Via Julio Rosas, a follow-up to Wednesday’s post about Omar accusing Trump of waging “economic warfare” against Iran in the form of U.S. sanctions. He slapped another round on them just this morning, in fact, to punish them for the missile attacks on American bases on Iraq on Tuesday night. Lots of righties wondered: If Omar thinks sanctions are tantamount to warfare in the case of Iran, i.e. a draconian measure that should be eschewed in the interest of peace, why does she endorse sanctions against Israel by supporting the “Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions” (BDS) movement?

Rosas caught up with her while she was leaving a protest last night and put the question to her. I have no idea what this means:

“The BDS movement is a movement that is driven by the people,” Omar told Townhall. “The sanctions on Iran, are sanctions that are being placed to create maximum pressure by a government. That’s very different.”

Is she implying that BDS has popular support? It doesn’t, at least not among the general population. It’s more popular among Democratic voters — but reeeeeally unpopular among Democratic members of Congress.

When I first watched the clip below I thought maybe she was just being a lazy populist, assuming that her personal policy preferences are necessarily shared by “the people” and that those she dislikes are being imposed on “the people” by a corrupt government. But Philip Klein had a different read on it. Is she … just pretending that “sanctions” aren’t part of BDS?

While it’s true that the “B” aspect of the BDS movement involves private boycotts of Israel, the “S” refers to the ultimate goal of the movement: getting governments to slap sanctions on Israel.

You don’t have to take this from me. Just check out the website of the Palestinian BDS National Committee, which is the coalition of Palestinian organizations that leads BDS efforts.

“One of the main reasons that Israel is able to violate international law and commit crimes against Palestinians is because governments fail to meet their legal obligations to hold it to account and provide Israel with political and material support,” the committee explains. “Sanctions were the final blow to the apartheid regime in South Africa and the BDS movement calls for sanctions against Israel. The BDS movement also calls for governments to meet their legal obligations not to be complicit in Israeli crimes and not to provide aid or assistance that help Israel maintain its regime of settler colonialism and apartheid.”

Is that what she’s doing here, ignoring the “S” in “BDS” and playing it off as nothing more than an attempt to organize an international grassroots boycott of Israel?

I think she’s punting. She knows she’s guilty of a double standard and has no explanation for it apart from the obvious, that she thinks any attempt by America to pressure another nation is a species of “colonialism” or whatever against oppressed peoples unless that nation turns out to be Israel. This was the best she could do to dodge when Rosas put her on the spot.