Representative Ilhan Omar’s (D., Minn.) World Cup visit, as Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel documented, offers another example of double standards against the Jewish state.

Omar, Kassel writes, went to Qatar last year to watch the global soccer tournament on a trip funded by that country’s government:

The Qatari Embassy in Washington, D.C., confirmed it had paid for Omar’s visit to the Gulf kingdom last year. The congresswoman ‘accepted an invitation from the Embassy of Qatar to attend events in Doha in November 2022 . . . as part of a program authorized under the Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Act,’ or MECEA, which allows House members to take trips funded by foreign governments provided that the travel is later disclosed in their annual financial statements.

As JI points out, Omar was not the only lawmaker on the trip, but her inclusion is ironic given her past statements about Israel. In a February 2019 tweet condemned as antisemitic, Omar intimated that U.S. support for the lone democracy in the Middle East is predicated solely on money from Jewish donors. Soon after, speaking at a Washington, D.C., bookstore, Omar decried “the political influence in this country that says it is okay for people to push for allegiance to a foreign country.”

Omar is not the only progressive to accuse the “Israel lobby” of undermining American democracy. Former Ohio state senator and Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) surrogate Nina Turner, who lost a 2021 House special-election primary to pro-Israel Shontel Brown, said she “didn’t lose [the] race; evil money manipulated and maligned [the] election.” Pervez Agwan, who is running against Representative Lizzie Fletcher (D., Texas) in next year’s Democratic primary, claimed that “Republicans and establishment Democrats are too concerned with offending the Israel lobby who bankrolls their campaigns.” Agwan stated that AIPAC “dictates” American foreign policy through financial contributions.

Of course, the “Israel lobby” is not the reason why the United States supports its closest ally in the region — public opinion is — and such arguments stink of Protocols of the Elders of Zion–adjacent conspiracy theories alleging that a Jewish cabal controls world politics. It’s also worth asking why Israel seems to catch all the flak whenever any progressive talks about supposed foreign influence on American politics. After all, as Tablet explained, AIPAC is small potatoes in the grand scheme of things:

In 2018, total pro-Israel lobbying spending was around $5 million, of which AIPAC accounted for $3.5 million. In contrast, Native American casinos spent around $22 million that year. By Tablet’s count, AIPAC was the 147th-highest ranked entity in terms of lobbying spending in 2018.

If we turn our attention to foreign countries and their attempts to curry favor with U.S. lawmakers, Israel is once again low on the list. In reality, nations such as Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and, yes, Qatar spend more money on American politics than Israel does. 

Back to Omar’s World Cup trip. The congresswoman, who so often rails against Israel’s supposed human-rights violations, accepted gifts from a regime that sponsors terrorism and exports anti-American propaganda.

So why is it okay for everyone else to exert influence? Why is it only a problem when the Jews do it? Former Soviet dissident and chairman of the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy Natan Sharansky argues that the criteria separating legitimate criticism of Israel from rank Jew-hatred are “delegitimization, demonization, and double standards.”

We’re all familiar with progressive slanders of Israel as an apartheid state, as an illegitimate nation, and as the aggressor in any and all instances in which it defends itself against terrorism. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that progressives have an antisemitism problem. But Omar’s Qatar trip demonstrates just how hypocritical those on the left are when it comes to the Jewish state.