Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) and her daughter Isra Hirsi, a Barnard student who was arrested and suspended from Columbia University last week for her role in anti-Israel protests on campus, attended another anti-Israel demonstration at Columbia together on Thursday.
Omar posed for a photograph with her daughter and answered a reporter’s question near the protesters’ encampment in front of Columbia’s Low Memorial Library, according to an X post on Thursday.
The anti-Israel protests at Columbia, which began last Wednesday with hundreds of students establishing an encampment on a campus lawn to demand the university divest from Israel, reached a fever pitch when more than 100 student protesters, including the Minnesota congresswoman’s daughter, were arrested by New York City police and suspended from Columbia.
The crackdown, however, did little to quell the protests. Columbia has since canceled in-person classes for the rest of the spring semester, leading House speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) and other Republican representatives to call for the resignation of Columbia president Minouche Shafik.
Omar on Monday said the arrested and suspended protesters “were peacefully protesting and have now ignited a nationwide Gaza Solidarity movement. … This is more than the students hoped for and I am glad to see this type of solidarity.”
“But to be clear, this [is] about the genocide in Gaza and the attention has to remain on that,” Omar added.
Omar, a member of the progressive group of House Democrats known as the “Squad,” has faced censure from her colleagues for repeatedly engaging in anti-Semitic and anti-Israel comments.
