Tlaib and Omar Weren’t Banned for Disagreeing with Israel

Written by Robert Spencer

It is unlikely to come as a surprise to anyone except the most blinkered Leftist ideologue that Ilhan Omar’s response to being banned from entering Israel, along with her fellow antisemitic Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, was outstandingly disingenuous. But she knows, when she retails her outrageous falsehoods, that the establishment media will never call her on them or reveal the true depths of her alliance with jihadis and agitation against Israel.

“The irony of the ‘only democracy’ in the Middle East making such a decision,” said Omar, “is that it is both an insult to democratic values and a chilling response to a visit by government officials from an allied nation.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tried to restore some realism and honesty to the discussion, saying: “As a free and vibrant democracy,” he said, “Israel is open to critics and criticism, with one exception: Israeli law prohibits the entry into Israel of those who call for, and work to impose, boycotts on Israel, as do other democracies that prevent the entry of people believed to be damaging to the country.”

There’s the rub. Omar and Tlaib are not just Congresswomen with opinions that are critical of Israel. They are not just spokesmen; they are activists. They are active apologists for the jihad terror networks Hamas and Hizballah. The Washington Examiner reported in May that

“Rep. Ilhan Omar appeared to take the side of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad Sunday night after terrorists fired hundreds of rockets at civilian targets in Israel this weekend.”

Omar tweeted:

“How many more protesters must be shot, rockets must be fired, and little kids must be killed until the endless cycle of violence ends? The status quo of occupation and humanitarian crisis in Gaza is unsustainable. Only real justice can bring about security and lasting peace.”

About Hamas’ genocidal incitement and celebration of the murders of Israeli civilians she was silent. Nor has she ever uttered a murmur of protest against the fact that Hamas is dedicated to the complete destruction of Israel, which, if it ever happened, would result in the deaths of millions of Israelis.

Tlaib, meanwhile, according to the Investigative Project on Terrorism, “was photographed with an avowed Hizballah supporter in January – just after being sworn in to the U.S. House of Representatives.” When this came to light, “she claimed she didn’t know the guy or what he stood for. But just two months later, Tlaib did it again. In a March photograph just discovered by the Investigative Project on Terrorism, Tlaib poses with Nader Jalajel, a Palestinian activist who last year mourned the death of a terrorist who led a shooting attack that murdered a rabbi.”

Hizballah is a wholly owned and operated subsidiary of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and is also dedicated to the complete destruction of Israel.

Both Tlaib and Omar have also spoken at fundraisers for the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). CAIR is an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case — so named by the Justice Department. CAIR officials have repeatedly refused to denounce Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist groups. Several former CAIR officials have been convicted of various crimes related to jihad terror. CAIR’s cofounder and longtime Board chairman (Omar Ahmad), as well as its chief spokesman (Ibrahim Hooper), have made Islamic supremacist statements about how Islamic law should be imposed in the U.S. (Ahmad denies this, but the original reporter stands by her story.) CAIR chapters frequently distribute pamphlets telling Muslims not to cooperate with law enforcement. CAIR has opposed virtually every anti-terror measure that has been proposed or implemented and has been declared a terror organization by the United Arab Emirates. CAIR’s Hussam Ayloush in 2017 called for the overthrow of the U.S. government. CAIR’s national outreach manager is an open supporter of Hamas.

In a sane society, fundraising for such a group would be political suicide. But in a sane society, neither Omar nor Tlaib would ever have been elected to Congress in the first place. Their lies would have dashed their political hopes. Tlaib’s would have been done in by her risible claim that her “Palestinian ancestors” worked “to create a safe haven for Jews” after the Holocaust.

In reality, as I show in detail in my forthcoming book The Palestinian Delusion: The Catastrophic History of the Middle East Peace Process, the Muslim Arabs in Palestine actually carried out numerous pogroms against the region’s Jewish residents and new arrivals. No Palestinian Arabs, none, worked to create a safe haven for Jews there or anywhere else.

But the most egregious falsehood that both Tlaib and Omar energetically propagate is the fiction that Israel is an occupying power, and that the Palestinian Arabs are suffering under this Israeli occupation. In reality, there never was a state of Palestine for Israel to occupy, in whole or part. Following the right of self-defense itself that all nations have honored throughout history (until the case of Israel), the Jewish state took control of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) from Jordan and Gaza from Egypt, after defeating the aggressive war of the neighboring Arab Muslim states. No Palestinian Arabs uttered a word of protest against the “occupations” from 1948 to 1967 by Jordan and Egypt of what they claim is their territory. Their rhetoric about Israel “occupation” now is designed to discredit Israel in the court of international opinion, and ultimately destroy it.

It is also worth noting that all the political parties in the “Palestinian territories” are pro-terror and dedicated to the destruction of Israel. This is what Omar and Tlaib support. Those who are comparing their ban with the banning of Pamela Geller and me from Britain are ignoring the fact that we never have called for or justified any violence or terrorism. The same cannot be said of Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib.

This article was originally published at FrontPageMag.com.