House passes measure condemning hate

WASHINGTON — The House on Thursday passed a measure broadly condemning hate, as Democrats seek to move past a controversy over alleged anti-Semitic comments from freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar.

The resolution condemns anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim bias in equal measure, a shift from a draft circulated Monday that rebuked only anti-Semitism. Neither mentions Omar, D-Minn., or her comments specifically.

“It’s not about her,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said of Omar at a news conference. “It’s about these forms of hatred.”

Thursday’s vote reflected Democratic leaders’ concerns that the acrimonious issue is overshadowing their legislative agenda, including the expected passage Friday of a sweeping election and ethics reform bill.

But even the new resolution had problems. The vote was briefly delayed Thursday afternoon as House leaders made further changes to the resolution, broadening it again to acknowledge prejudice against even more minority groups.

Omar suggested last week that Israel’s supporters have an “allegiance to a foreign country,” remarks that angered some Democrats who saw them as hateful tropes and who pushed to condemn the freshman lawmaker. Her defenders argued that leadership was applying a double standard in singling out one of the two Muslim women in Congress.

The resolution posted Thursday indirectly repudiates Omar’s comments, saying that “accusations of dual loyalty generally have an insidious and pernicious history” and noting that such an accusation “constitutes anti-Semitism because it suggests that Jewish citizens cannot be patriotic Americans and trusted neighbors.”

But it also includes language condemning anti-Muslim bigotry “as hateful expressions of intolerance that are contrary to the values and aspirations of the United States,” and condemns incidents of mosque bombings and planned domestic terrorist attacks targeting Muslim communities.

Omar, a Somali American immigrant, has spoken about religiously motivated verbal attacks and threats she has been subjected to. Last week, a sign was posted in the West Virginia state Capitol falsely linking her to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The decision to sanction Omar for her “allegiance” comments without mentioning the hatred she had faced — as well as incidents of intolerance concerning President Donald Trump and other Republicans — infuriated many Democrats and prompted a backlash at the initial plans to condemn anti-Semitism specifically.

That forced Democratic leaders to chart a delicate path to navigate the sensitivities of their own caucus.

The seven-page resolution that passed the House acknowledges at one part that white supremacists have targeted “traditionally persecuted peoples, including African-Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders and other people of color, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, the LGBTQ community, immigrants, and others.”

The version circulated earlier Thursday did not include Latinos, Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders or the LGBTQ community.

Noting the front-page coverage the controversy has received, Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., said, “We want to put this thing to bed before we do H.R. 1, which is a really important bill.” She referred to the ethics and election reform bill.