House Minority Leader and Brooklyn Dem Hakeem Jeffries says Ilhan Omar belongs on Foreign Affairs Committee --- even though she didn't know some of what she said were verbal attacks on Israel and intensely anti-Semitic

Omar says  ---  "....  To insinuate that I knowingly said these things when people have read into my comments to make it sound as if I have something against the Jewish community is so wrong....”

House Minority Leader. Brooklyn Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, the Steering and Policy Committee for House Democrats, and the House Democratic Caucus as a whole have put forward Rep. Ilhan Omar among the Democrats’ selections for seats on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, a Friday news release revealed.

This move defies threats from House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to pursue his plan to prevent Omar’s continued service on that standing House Committee. To accomplish that aim, McCarthy would need to hold a vote in the full House, not unlike what the House did when it removed Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene from committees during the past Congress during Democrat control.  At this time, it is far from a sure thing that Speaker McCarthy would have enough votes on his side to purge Congresswoman Omar; so, only time will tell.

For her part, Representative Ilhan Omar  (D-MN) said Sunday that she was unaware that various statements about Jewish people and money would or should be considered anti-semitic.   

On the Sunday cable show “State of the Union,” CNN's anchor Dana Bash confronted Repsentative Ilhan Omar with this  >>>  “What Republicans are saying about you is that there is a pattern of antisemitic and other controversial statements that make you unfit to sit on, in your case, the House Foreign Affairs Committee. I’m told that Republicans presented a list in their meeting, in their private meeting this past week. Included in that list, you said that Israel hypnotized the world. You said Israel is an apartheid regime. You said that politicians with pro-Israel stances were all about the Benjamins, which you very notably apologized for, that you support the BDS movement, which a lot of people think is rooted in anti-semitism, compared the U.S. and Israel to Hamas and the Taliban. I want to give you a chance to respond to all of that.”

Congresswoman Omar responded with this  >>>   “I might have used words at [that] time that I didn’t [know] were trafficking in anti-semitism. When that was brought to my attention, I apologized. I owned up to it. That’s the kind of person that I am. I continue to work with my colleagues and my community to fight against anti-semitism....   “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. To insinuate that I knowingly said these things when people have read into my comments to make it sound as if I have something against the Jewish community is so wrong.”