After an intense public campaign from many such as Bryan Leib, the popular advocate for a democratic Iran and staunch Israel supporter, Ilhan Omar, the Democratic congresswoman from the state of Minnesota, was removed Thursday from her seat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. According to those who were vocal supporters of the move, the move comes after years of Omar’s antisemitic comments and her now infamous allegation that on September 11, 2001, ‘some people did something’.

While many, like Leib who until last month headed up the lobbying group “Iranian Americans for Liberty” believe her removal is a strong indictment of anti-Semitism, some on the left are calling the move ‘revenge’ by the Republican majority. In 2020, two of their members were removed from the committees when the Democrats held the majority in the House of Representatives.

Watch: Bryan Leib: Rep. Ilhan Omar has "no place on the House Foreign Affairs Committee" https://t.co/M36sGEYb8o

— Just the News (@JustTheNews) February 2, 2023

Omar claimed that her removal from the position was due to her being a Muslim woman who immigrated to the United States as a refugee. "Is anyone surprised that I am somehow deemed unfit to speak about American foreign policy?" she said shortly before the vote. 

In recent weeks, Lieb has been making the rounds across cable News calling for Republicans to oust Omar from the prestigious and sensitive congressional committee post. Earlier in the week he appeared on the news program 'Just The News, No Noise' with Amanda Head on the Real America's Voice network and said Omar has "disqualified herself (from the Foreign Affairs Committee) based on her words, her rhetoric, and her actions." Prophetically, Lieb even predicted that the Congresswoman would blame the move on racism, saying that "[t]his is not a racist play. This has nothing to do with her being a Muslim member of Congress. If she wants to serve on the Veterans Affairs Committee or the Small Business Committee she should do that."

In recent weeks since the Republicans assumed control of Congress, there has been a public push by many to remove Omar from the high-profile committee as well as Congressman Eric Swalwell from the House Intelligence Committee. Swalwell allegedly had an affair with a notorious Chinese spy Christine Fang and since those revelations in 2020, calls for his removal from the committee that is privy to confidential information have grown louder. Swalwell was removed by Congressional Speaker Kevin McCarthy along with Adam Schiff from the Select Intelligence committee last week although removing Omar from the Foreign Affairs committee required a majority congressional vote.

Adam Schiff lied.
- about Russian collusion
- about Hunter Biden's laptop
- about knowing a whistleblower

Eric Swalwell had a relationship with a Chinese spy.

They are disqualified from serving on the House Intelligence Committee. pic.twitter.com/yJ8S73QI7O

— Kevin McCarthy (@SpeakerMcCarthy) January 26, 2023

Many pundits such as Leib have been calling for Omar’s removal from the Foreign Affairs committee for years, and those calls grew louder once it was confirmed that the Republicans would assume control of the House of Representatives late last year. As early as June 2021, Leib, who also serves as an ‘Insider’ on the popular cable news channel Newsmax, was calling for Omar’s removal after a Tweet from the Somali-born congresswoman claimed that “[w]e have seen unthinkable atrocities committed by the U.S., Hamas, Israel, Afghanistan, and the Taliban.”

In the wake of the shocking comparison by Omar, Leib said on Newsmax at the time that the Democrat head of the US Congress Nancy Pelosi “couldn’t find the moral courage that is needed to condemn Ilhan Omar when she mentioned the United States and Israel in the same breath as Hamas and the Taliban. Hamas and the Taliban are foreign terror organizations, and the U.S. and Israel are two bastions of Democracy.”

Omar has frequently criticized Israel and is a vocal supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction movement (BDS) against Israel. She has repeatedly condemned Israel’s policies in Judea and Samaria, which the Jewish State has controlled since Jordan retreated after a humiliating loss in 1967’s Six-Day-War. Jordan, who had annexed the land in 1950, officially renounced any claim to the territory which includes East Jerusalem, in 1988.

About four years ago, the leadership of the Democratic Party announced in an extremely unusual move that it would hold a vote in Congress on a proposal condemning anti-Semitism and directly referring to the statements of Omar, who is among the harshest critics of Israel in Congress. However, two days later the vote was postponed to an unknown date due to disputes within the party that prevented public condemnation of her statements. At the same time, three presidential candidates from the Democratic Party issued statements backing Omar.

Omar got into trouble several times with anti-Semitic statements. Immediately after her 2018 election to Congress in an interview with "Yahoo News", Omar compared Israel to Iran while purposefully misrepresenting a proposed Israeli law that codified that Israel is a Jewish State: "When Israel passes a law that recognizes it as a Jewish state and does not recognize other religions that live there, and we treat it as a democracy In the Middle East, I almost laugh. Because we see it in the societies we visit like Iran," she said.

To all the people in my mentions and DMs who think that S1 was the work of AIPAC: I have a bridge I want to sell you. Either way, OF COURSE it's possible to critique AIPAC et al in a non-anti-Semitic way. This ain't it, chief.

— Batya Ungar-Sargon (@bungarsargon) February 11, 2019

Omar’s statement ignored that Israel’s non-Jewish citizens enjoy the same rights and freedoms as its Jewish citizens which are the majority. According to its Declaration of Independence which serves to outline the nation’s values in the absence of a formal constitution, equality is of utmost importance to Israel, and citizens, regardless of background or religious affiliation, share the same rights and opportunities in the country.

Later in 2018 before her inauguration, Omar participated in a panel at a neighborhood cafe in Washington and was asked to address the uproar due to her previous anti-Semitic statement, in which she implied that the support of members of Congress for Israel was bought with money. Omar explained her opposition to the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC by saying: "I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says you can be loyal to another country." "Why can we talk about the NRA or 'Big Pharma' but not about another lobby that affects policy?".

Shortly after those comments, Leib wrote an Op-Ed published in the Times of Israel entitled ‘It’s 2019 and I am scared to be a Jew in America’. In that piece, he specifically called out the newly elected Omar’s long history of public antisemitic comments. He alleged that antisemitism had now gone mainstream in America. Leib wrote: “I’m talking about Ilhan Omar from Minnesota who is a Farrakhan disciple, who echoes his venomous words towards Israel and Jewish Americans. Farrakhan calls Jews “Termites” and “Satanic.” Omar has called for her god to open the world’s eyes to the evil of Israel. Omar recently said the only reason American politicians support Israel is because of the money that in her opinion, Jews have bought.”

Dear @AIPAC,

Please call on @RashidaTlaib @IlhanMN & @AOC to condemn these rocket attacks.

Sincerely,

Bryan Leib https://t.co/IJSeUM7PGX

— Bryan E. Leib (@BryanLeibFL) August 17, 2019

Not long after her swearing into Congress In 2019, Omar apologized for implying that money was behind the support for Israel. Members of both parties, including then-Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, condemned her comments as anti-Semitic, claiming they evoked stereotypes about Jews using money for influence. However, since that apology, she has continued to make antisemitic comments. On Thursday, Democrats, including Jewish members, also said that Omar had taken appropriate steps to educate herself about anti-Semitism despite her appearance on CNN’s face the nation Sunday where she claimed she was unaware that the association of Jews and Money was considered an antisemitic trope.