Skip to main content
Categories
News

Ilhan Omar Controversy: Cori Bush Accuses Fellow Democrats of ‘Anti-Blackness and Islamophobia’

Reps. Cori Bush, D-Mo., and Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., rushed to the defense of Squad member Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., as her comments about Israel and the U.S. create division among House Democrats.

“Stop attacking @IlhanMN. Stop attacking us. I’m not surprised when Republicans attack Black women for standing up for human rights. But when it’s Democrats, it’s especially hurtful. We’re your colleagues. Talk to us directly. Enough with the anti-Blackness and Islamophobia,” Bush wrote on Twitter on Thursday.

“Once again disappointed in my colleagues quicker to condemn @Ilhan than they are to condemn the human rights abuses of the apartheid state of Israel. This statement purposefully distorts her words, stokes anti-Muslim hate toward my sister in service, and is unacceptable,” Tlaib wrote on Twitter.

Democrats, including Reps. Brad Schneider of Illinois, Brad Sherman of California, Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, Jake Auchincloss of Massachusetts and Ted Deutch of Florida, asked Omar to “clarify her words” in a recent statement.

“Equating the United States and Israel to Hamas and the Taliban is as offensive as it is misguided,” the group of Democrats said in a statement. {snip}

{snip}

“On Monday, I asked Secretary of State Antony Blinken about an ongoing International Criminal Court investigations. To be clear: the conversation was about accountability for specific incidents regarding those ICC cases, not a moral comparison between Hamas and the Taliban and the U.S. and Israel. I was in no way equating terrorist organizations with democratic countries with well-established judicial systems,” Omar said in a statement.

She had doubled down and accused her critics of “Islamophobic tropes” earlier on Thursday.

{snip}

The latest episode of intra-party division among Democrats over comments from Omar began during a Monday hearing with Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Omar pressed Blinken on his opposition to the International Criminal Court investigating alleged war crimes in both “Palestine and Afghanistan.”

{snip}