Thursday, March 07, 2013

Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton to Honor Antisemite

7 March 2013

International Women of Courage Award goes to Egyptian activist who quoted Hitler, praised Burgas bombing

UPDATE: Award postponed pending investigation

Photo by Gigi Ibrahim

UPDATE: The U.S. State Department is backing off its award to Egyptian activist Damira Ibrahim following media reports that Ibrahim posted a series of antisemitic Tweets in recent months.
Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said late Thursday that

the US would hold off on awarding Ibrahim while officials investigate the tweets, which include support for attacks against US diplomatic installations and praise for a terrorist assault against Israeli citizens in Bulgaria.

The story was reported in the Weekly Standard, and quickly picked up by other media outlets, including influential Atlantic writer and Obama supporter Jeffrey Goldberg, who wrote that the State Department was alerted to the issue by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

According to museum spokesman Andrew Hollinger, the director of the museum's Initiative on Holocaust Denial and State-sponsored Antisemitism, Diane Saltzman, "alerted the State Department to Samira Ibrahim's tweets" on Tuesday.

Goldberg is seen as an important Jewish supporter of the Obama administration, which may have helped tip the scales toward postponing the award.

***

In a deeply disturbing development, the Weekly Standard reported on Thursday that the U.S. State Department will be giving a prestigious award to an outspoken antisemite.

On Friday, Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton will present Samira Ibrahim with the International Women of Courage Award. Ibrahim is a victim of sexual violence and an activist for women's rights in Egypt, her native country.

She is also, apparently, a ferocious antisemite. The Standard has several examples of Twitter posts that display the crudest and most offensive forms of Jew hatred. In one, she appears to approvingly quote Adolf Hitler saying "I have discovered with the passage of days, that no act contrary to morality, no crime against society, takes place, except with the Jews having a hand in it."

In another, she rejoices over the murder of Israelis in the Burgas terror attack. "Today is a very sweet day," she wrote of the atrocity, "with a lot of very sweet news." She also attacks the Saudi royal family by calling them "dirtier than the Jews."

According to the Standard,

Just today, apparently after having been warned that her vicious tweets might cause her trouble during her visit to the U.S., she has written on twitter: “My account has been previously stolen and any tweet on racism and hatred is not me.” However, in the past she never made any mention of her account being “stolen.” The record of her anti-Semitic tweets is still available online.

One doubts that, only a day away from the ceremony, the State Department will rescind the award, but one hopes they will be more careful, much more careful, in the future.

Labels: Anti-Semitism, Communications, Human Rights, United States