Samira Ibrahim 'Refuses to Apologize' for Her Tweets

By Jeffrey Goldberg

Mar 7 2013, 9:50 PM ET

Lee Smith reports that Samira Ibrahim, the Egyptian woman whose anti-American and antisemitic tweets have forced the State Department to defer granting her the International Woman of Courage Award -- an award Michelle Obama and John Kerry were scheduled to present to her on Friday -- now seems to admit that she was the author of the tweets in question. She previously claimed that her account was hacked:

...Ibrahim herself has spoken, writing in Arabic on her Twitter page. Egyptian democracy activist Mina Rezkalla provides the translation: "I refuse to apologize to the Zionist lobby in America regarding my previous anti-Zionist statements under pressure from American government therefore they withdrew the award."

Just to refresh your memories, the "anti-Zionist" tweets in question included a celebration of murder: ""An explosion on a bus carrying Israelis in Burgas airport in Bulgaria on the Black Sea. Today is a very sweet day with a lot of very sweet news." In another tweet, she described the leaders of Saudi Arabia as "dirtier than the Jews." (This counts as a twofer, I suppose, because it's hard to imagine America's Saudi allies being very happy about this one.) Then there was this tweet, praising the handiwork of al Qaeda: "Today is the anniversary of 9/11. May every year come with America burning."

Thanks to Samuel Tadros, at the Hudson Institute, and other Egyptian liberal activists, the State Department and the White House have narrowly averted a moral and public relations disaster. If I were John Kerry, I would be ringing up the American embassy in Cairo, asking who exactly vetted the nomination of Samira Ibrahim for this award.