Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., attacked Israel’s response to an unprecedented assault by Hamas in an extensive thread on social media Monday.
Omar, a longtime critic of Israel and advocate for Palestinians, seemed to equate the Israeli victims killed by Hamas terrorists this weekend and Palestinians killed in the ongoing Israeli response.
‘Just as we honor the humanity of the hundreds of innocent Israeli civilians and 9 Americans who were killed this weekend, we must honor the humanity of the innocent Palestinian civilians who have been killed and whose lives are upended,’ she wrote.
Omar went on to highlight the hardships of living in Gaza, accusing Israel of operating an ‘apartheid’ state in an attempt to explain violence by Hamas.
‘Palestinian residents of the West Bank have scarcely better lives than Gazans — with the routine destruction of their ancestral homes, destruction of their crops, and violent attacks by Israeli settlers,’ Omar wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
‘Palestinians have few recourses for justice and accountability. Attacks by the IDF and settlers against Palestinians are regularly met with impunity. Efforts to seek justice in international courts are stonewalled by the Israeli government, with U.S. support,’ she added. ‘As the world is condemning Hamas’s attacks, we must also oppose an Israeli military response that has already taken the lives of hundreds of Palestinians, including nearly two dozen children.’
Omar’s office did not respond to questions from Fox News Digital asking her to elaborate on the thread.
The congresswoman did not clarify how she believed Israel should have responded to Saturday’s attack, which has since left at least 1,000 Israelis dead and 2,700 more wounded. The Minnesota Democrat’s only suggestion for a ‘solution to this horror’ was ‘a negotiated peace — with Israelis and Palestinians enjoying equal rights and security guarantees.’
Later in the thread, Omar said that Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant had called all Palestinians ‘human animals’ in comments earlier this week, though his full statement made clear that he was referring only to Hamas terrorists.
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‘We are imposing a complete siege on Gaza. There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything will be closed,’ Gallant said. ‘We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly.’
Israeli forces have deployed tens of thousands of troops to the area around Gaza City, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has suggested a ground invasion may be imminent.
Other statements from Omar have sparked controversy in the past.
When she took office in 2019, she soon had to answer for a now-deleted 2012 tweet in which she wrote, ‘Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.’ She later expressed regret, saying the ‘unfortunate words were the only words’ she could ‘think about expressing at that moment’ in reference to Israel’s 2012 operation against Hamas in Gaza.
Also in 2019, speaking at a Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) fundraiser, Omar said: ‘CAIR was founded after 9/11 because they recognized that some people did something, and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties.’ Critics accused her of trying to downplay the actions of terrorists by describing it as ‘some people did something.’ She later clarified, ‘Many Americans found themselves now having their civil rights stripped from them, and so what I was speaking to was the fact that as a Muslim, not only was I suffering as an American who was attacked on that day, but the next day I woke up as my fellow Americans were now treating me as a suspect.’
Also, in January 2023, Omar responded to the outrage over a 2019 tweet in which she described America’s relationship with Israel as ‘all about the Benjamins,’ a tweet for which she later apologized.
‘I certainly did not or was not aware that the word ‘hypnotized’ was a trope. I wasn’t aware of the fact that there are tropes about Jews and money. That has been very enlightening part of this journey,’ she told CNN.
Fox News’ Yael Halon and Houston Keene contributed to this report.