Omar’s tenure has been embroiled in controversy over her comments about Jewish people and Israel, especially in wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack in which 1,200 innocent people lost their lives and over 200 others were taken hostage. Al-Aqidi is a pro-Israel Sunni Muslim hoping to bridge the divide between MN-5’s large Islamic population and its Jewish constituents.

With the urban district “in the heart of Minnesota” receiving a D+29.7 grade from Cook Political Report, Al-Aqidi spoke to the Washington Examiner to discuss why she believes Republicans and Democrats alike should vote for her instead of the “Squad” member on Tuesday.

‘Ground zero for Jew hatred’

The most stark difference between the two candidates is their stance on Israel. Al-Aqidi argued that Omar’s rhetoric on the Jewish nation “has turned our district to ground zero for Jew hatred.”

Al-Aqidi pointed to a number of comments Omar has made both before and after Oct. 7 which she believes crossed the line. For example, Omar was accused of “blood libel” by the anti-Defamation League after labeling Jewish students who support Israel as “pro-genocide” in April.

She called Omar a “demagogue” for pushing the trope of wealthy Jews using money to buy political influence after the Congresswoman tweeted “it’s all about the Benjamins, baby” in 2019 in reference to pro-Israel lobbying groups. Omar apologized for this comment after receiving pushback from both sides of the aisle.

“She was insinuating that Jews and their money control the world,” Al-Aqidi said. 

Omar similarly tweeted that “Israel has hypnotized the world” in 2012 following an Israeli operation against Hamas terrorists. She deleted the post and called her wording “unfortunate” after it resurfaced years later.

Democratic chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) called on Omar to apologize for “a vile, antisemitic slur” she made in 2019 suggesting that Jewish politicians in the United States have a dual allegiance to Israel. Instead of apologizing, she doubled down and claimed that her Jewish colleagues only consider her comments to be antisemitic because she is Muslim.

Al-Aqidi additionally lambasted Omar’s support for anti-Israel demonstrations on college campuses following the Oct. 7 terrorist attack. Days after Omar’s daughter was arrested for her conduct at a Columbia University demonstration, the MN-5 incumbent visited University of Minnesota’s encampment in April and praised the protestors as “putting your bodies on the line” to end what she falsely characterized as “genocide in Gaza.”

Two weeks ago, University of Minnesota’s anti-Israel agitators occupied and vandalized an administrative building, resulting in 11 people being arrested.

“These people who Omar has praised have no idea what it means to support a terrorist group like Hamas,” Al-Aqidi said, regarding the Oct. 21 incident. “They don’t know how many Americans and others were killed by the militias that were created by the mullahs in Iraq. They have no clue.”

Immediately following the Oct. 7 attack, anti-Israel demonstrations popped up on campuses around the country, and in many cases alleged antisemitic conduct has followed. This has resulted in over 100 Title VI investigations into universities and school districts.

Al-Aqidi declared she would “absolutely” support pulling federal funding from schools found to have violated Title VI. “I’ve been calling on the government to stop all the federal funds to the universities that fail to protect their Jewish Students,” she said. “If history ever taught us one thing, it is that what starts with the Jews never ends with the Jews.”

She also slammed Omar for sharing a report which framed a group of Jewish donors to her moderate Democratic primary opponent Don Samuels’s campaign as supporting Nazis. The Washington Examiner investigated the report and found that it was extremely misleading, but Omar never retracted her statement.

“It’s sad,” Al-Aqidi said. “It shows you how desperate she is, and it shows you what kind of a leader she is to spread division and spread lies and demonize others who don’t agree with her, even from her own party.”

Who is Dalia Al-Aqidi and what does she stand for?

In addition to her pro-Israel stance, Al-Aqidi is pitching herself as a pro-American alternative to Omar, whose comments about foreign policy have been criticized as anti-American.

She juxtaposed herself as an Iraqi immigrant who “loves this country” with Omar, who has faced backlash for saying that “some people did something” in reference to the 9/11 terrorist attack that killed nearly 3,000 innocent people, as well as when she “equat[ed]” the United States and Israel to Hamas and Taliban terrorists for committing “unthinkable atrocities.”

Al-Aqidi criticized Omar for having “led the effort to defund the police” despite the fact that “in our district, carjackings, shootings, and break-ins have become the norm.” Omar once Tweeted that her stance on defunding the police is “not a slogan but a policy demand.”

“Everybody with common sense would be against defunding the police,” Al-Aqidi said. “We’re suffering from [crime] on a daily basis. If you look at downtown Minneapolis, it’s a ghost town, and we cannot do anything about it because our police force is suffering.”

On a national policy level, Al-Aqidi said she wants to stop the “nonsense spending” pushed by progressives like Omar as a means to combat inflation. “We are struggling here with the cost of living,” she said. “Everything is more expensive, name anything. Even the moderate Democrats that I’ve talked to since I launched my campaign are so worried that they can’t make ends meet anymore, because everything is going higher and higher.”

She also heavily criticized the Biden-Harris administration’s “open border policies” as well as efforts to make Minnesota a sanctuary state for illegal immigrants. Her experience as a longtime journalist and having lived in Iraq, the Czech Republic, and Lebanon showed her “how dangerous it is” to allow just anyone to come into the country unvetted, especially given how some radicals “hate the US.”

“I came to the US to be free,” Al-Aqidi said. “And I am against anybody, any immigrant, who comes here and tries to impose the ideologies that they left behind. That’s part of why I decided to run against Omar.”

Born in Bagdad, Iraq, Al-Aqidi grew up defying western stereotypes of Muslim women in the Middle East. Her parents were “considered pioneers in Iraqi modern theater, so I grew up with books and theater and arts, even dancing ballet.” She lived in Lebanon for the majority of her childhood, and returned to Iraq in 1979 — the year Saddam Hussein came to power.

She credits living in Iraq “under a brutal dictatorship and under oppression, not being allowed to think freely or even dream” with helping her to “look at things from a different perspective.” She began her career as a journalist in the 1980s “because I felt that it’s my duty to fight dictatorships and oppression, because I lived it and I suffered from it, and I wanted to make a difference.”

Al-Aqidi described herself as “a secular Muslim who values peace and democracy and rejects the politicization of the religion and the normalization of Sharia Law, who embraces tolerance, who rejects any type of hatred against Jews and Christians, and who rejects to call them infidels.”

“A secular Muslim who opposes Jihad and Sharia law,” she added. ”A secular Muslim who stands against all types of violence, from Charlie Hebdo to you name it; a secular Muslim who stands for the rights of women and who stands with oppressed women, especially under regimes like the Iranian regime.”

She expressed support for the Mahsa Amini Human rights and Security Accountability Act, named after an Iranian woman who was murdered while in the custody of Iran’s morality police who arrested her for violating the country’s mandatory hijab rules. The bill, which passed in the House, would impose sanctions on Iran.

When Al-Aqidi was working in Saudi Arabia, she made a “great friend” in the late Christopher Stevens, a U.S. ambassador who was killed in a 2012 terrorist attack at the United States embassy in Benghazi, Libya. It was Stevens who actually convinced Al-Aqidi to immigrate to America after being vetted thoroughly. 

This experience “probably explains why I have a very strong opinion about the open border policies that the Biden-Harris administration has adopted since they took office,” she said. “When I came here, nobody gave me anything. I started working from day one as a journalist, until I reached a level that I was part of the White House Press corps” during the George W. Bush administration.

‘I saw the atrocities’: Al-Aqidi’s stance on the war in Gaza

Having lived in the Middle East and covered foreign policy and national security “for a long time” at the highest levels, Al-Aqidi explained her position on the war in Gaza, which has expanded to other parts of the region.

She said, “I was always a supporter of Israel way before October 7, because Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, and I’ve always believed that there is no way to reach any solution while a terrorist group like Hamas is in charge, while Hamas is in charge.”

She called on the Palestinian people “to choose a wise leadership” instead of Hamas, and said she supported former President Donald Trump’s approach to stabilize the region by facilitating and mediating the Abraham Accords which sought to normalize relations between Israel and Arab countries.

“It’s the only way to achieve peace in the Middle East, and the only way that we could help the Palestinians,” she said.

Al-Aqidi criticized the Iraqi and Lebanese governments for attempting to pressure Israel into not retaliating against pro-Iran militias launching attacks on Israel from Iraqi and Lebanese soil. “They allow them, willingly or unwillingly, to lush attacks against Israel, while asking Israel not to respond. This is nonsense. This is disgusting.”

Two weeks after the Oct. 7 terrorist attack, Al-Aqidi went to Israel and stayed there for three weeks. “I saw the atrocities,” she said. “The same atrocities I saw in Iraq when I covered the war, and I covered when ISIS entered the city of Mosul and started persecuting Christians.”

Al-Aqidi was deported from Lebanon by Hezbollah in 2015 after she launched a campaign called, “We’re all Christians” in opposition to the terrorists’ persecution of Christians in the region. “I went on air saying, ‘I’m a Muslim Sunni. I reject all forms of violence in my name.’ And I decided to wear the cross around my neck until every Christian goes back to their villages and towns, not only in Iraq, but in the Middle East.”

“Lebanon has been suffering big time due to the atrocities of Hezbollah, and I say that because I’ve lived there,” she said. “I grew up there with Hezbollah thugs in control of the streets, and what’s happening in Lebanon now is because of Hezbollah’s atrocities” and Iran’s influence. 

“People should know that Iran would never, ever, sacrifice one Iranian citizen, but Iran is ready to sacrifice thousands of people in Iraq, in Lebanon, in Gaza, in Yemen and Syria,” Al-Aqidi said.

Al-Aqidi’s ‘final argument’ one day before the election

“One of the most beautiful things about our district, which is the heart of Minnesota, is its richness — ethnically, culturally, religiously,” Al-Aqidi said. “We deserve a representative that could talk to everyone, that could listen to everyone, that could serve everyone.”

She argued that the majority of Muslims, of which Minnesota has a large population, have conservative values but vote for Democrats due to “the false narrative and lies that Ilhan and other organizations like CAIRE push to brainwash Muslim immigrants [into believing] that Republicans are racist and hate Muslims.”

“But let me tell you, I am an Arab American, I am a Muslim, I am a woman, and I am the living proof that the GOP is the party of inclusion,” she said. “I chose to be a Republican.”

Al-Aqidi told the Washington Examiner that “if any voter in my district reads this, which is kind of my final argument,” she hopes they “stop thinking about political party and think about the future of our district and the future of our country.”

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“We have so many things in common,” she said. “We have the same ambitions, and we all want to have a decent living. We all want to have a better future for our kids. We all want safety, and we all want prosperity, and maybe it’s time for us to overlook our political differences, because we have many issues that unite us.”

“We’re not as divided as what Ilhan Omar and others want us to believe,” Al-Aqidi said.