Tying Ilhan Omar’s anti-Semitism to her overseas roots – Washington Examiner

In defending the repeated anti-Israel, anti-Semitic things freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., keeps blurting out, Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., touched on something no one is bothering to ask: Why does Omar hold these views about Jews?

Omar has accused Israel, which is Jewish, of having “hypnotized the world.” She keeps talking about Jews and their money. Her sympathies with Iran, a U.S. adversary and a hostile state to Israel, are well documented.

TheHill.com reported Wednesday that Clyburn defended Omar by “lamenting that many of the media reports surrounding [her] recent controversy have omitted mentioning that Omar, who was born in Somalia, had to flee the country to escape violence…” Clyburn told the website, “It’s more personal with her. I’ve talked to her, and I can tell you she is living through a lot of pain.”

Clyburn’s remarks suggest that Omar’s beliefs may seem foreign precisely because her beliefs didn’t form in America.

Omar was born in Somalia, lived much of her childhood there, and then moved with her family to a neighborhood full of other Somalian refugees. Somalia is about 100 percent Muslim, and I’ll assume I don’t need to get into the longstanding, ongoing conflict between Muslims and Jews. These communities in and around Minneapolis are insular and it’s not a shock that she might absorb views that aren’t standard throughout the rest of America.

In a story published in August of last year, the Minneapolis Star Tribune quoted Hassan Mursal, a small business owner in a city outside of Minneapolis, saying that the locals “realized” of the Somali population that “we’re normal people with a different culture.”

In that “different culture,” you can fully expect views that are exotic, even abhorrent, to take hold. Federal data show people leave or attempt to leave Minneapolis in hopes to join Islamic terrorist networks abroad more than any other city in the U.S.

So big is the problem that Minnesota U.S. attorney general Andrew Lugar said in 2015 that “Minnesota has a terror recruiting problem.”

The Times reported that year that “Federal prosecutors have charged more than 20 people in Minnesota in relation to Al Shabaab, an African terrorist organization. At least 10 more have been charged with supporting the Islamic State.”

Omar comes from places where ideas and views like this can spread. Are we surprised by the anti-Semitism?