Anti-Semitism Is Hard to Unlearn, but It’s Possible—Even for Ilhan Omar

Born in Somalia, and having spent her childhood in Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, and Kenya, Ayaan Hirsi Ali never heard the word anti-Semitism until she came to Western Europe as an adult—but she was exposed to abundant expressions of anti-Semitism itself. No doubt, writes Hirsi Ali, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, also born in Somalia, had similar exposure to anti-Semitism in the country of her birth, or in the refugee camp in Kenya where she spent four years as a child, or in the Muslim community in Minneapolis. Any of these possibilities would explain the antipathy toward Jews expressed by Omar in various public statements. Yet many in the West, Hirsi Ali goes on to argue, fail to understand the extent to which anti-Semitism permeates much of the Muslim world: