The State Department will delay awarding Egyptian activist Samira Ibrahim with the International Woman of Courage Award, an honor she was slated to receive for standing up to the “virginity tests” she and other women were subjected to by the Egyptian military during Arab Spring protests in March 2011.
A State Department spokeswoman said during a press briefing Ibrahim will not receive the award on Friday because of anti-American and anti-Semitic tweets, and officials will first study the tweets, the Associated Press reported.
Ibrahim’s name no longer appears on the State Department’s press release or the biographies of awardees. The ceremony is scheduled for Friday, when Secretary of State John Kerry and first lady Michelle Obama will honor nine other women from around the world “who have shown exceptional courage and leadership in advocating for women’s rights and empowerment, often at great personal risk.”
As the State Department’s original press release described her, Ibrahim “was among seven women subjected by the Egyptian military to forced virginity tests in March 2011,” the Weekly Standard noted on Wednesday, before her award was delayed.
But she has also drawn attention for tweets displaying anti-Semitic and anti-American views. As the Weekly Standard notes, on July 18, 2012, after five Israeli tourists and a Bulgarian bus driver were killed by a suicide bomber, Ibrahim tweeted: “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.”
On Sept. 11, 2012, after a mob stormed the U.S. embassy in Cairo and replaced the American flag with an al Qaeda flag, Ibrahim tweeted, “Today is the anniversary of 9/11. May every year come with America burning.” The tweet was deleted, but an activist saved a screen shot of it.
According to a story in the Jewish Journal today, Ibrahim claims her Twitter account was hacked.
The Journal notes that a March 6 tweet on her Twitter feed— which is in Arabic — claims her account has been hacked multiple times and that any expressions of racism and hatred are not hers.
