How did State Department fail to vet Samira Ibrahim?

How did State Department fail to vet Samira Ibrahim?

Samira tactics
Samira tactics

Samira who? That is more-or-less the result returned by a search of the State Department’s web page naming the winners of the 2013 International Women of Courage Award.

If you had checked the site as recently as Thursday, you would have found the name Samira Ibrahim, accompanied by a paragraph acknowledging her courage as a crusader for women’s rights in repressive Egypt.

Ibrahim’s name was scrubbed and the award — to be presented by Secretary of State John Kerry and First Lady Michelle Obama — rescinded after The Weekly Standard outed her as a hate-spewing bigot. Via a Twitter account, she has openly and repeatedly avowed her hatred of Jews and written that America should burn on the anniversary of Sept. 11.

Ibrahim is also a coward — someone who refuses to own up to her views. When first confronted with her incendiary tweets, she claimed her account had been hacked. Yet on Thursday, after her name was removed from the list of award recipients, she tweeted:

I refused to apologize to the Zionist lobby in America on the previous statements hostile to Zionism under pressure from the American government, so the prize was withdrawn.

Two questions arise now. One is how the State Department failed to vet Ibrahim. If she used a social medium as open and transparent as Twitter to spew her hateful thoughts, then surely there must be letters or other evidence of her anti-Semitic, anti-American views. The second question is how careful State has been in vetting the remaining recipients.

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Howard Portnoy

Howard Portnoy

Howard Portnoy has written for The Blaze, HotAir, NewsBusters, Weasel Zippers, Conservative Firing Line, RedCounty, and New York’s Daily News. He has one published novel, Hot Rain, (G. P. Putnam’s Sons), and has been a guest on Radio Vice Online with Jim Vicevich, The Alana Burke Show, Smart Life with Dr. Gina, and The George Espenlaub Show.

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