Last night hundreds of protesters gathered in Times Square in New York City to call for the removal of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) from the powerful House Foreign Affairs Committee. The protest was organized by conservative activist Joe Diamond, whose campaign to raise funds for a Times Square billboard was pulled by Facebook soon after they’d raised adequate funds. The Jerusalem Post covered the event:
Following the Minnesotan congresswoman’s highly-publicized allegations of antisemitism and statement downplaying the 9/11 terrorist attacks, New York native and activist Joe Diamond organized a rally and billboard launch calling on the removal of Omar, one of the first two Muslim women to be elected to the US legislature.
“In my lifetime I cannot think of any other politician who presents a bigger threat to the alliance between the US and Israel and to America’s Jews,” Diamond told the Jerusalem Post ahead of Monday’s protest. “This woman is an ardent antisemite and she doesn’t even try to hide it.”
Omar’s critics had planned to launch a billboard with redacted quotes from the politician, alongside graphic 9/11 imagery. The group, named ‘Ilan Must Go,’ was prepared to spend thousands of dollars on the billboard, with donations from the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Zionist Organization of America and more. Instead, the detractors put the video display on a truck, as they were unable to receive a stationary billboard permit from local authorities, which cited the ad as “disparaging.”
No U.S. mainstream media outlets covered the protest. The mobile billboard can be seen in the following video posted to Twitter:
Ilhan Omar must go mobile billboard pic.twitter.com/JWhRJOlGAm
— Nick Fad🇺🇸 (@NicAtNigh) May 20, 2019
More video from the protest was posted on YouTube:
Here are photos that were posted to The Coalition to Get Ilhan Omar off the Foreign Affairs Committee Facebook group:
Joe Diamond, the organizer, spoke with PJ Media about the rally and said he was very pleased with the turnout. He expressed disappointment that the billboard was not approved to run, but says it was not the city that denied approval. “It was a private billboard owned by a private company. As far as I know, the city had nothing to do with it,” Diamond said. According to Diamond, Clear Channel, which owns the billboard space, waited until last Wednesday to inform him via telephone they weren’t going to let him run the billboard because they claimed they don’t run ads that disparage groups or individuals. This was after they’d previously agreed to run it. “We had already signed the contract and made the downpayment,” Diamond explained.
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Matt Margolis is the author of The Scandalous Presidency of Barack Obama and the bestselling The Worst President in History: The Legacy of Barack Obama. His new book, Trumping Obama: How President Trump Saved Us From Barack Obama’s Legacy, will be published in July 2019. You can follow Matt on Twitter @MattMargolis
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