Washington, D.C. – U.S. Representative Paul Gosar, D.D.S. (AZ-09) issued the following statement after voting in favor of removing Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar from the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

“Representative Omar has pursued a reckless and fundamentally anti-American agenda while in the United States House of Representatives.  She regularly engages with racists, supports and condones racism, and champions anti-American sentiments.

Through it all, she has expressed a deep hatred for Jewish people and Israel.   It is because of her hate filled tirades against Jews and Israel that she has been barred from traveling to Israel.  Representative Omar has no place on the House Foreign Affairs committee, which often addresses issues with Israel.   Ms. Omar is not the exception; however, she is representative of the racism and antisemitism endemic of many on the Left today.

Though Representative Omar previously refused to grant any due process rights to Republicans whom she falsely labeled racist and voted to remove from committees, the Republican Conference has granted Ms. Omar that which she refused to others: the right to due process and to plead an appeal to the House Ethics Committee.  The Republicans are always fair-minded when it comes to protecting individual rights and liberties, something Representative Omar herself denied to Republicans with glee.

We cannot allow a person who acts with such dishonor, with such open hostility against our Jewish friends, or a person so seething with hatred and bile such as Representative Omar, to serve on this important committee.  It is a fair question whether she should serve in Congress at all,” concluded Representative Gosar.  

Background:

The removal resolution, submitted by Rep. Max Miller (R-OH), establishes that Representative Omar has “brought dishonor to the House” by invoking antisemitic tropes and “by her own words, has disqualified herself from serving on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, a panel that is viewed by nations around the world as speaking for Congress on matters of national importance and international security.”

House Ethics Committee Chair Michael Guest (R-MS), spoke in favor of the resolution noting that the “resolution is very narrowly tailored just to remove Ms. Omar from a single committee, which is Foreign Affairs. Many of her statements, if not all, relate to statements she made [about] people of Jewish descent, and those are issues that are taken up by the Foreign Affairs Committee.”

Representative Omar has accused Jewish Americans of having a dual loyalty where they prefer Israel over the United States.  She also accused Jewish Americans of acting only in the pursuit of money, claiming that support for Israel is “all about the Benjamins,” and that Jewish Americans who support Israel are “push[ing] for allegiance to a foreign country.”  Ms. Omar also falsely called Israel an “apartheid state,” and she has made comments comparing the United States and Israel to Hamas as well as the Afghani Taliban.