Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Omar: Influential Americans ‘Push For Allegiance To A Foreign Country’

Days after she deleted tweets widely criticized for anti-Semitism, Rep. Ilhan Omar made comments that some saw as accusing Jews of possessing dual loyalties.

According to Jewish Insider, Omar said during a panel discussion at a Washington, D.C. bookstore that because she and fellow first-term Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who was also there, are Muslim, “a lot of our Jewish colleagues, a lot of our constituents, a lot of our allies, go to thinking that everything we say about Israel to be anti-Semitic because we are Muslim.”

She said that she felt “pained” when people accuse her of intolerance. “But it’s almost as if, every single time we say something regardless of what it is we say…we get to be labeled something,” she said. “And that ends the discussion. Because we end up defending that and nobody ever gets to have the broader debate of what is happening with Palestine. So for me, I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is okay to push for allegiance to a foreign country.”

Accusing Jews of having loyalties to countries other than their home is a longtime anti-Semitic trope. Some accused Tlaib of deploying this rhetoric when she tweeted in January that legislators who wanted to vote for an anti-BDS bill during the government shutdown “forgot what country they represent.”

Both liberal and conservative Jewish commentators expressed their disapproval of Omar’s comments:

At one point, according to Jewish Insider, an audience member shouted out “It is about the Benjamins,” quoting Omar’s tweet from earlier this month that accused politicians of supporting Israel because of donations from the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC. Omar “unequivocally apologize[d]” after several fellow Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, said the remark reflected anti-Semitic tropes about Jews using their money to nefariously control political leaders.

Earlier this week, Omar deleted those tweets, as well as a tweet from 2012 accusing Israel of having “hypnotized the world.”

Contact Aiden Pink at [email protected] or on Twitter, @aidenpink

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.