Leading the effort to stop Kevin McCarthy. Congress lady Ilhan Umar By serving on the House Foreign Affairs Committee because of his earlier criticism of Israel, the report Al Jazeera. This is one of his first acts as Speaker of the US House of Representatives.
A proposal to remove Omar from the panel was tabled Wednesday by the House Republican majority. Democrats rejected the initiative and accused McCarthy of racism for focusing on the lawmaker. Only two Muslim women Serves in the US Congress and is a former refugee of Somali heritage.
The resolution against Omar was initially challenged by some Republicans, who questioned McCarthy’s ability to carry it because of the GOP’s thin majority. But on Wednesday, all 218 Republicans in the House voted to advance the proposal, while 209 Democrats continued to support Omar. A final vote is expected on Thursday as progressives back Omar.
Omar was supported by the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), which described him as a “respectable and indispensable” legislator.
“You can’t remove a member of Congress from a committee just because you don’t agree with their views. That’s both ridiculous and dangerous,” CPC chair Pramila Jaipal said in a statement on Monday.
Republican Max Miller of Ohio, who sponsored the anti-Omer movement on Tuesday, cited several instances in which a female member of Congress has criticized Israel and US foreign policy.
“Congresswoman Omar clearly cannot be an objective decision maker on the Foreign Affairs Committee, given her anti-Israel and anti-Jewish biases,” Miller said in a statement.
In response, Omar asserted that the resolution was not “objectively correct” and that if it was, no one would have joined the committees.
Despite the fact that the Republican resolution accuses Omar of being anti-Semitic, it only refers to comments he made about Israel and not Jews.
For example, the legislation criticizes the congresswoman for calling Israel an “apartheid state,” despite the fact that prominent human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have also criticized Israel for its racist treatment of the Palestinians. The system has been accused of imposing.
When Omar claimed that political contributions from pro-Israel lobby groups, such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), fueled support for Israel in Washington earlier in his congressional career in 2019, he drew intense scrutiny. come under
Omar eventually apologized for the comments, but Palestinian rights advocates claim that accusations of anti-Semitism against critics of Israel are intended to silence debate over those policies.
Progressives who support Palestinian human rights, such as Andy Levin of Michigan, a left-leaning Jewish former House member, have been funneled millions of dollars into congressional races by AIPAC and other pro-Israel groups over the past two years. Defeated.
During the 2020 election, Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric often referred to ageism. At a rally in 2019, Omar’s fans chanted “send him back” but Trump did nothing to stop them.
Omar has resisted McCarthy’s attempts to remove him from the committee despite initial resistance from his own caucus, calling him “pathetic”.