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(JTA) — Rep. Ilhan Omar declared in a collection of tweets that she not be current when Israeli President Isaac Herzog addresses a joint session of Congress subsequent week.
“There isn’t any manner in hell I’m attending the joint session deal with from a President whose nation has banned me and denied
@RashidaTlaib the flexibility to see her grandma,” Omar, the Minnesota Democrat, tweeted Wednesday night concerning Herzog’s July 19 speech.
Omar’s tweet referenced Israel’s determination in 2019 to bar her and Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib from visiting Israel and the West Financial institution as a result of each congresswomen assist the motion to boycott Israel. Israel later mentioned Tlaib, who’s Palestinian-American, may go to her grandmother within the West Financial institution on humanitarian grounds, however she declined the provide, citing “oppressive” circumstances Israel was inserting on the go to. (Tlaib doesn’t seem to have commented publicly on Herzog’s deal with.)
Omar added, in a separate all-caps tweet, “We shouldn’t be inviting the president of Israel — a authorities who below its present prime minister barred the primary two Muslim ladies elected to Congress from visiting the nation — to present a joint deal with to Congress.”
Herzog’s go to to Washington comes amid a chill in relations between President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has but to obtain an invite to the White Home. As president, Herzog serves as head of state in a traditionally apolitical function, although he has repeatedly known as for a pause on Netanyahu’s effort to weaken Israel’s judiciary — which Biden has additionally criticized.
Omar additionally criticized the judicial overhaul effort, in addition to the Netanyahu authorities’s robust opposition to Palestinian statehood, amongst different points. She acknowledged that Herzog doesn’t maintain govt energy however mentioned that he would nonetheless be performing as an “ambassador” for the Israeli authorities. She wrote that she additionally opposed a latest deal with to Congress by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi due to opposition to his insurance policies.
Omar just isn’t the primary U.S. lawmaker to sit down out an deal with by an Israeli chief. When Netanyahu controversially addressed Congress in 2015 to rally opposition to then-President Barack Obama’s nuclear settlement with Iran, eight senators and 50 members of Congress, all Democrats or allied with them, didn’t attend.
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