Let’s examine one of the GOP’s core arguments in removing Rep. Omar from the House Foreign Affairs Committee: that criticism of the U.S. and Israeli government’s role in the Palestinian human rights crisis — which organizations from Human Rights Watch1 to Amnesty International2 are sounding the alarm on — is equivalent to antisemitism.
It is important to recognize that this is a dangerous and false conflation designed to threaten and prevent us from taking the matter of human rights in the region seriously.
Jewish members of Congress themselves, of all positions and takes on the matter, conveyed horror at the charge of antisemitism being cynically weaponized to silence people in this fashion and testified to Rep. Ilhan Omar’s character. They asked the GOP to not do this in their name nor on their community’s behalf.
It also gets to one of the actual core reasons they sought to strip Rep. Omar of her committee assignment to Foreign Affairs: because her experience as a refugee, Muslim, immigrant, mother, and survivor of war gives her a unique and special credibility to challenge a U.S. foreign policy consensus that has too often failed both Americans at home and human beings abroad. Her presence, identity, and experience forces us to look in the mirror and sit with our policy decisions and costs of war, and center the victims, survivors, and those who are most impacted.
That is why it is important to show up and support in this moment, and see this cynical political attack for what it really is: fear of inspiring a larger shift towards accountability and transparency by everyday Americans regarding our own foreign policy.
Together we will continue to fight for just foreign policy that supports human rights for all.
In solidarity,
Alexandria
1 - Human Rights Watch
2 - Amnesty International
 |
 |
 |
Email us: [email protected]
This email was sent to [email protected]. Email is the most important way we keep in touch with people like you, so thank you for reading to the end. Small donors like you keep us going. To contribute via check, please address to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for Congress, PO Box 680080, Corona, NY 11368.
Paid for by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for Congress
