#Resist: Dem Lawmaker Who Interrupted Trump's Va. Speech to Protest "Hate" Has Anti-Semitic History

Virginia Del. Ibraheem Samirah, D-Fairfax, is escorted out after interrupting President Donald Trump as he spoke at an event marking the 400th anniversary of the first representative assembly, Tuesday, July 29, 2019, in Jamestown, Va. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Virginia Del. Ibraheem Samirah, D

Virginia Del. Ibraheem Samirah, D-Fairfax, is escorted out after interrupting President Donald Trump as he spoke at an event marking the 400th anniversary of the first representative assembly, Tuesday, July 29, 2019, in Jamestown, Va. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

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In case you missed it in the midst of the ongoing national media coverage of President Trump’s feud with Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD-7), a Virginia House of Delegates Democrat made headlines on Tuesday when he interrupted a speech Trump gave in Jamestown.

NBC News reports:

A Virginia lawmaker, who is Muslim, shouted “you can’t send us back!” briefly interrupting President Donald Trump during an event Tuesday commemorating the 400th anniversary of Virginia’s first legislative assembly.

Ibraheem Samirah, a Democrat elected this year to the state House of Delegates, halted Trump’s speech with a one-man demonstration as he held a sign that read “deport hate,” “reunite my family” and “go back to your corrupted home.”

Watch video of Samirah protesting Trump’s speech below:

One crucial piece of information missing from that NBC News piece on Delegate Samirah protesting “hate” is the fact that Samirah has a history of expressing anti-Semitic hate. Via Fox News:

The Washington Post, in February, reported on a series of Samirah’s social media posts from 2014 that have since been deleted.

In one Facebook post in 2014, Samirah shared an angry letter by musician Brian Eno who claimed that funding Israel was like supporting the Ku Klux Klan.

“I’d say worse,” Samirah wrote, sharing the letter. “But I’ll go along with Eno on this one.”

In another post from 2014, after former Israel Prime Minister Ariel Sharon died, Samirah wrote: “Ariel Sharon, burn. Burn a million times for every innocent soul you killed. Hell is excited to have you.”

Samirah also reportedly posted comments about Israeli teenagers, sharing an article about how Israel uses social media and dating apps to “legitimize murder,” writing: “Most Israeli teenagers not only want to cover up the murders in their name, but they have young urges that need to be released somehow! Tinder’s perfect for that.”

Samirah, who was a former volunteer for Tlaib, also is reportedly connected to multiple anti-Semitic organizations.

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Who did Samirah learn this behavior from? Not just Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib, but his own father, too:

A Washington Free Beacon investigation found in early 2019 that Samirah has connections to many anti-Semitic organizations and that his father is a organizer for the terrorist group Hamas.

Samirah himself spoke at a Hamas-related conference in 2018 and is a fervent supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against Israel. He urged friends on Facebook in 2014 to support the BDS movement while Israel is “most exposed.”

[…]

Samirah has said that he takes his inspiration from his father, whom Al Jazeera described in 2011 as a “leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan.” Samirah posted on Facebook in 2018 that he is “inspired by my father” to “dedicate my life to the liberation of Palestine.”

To their credit, every major news outlet outside of NBC News mentioned the accusations of anti-Semitism against Samirah, although the mentions were buried in their stories and they didn’t dive too deeply into them. They didn’t mention his father’s troubling history at all.

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Not only did NBC News not report on Delegate Samirah’s disturbing past, but the interview segment MSNBC‘s Ari Melber did on Samirah’s protest was stunningly ignorant and came off as more of a political promotion of Samirah’s views than it did an actual interview.

Samirah was treated like a hero by Melber, and Samirah also compared himself to MLK. With a straight face, the Virginia state lawmaker said his terrorist-supporting father was a victim of “the poor immigration policy of the United States.” Melber did not question him on the reason for that claim once, nor did he ask him about his past anti-Semitic statements.

Watch:

I’m not sure if Melber is Jewish, but at the very least he has ties to the Jewish community as he was “responsible for Jewish outreach” for Sen. John Kerry’s failed 2004 presidential campaign. If Melber confines himself to reading only NBC News stories, it’s understandable why he’s seemingly unaware of Samirah’s anti-Semitic history.

But if Melber is aware of it and still neglected to question him on it, it’s appalling that he failed to do so for reasons that go way beyond his journalistic credibility.

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— Based in North Carolina, Sister Toldjah is a former liberal and a 15+ year veteran of blogging with an emphasis on media bias, social issues, and the culture wars. Read her Red State archives here. Connect with her on Twitter. –

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