Ilhan Omar is leading a boycott of Israeli president Isaac Herzog’s speech to Congress this week, saying a country that banned her and Rashida Tlaib, both Muslims, from visiting should not get an audience from a joint session of Congress.

Rep. Ilhan Omar’s insulting removal from the House Foreign Affairs Committee is a stark reminder of where Muslim Americans stand in the United States. 

PBS News Hour irresponsibly suggests that Rep. Ilhan Omar is antisemitic for her criticism of pro-Israel campaign spending by the Israel lobby. And the same broadcast covers “dark money” in this year’s campaign without mentioning $27 million AIPAC just dropped in the latest cycle. Go figure.

In an interview with Benjamin Netanyahu, Bill Maher compared Kanye West’s recent antisemitic comments to criticisms of Israel by Democratic House members.

Filings from the Federal Election Commission (FEC) reveal that the pro-Israel group the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) spent more than $350,000 trying to defeat Rep. Ilhan Omar in the Democratic primary for Minnesota’s 5th district. Additionally the group spent over $400,000 to help defeat New York 10th district candidate Yuh-Line Niou, a progressive assembly member who expressed support for the BDS movement. Both races were very close, Omar’s unexpectedly so.

House Foreign Affairs Committee votes to stop funding Palestinian curriculum that include teaching that Israel is an apartheid state. Rep. Brad Sherman of Los Angeles explains, Israelis and Palestinians live side by side in separation, just like the Dutch and the Germans live on either side of a border, so to characterize Israeli rule as apartheid is an “extreme and ridiculous conclusion.”

Democratic congressional members are calling on the Biden administration to take action over Israel’s recent attacks on human rights groups.

Two new legislative efforts to force the Biden administration to investigate the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh were announced this week.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib has introduced a historic resolution acknowledging the Nakba, which calls on the U.S. government to officially recognize the event and honor the rights of Palestinian refugees.

Israel’s declaration of six leading Palestinian human rights and civil society groups as “terrorist” organizations continues to have reverberations in Washington. Rep. Betty McCollum has introduced a resolution calling on the U.S. House of Representatives to condemn Israel’s announcement, and specifically called for the Biden administration to “publicly condemn this authoritarian and antidemocratic act of repression by the Government of Israel against prominent Palestinian civil society organizations.”