ILHAN OMAR’S ISLAMOPHOBIA DODGE:

In her speech to CAIR, Omar claimed that the group had been founded after 9/11 in order to defend Muslims against a backlash after the attacks. This is patently false. CAIR was founded in 1994 as a political front for the Holy Land Foundation, a group that raised funds for the Hamas terror group that was eventually shut down by the Treasury Department. Her support for CAIR is consistent with her backing for the anti-Semitic BDS movement.

But the broader point to be made here is the way the effort to shift the discussion about 9/11 from a seminal moment in the long struggle against Islamist terror to a mere excuse to discriminate against Muslims is now being used to downplay Omar’s anti-Semitism. . . .

While all forms of bias are despicable, the backlash narrative was, as I noted in 2010, a successful effort to “redirect, redefine and rewrite the unambiguous meaning of an unambiguous event” in order to defame the United States. But it’s now being weaponized again to portray an unapologetic anti-Semite like Omar as a victim. The point of this campaign is to protect her and all others who seek to delegitimize Jews and supporters of Israel with an impenetrable cloak of immunity that belongs to victims.

Decent persons—Jewish and non-Jewish, Republican or Democrat—cannot allow this big lie to stand unopposed.

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