Ilhan Omar
D · U.S. House, MN-5 · Tier 5/6
Tier 5/6, between “Critical on most positions” and “Most critical of Israel / supports Palestine”
Block the Bombs cosponsor; says Israel has learned it “can commit genocide and other atrocities with near-total impunity” and calls for an end to U.S. aid to Israel (June 2026). She led H.Res.496 (116th Congress, 2019) affirming the right to participate in boycotts — a movement-neutral First Amendment resolution that names neither BDS nor Israel, and which she said at the time “isn’t about any particular movement,” so the resolution itself is not a BDS-by-name endorsement. She had backed BDS by name in November 2018, days after her first election: “I believe and support the BDS movement and have fought to make sure people’s right to support it isn’t criminalized. I do, however, have reservations on [the] effectiveness of the movement in accomplishing a lasting solution” — three months after calling it “counteractive” to a two-state outcome at a candidate forum. In 2023 she co-sponsored a resolution affirming Israel as a “Jewish and democratic State,” a hedge in her record. She has also framed her goal as two states in her own words — “I support a two-state solution, with internationally recognized borders” (Washington Post op-ed, March 2019) and “As someone who believes in a two-state solution” (May 2024) — and voted Yea on H.Res.888 reaffirming Israel’s right to exist (Nov 2023). She signed letters urging the State Department to affirm U.S. opposition to the forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza (January 2024), backing refugee priority status for Gazans with U.S. citizen or permanent-resident relatives (June 2024), urging President Biden to sanction Israeli ministers Smotrich and Ben-Gvir over incitement of settler violence (October 2024), demanding answers on the detentions of the student activists Mahmoud Khalil, Rümeysa Öztürk and Mohsen Mahdawi (March and April 2025), condemning the Israeli government’s “use of starvation as a weapon of war” and rejecting the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (Tlaib’s 19-signer letter, June 2025) and urging Secretary Rubio to press Israel to allow a surge of aid into Gaza, above all infant formula (August 2025). Omar cosponsored Tlaib’s Lebanon war-powers resolution (H.Con.Res.83) on Apr 27, 2026. In August and September 2026 Omar signed Tlaib’s letter demanding the release of 20-year-old US citizen Sama Safi from Israeli military detention, the Dexter–Ruiz letter seeking the release of Gaza pediatrician Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya from Israeli detention without charge (Sep 8) and the Pocan–Quigley letter on Palestinian medical workers held by Israel without charge (Sep 24). On October 6, 2026 she joined Chuy García, Delia Ramirez, Rashida Tlaib, Summer Lee and Pramila Jayapal in a joint statement that called Israel’s destruction of Palestinian hospitals and killing of health workers “an intentional policy designed to further occupation, apartheid, and genocide against the Palestinian people” and demanded “an end to U.S. arms transfers to Israel, including the Trump Administration’s latest $2.8 billion sale of bombs.” In August 2019 Israel’s government barred her and Rashida Tlaib from entering, citing their support for the boycott movement, days before a “Delegation to Palestine” organized by the Palestinian NGO Miftah that was to take them to Hebron, Bethlehem, Ramallah and a refugee camp; she called the ban “an affront” that kept them from entering “the Palestinian territories.” On Oct 22, 2026 she wrote of the detentions at the olive harvest: “It’s not illegal to harvest olives; Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people is. All detainees must be released immediately. We must end the genocide.”
Held at 5/6: has a record reaching toward 6 (backed BDS by name in 2018, cosponsors the right-of-return resolutions) but co-sponsored a 2023 resolution affirming Israel as a ‘Jewish and democratic State’ — a countervailing hedge. A strong record at the critical end — she backed BDS by name in her own words in November 2018, with a stated reservation about its effectiveness; she was lead author of H.Res.496, affirming the First Amendment right to boycott — movement-neutral, naming neither BDS nor Israel — has been an original cosponsor of all five of Tlaib’s Nakba resolutions affirming the Palestinian right of return (H.Res.1123 in 2022, H.Res.388 in 2023, H.Res.1231 in 2024, H.Res.409 in 2025 and H.Res.1289 in 2026), backs ending military aid and Block the Bombs, co-signed an October 2026 statement demanding “an end to U.S. arms transfers to Israel,” and calls Israel's campaign genocide; she was an original cosponsor of Tlaib’s H.Res.876 recognizing the genocide (Nov 13, 2025). Cosponsoring the Nakba resolutions puts her on record for the right of return, a position that questions Israel’s legitimacy and reaches toward the Tier 6 end, and she announced the H.Res.1289 cosponsorship herself on May 15, 2026 (“The Nakba never ended”), sharing Tlaib’s post that the resolution would “reaffirm Palestinian refugees’ right of return.” But she has a documented hedge: facing removal from the Foreign Affairs Committee in Feb 2023, she co-sponsored Gottheimer's resolution affirming Israel as a 'Jewish and democratic State' — she signed on the day the House voted to remove her, it didn’t prevent her ouster, and she wrote that day that her critique of Israel’s policy toward Palestinians “will not change.” That record puts her near 6; the Jewish-state affirmation keeps it a 5/6 rather than a clean 6.
Open the full card, with votes, money and every source, on elect26 →
elect26 places 2026 midterm candidates on a six-tier spectrum, from 1 (most pro-Israel) to 6 (most critical of Israel).