If nothing else, one thing most people would agree on about Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) is that when she wants to get a message across, she doesn’t waste any time.
Such was the case earlier this week when, on Wednesday evening, the freshman Congresswoman tweeted out support for a newly-formed bipartisan caucus for black and Jewish House members . . . and then sided with anti-Semitic activist Linda Sarsour in a Twitter war over one of the caucus’s Jewish founders just hours later.
Here’s a timeline of what went down:
On Monday, the American Jewish Community advocacy group officially announced the formation of the coalition:
The AJC also noted the purpose of the caucus:
A couple of days after Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) retweeted the news, Omar weighed in with a show of solidarity:
Upon seeing this, AJC Global’s assistant executive director Avi Mayer copied Omar’s tweet to Sarsour:
Sarsour responded by accusing Zeldin of “anti-Arab, anti-Palestinian” bigotry:
Not done, Mayer pushed back:
The next day, Jewish Insider reported that Omar’s spokesman confirmed she’d be joining the caucus:
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) will join the newly formed bipartisan, Congressional Black-Jewish Caucus, her spokesman Jeremy Slevin confirmed to Jewish Insider on Thursday.
Somewhere in the midst of officially joining the caucus and the back and forth tweets between Sarsour and Mayer, Omar noticed Mayer’s second tweet and made sure to let everyone know that she stood with Sarsour on the issue of caucus founder Rep. Lee Zeldin:
Zeldin, who has not been shy in the past about condemning the anti-Semitic tropes frequently used by both Omar and her Congressional BFF Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), took a more measured approach.
Instead of pointing out that Omar had just demonstrated that her goal was to undermine the very bipartisan group she just joined, Zeldin instead suggested that she “be better”:
Except Omar has no intentions of being better, and she proved it on Friday with this racially-charged retweet:
Ironically enough, the idea of a bipartisan caucus was first suggested by Jewish groups who were concerned, in part, about the anti-Semitic rhetoric coming from Sarsour and Democrat members of Congress like Omar and Tlaib:
The new caucus followed multiple shootings at American synagogues as well as concern over remarks made by both Sarsour and Omar. The American Jewish Congress specifically called for a bipartisan group of Jewish lawmakers to form after Omar suggested that Israel had bought support from the U.S.
Shortly after the AJC’s announcement, Mayer noted that Sarsour’s panic over the formation of the group was a welcome sign:
While that’s true, it remains to be seen if Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), a founding member of the new caucus and also a longtime member of the Louis Farrakhan-friendly Congressional Black Caucus, is listening.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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