Credit: House Foreign Affairs Committee Republicans

Yesterday, the Trump Administration’s point man for Venezuela, Elliott Abrams, appeared before the House Foreign Affairs Committee. What should have been an opportunity to demonstrate unity degenerated into a vitriolic attack on Abrams by freshman Congressman Ilhan “I’m not actually screwing my brother” Omar. Omar is a rabid antisemite who was condemned by a near-unanimous vote of the House. She’s a Maduro apologist. And both of those avocations merged when the Jewish guy charged with removing Maduro testified.

OMAR: "Do you think [the El Mozote] massacre [in El Salvador] was a fabulous achievement that happened under our watch?"

ABRAMS: "That is a ridiculous question.

OMAR: "Yes or no?"

ABRAMS: "No!"

OMAR: "I will take that as a yes."https://t.co/Wkwc5wtLn5 pic.twitter.com/QfoaAMTWvY

— David Rutz (@DavidRutz) February 13, 2019

These are some highlights:

Rep. Omar: On February 8, 1982, you testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about U.S. policy in El Salvador. In that hearing you dismissed as communist propaganda reports about the massacre in El Mozote in which more than 800 civilians, including children as young as two years old, were brutally murdered by U.S.-trained troops. During that massacre, some of those [American] troops bragged about raping a 12-year-old girls before they killed them … You later said that the U.S. policy in El Salvador was a fabulous achievement. Yes or no do you still think so?

Abrams: From the day that President [José Napoleón] Duarte was elected [in 1984] in a free election to this day, El Salvador has been a democracy. That’s a fabulous achievement.

Rep. Omar: Yes or no, do you think that massacre was a fabulous achievement that happened under our watch?

Abrams: That is a ridiculous question.

Rep. Omar interrupted: Yes or no?

Abrams: No.

Rep. Omar: I will take that as a yes.

Abrams: I am not going to respond to that kind of personal attack, which is not a question.

Completely normal behaviour. https://t.co/4aiD0DFicY

— Rita Panahi (@RitaPanahi) February 13, 2019

And this:

Omar proceeded to ask whether Abrams would support an armed insurrection in Venezuela that engaged in war crimes or genocide if it served U.S. interests, “as you did in Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua.”

Abrams again declined to respond to the questions, at which point Omar argued that it was fair given how important it was to uphold human rights in situations such as Venezuela. In that country, the United States has recognized a new president as legitimate and the Trump administration has even left open the idea of an intervention against Nicolás Maduro, who is clinging to power.

“I suppose there is a question in there,” Abrams said wryly, before assuring her that human rights are an important U.S. goal.

Rep Omar called Reagan official Elliot Abrams "Mr Adams" before referring to the Iran-Contra Affair as "Iran-Kotra".

She also spent the whole hearing reading from notes.

Since she's not expressing her own thoughts, who's feeding her these lines?https://t.co/UHk53hBDyX

— Ken Webster (@KenWebsterII) February 14, 2019

The attack on Abrams is so nasty and personal that it is really difficult to attribute it to anything but Omar’s established hatred of and contempt for Jews.

And along the way, she tries to paint the legitimate leader of Venezuela, Juan Guaidó, as “right-wing” when he is actually a socialist, just not a homicidal one, which sort of makes him unusual.

What Omar is alluding to is the leftist narrative of the brutal little wars in Central America in the 1980s when Reagan changed US policy from “containment” of Soviet adventurism–under Jimmy Carter, it was more like “assume a fetal position under your bed”–to “roll back.” While the typically robust socialist massacres in Nicaragua were ignored, the American left ran a full court press to deliver El Salvador into the hands of the USSR’s Cuban proxies and their native lackeys. Abrams was caught up in the “special counsel” investigation of Lawrence Walsh. He took a guilty plea as much to avoid a financially ruinous trial as anything to do with his guilt and was pardoned by George H. W. Bush.

Even cruise-ship, Vichy conservatives like Max Boot were appalled.

Disgraceful ad hominem attacks by @IlhanMN on my @CFR_org colleague Elliott Abrams. She doesn't seem to realize he is a leading advocate of human rights and democracy–not a promoter of genocide! More evidence of the loony left I caution Democrats about: https://t.co/dyVdVOS7PY https://t.co/yjeLJksYCj

— Max Boot (@MaxBoot) February 13, 2019

The fact that we have someone like Omar–an antisemite who is corrupt to her very bone marrow and who is hostile to the United States–on the Foreign Affairs Committee shows just how deeply un-serious Nancy Pelosi’s Democrats are.

So, we can add Communist apologist to the list.

Nice job #Minneapolis. Well done. https://t.co/WvqzXjtdCp

— cdrsalamander (@cdrsalamander) February 13, 2019

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