Award to wait while US officials investigate anti-American and anti-Israeli online messages.
(WJD) The U.S. State Department is backing off its award to Egyptian activist [S]amira 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.
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