. . . Dianne Lob, Chair, William Daroff, CEO, and Malcolm Hoenlein, Vice Chair of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, issued the following statement:
“We condemn the disgraceful comments made by Representative Ilhan Omar (MN-5) in a CNN interview in which she accused her Jewish Congressional colleagues, along with the Jewish people as a whole, of not being committed to the pursuit of justice. Her tweets this morning with examples of individual Jews and Jewish organizations that she finds noteworthy do not mitigate her bigoted comments. We remain greatly concerned with the pattern of her statements attacking the Jewish people and, specifically in this case, Jewish members of Congress.
The late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was an eloquent voice for Jewish values, and was fond of the Torah passage ‘Justice, justice shall you pursue.’ Seeking justice is a core tenet of our faith, a tenet sustained throughout 2000 years as an oppressed, stateless minority and championed since 1948 by the State of Israel.
Representative Omar needs to better understand the history of the Jewish people and the commitment to social justice of her Jewish colleagues in Congress in order to understand true Jewish values, including the mandate of tikkun olam (social justice), chesed (acts of kindness) and Tzedaka (charity) that guide the work of the American Jewish community, the Jewish State, and the Jewish people everywhere.”
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