Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn, has criticized comedian Jerry Seinfeld after he told a streamer that “Palestine doesn’t exist” as he walked out of an NBA Finals game after he was repeatedly asked to say “Free Palestine.”
While being interviewed by TMZ on Capitol Hill, Omar called Seinfeld’s comment “disgusting,” “disturbing,” and “genocidal language,” and argued that the remark is intended to erase Palestinian existence.
“Jerry Seinfeld has been a really horrific human being and an example when it comes to talking about the reality of the genocide that Israel has carried out,” Omar told TMZ. “And I think when people prioritize their own people in the interest of harming others, it’s very dangerous.”
The congresswoman argues that the danger extends beyond Seinfeld’s platform and his celebrity’s public reach.
“I don’t even think of him as like just a celebrity and someone who has a platform in that danger, but it is dangerous just as a human being to talk the way that he does,” Omar told TMZ. “It’s very disgusting, it’s very disturbing, and it’s very genocidal language that he uses, and people need to call him out for it.”
Omar said that the contrast between Seinfeld’s heritage and his comments is troubling. As a Jewish person who endured the Holocaust, Omar says he should know better than to use what she described as genocidal language.
“For him knowing that his people suffered the Holocaust and experienced what genocide looks like, for him not to recognize the genocidal language that he’s using to wipe out a whole group of people is very disturbing, and people need to recognize that,” Omar told TMZ.
Regarding the impact of Seinfeld’s comments on a global scale, Omar added: “It does, because it carries weight,” she said. “So many people are able to see it and hear it.”
When asked what her message to Seinfeld would be if she could communicate with him directly, Omar responded: “Be a human. Care about other people,” she said. “Palestinians do exist. They are real people. They are ethnic to the land in which they belong. And Israel is the one that is taking their land, not the Palestinians.”
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