Ilhan Omar’s Sanctions Hypocrisy

(January 12, 2020 / JNS) The bias of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) revealed itself yet again this week, in the aftermath of the killing of Iranian general and arch terrorist Qassem Soleimani. In her rush to condemn the U.S. administration and President Donald Trump’s declaration of increased economic sanctions on Iran, she forgot that she approves of sanctions when it politically and personally suits her.

“This makes no sense,” Omar exclaimed on Twitter. “Sanctions are economic warfare. They have already caused medical shortages and countless deaths in Iran. You cannot claim to want deescalation and then announce new sanctions with no clear goal. This is not a measured response!”

This was not the first time Omar has condemned U.S. sanctions. When Trump threatened Turkey with sanctions in October, in response to Ankara’s incursion into northern Syria, Omar referred to it as “a humanitarian and geopolitical disaster.”

In January 2019, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced sanctions on Venezuela in response to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro not respecting the results of the election and turning over power to Juan Guaidó. Omar tweeted in response that “Trump’s new sanctions on Venezuela are nothing more than economic sabotage designed to force regime change by starving the very people we claim to be helping. … We should support dialogue, not a coup!”

So Omar openly sides with the dictator who stole an election and has destroyed his country and his people, but Trump is the bad guy.

Then there is her favorite target, Israel. Despite all the admonishments that sanctions are “economic warfare” that harms the people of a country, not the government, she has been a vocal proponent of the anti-Israel BDS movement. Even though she assured the Jewish voters in her district that she didn’t support BDS because it was “not helpful in getting that two-state solution,” she flip-flopped back to supporting BDS once elected.

Omar sponsored House Resolution 496, which is a pro-BDS resolution disguised as a free speech issue. This is important because of the response Omar gave when pressed on the difference between sanctions on Iran and BDS.

“The BDS movement is a movement that is driven by the people,” Omar said when asked by a reporter. “The sanctions on Iran, are sanctions that are being placed to create maximum pressure by a government. That’s very different.”

However, as is clearly seen by Omar’s own resolution, she wants the U.S. government to exert maximum pressure on Israel. So either she’s lying, or she forgot that she introduced such a resolution.

She is also either lying or forgetting BDS’s own definition of itself. From the BDS website: “BDS aims to end international support for Israeli violations of international law by forcing companies, institutions and governments to change their policies.”

“Forcing governments to change their policies” sounds a lot like a maximum pressure campaign that consists of economic warfare against citizens.

Finally, when questioned on Twitter last October about her selective support of sanctions, Omar replied: “Not all sanctions are alike, some sanctions economically devastate a country and ultimately only harm its citizens, I am never for those.”

Which sanctions don’t ultimately harm citizens? The purpose of sanctions is to incentivize citizens to pressure their own governments! Once again, Omar is either lying, or has no clue what she is talking about.

Ilhan Omar has a well-documented history of siding with despots and dictators and against Israel and America. She has been wrong on every foreign policy issue. Meanwhile, she sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. It’s easy to call her anti-Semitic, anti-American and a detriment to our government and society. The hard part is influencing and educating the voters in her district so they vote her out.