(Pluralist) Rep. Ilhan Omar has been called out for a 2013 interview in which she complained that Americans say “Al Qaeda” as though it’s something negative.
Video of the conversation resurfaced after Omar, a freshman Democratic congresswoman from Minnesota, on Sunday tweeted that US support for Israel is “all about the Benjamins.” Under heavy bipartisan pressure, including from the leaders of her party, she apologized on Monday, saying she had been unintentionally anti-Semitic.
In the several-year-old clip, Omar joked with Arab-American talk show host Ahmed Tharwat that Americans seem to preserve the Arabic names for things they don’t like.
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“It’s very interesting that we keep the Arabic name to such violent and negative entities: Al Qaeda, Al Shabaab, Hezbollah,” Tharwat said, listing major terrorist groups.
