Ibraheem Samirah with antisemitic Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, 2018
Ibraheem Samirah is a former Virginia State Delegate, a dentist, and the son of a Hamas fundraiser, Jordanian-born Dr. Sabri Ibrahim Samirah.
Samirah has a shocking history of antisemitic statements, including that funding Israel is worse than sending money to the KKK. He is also known for his troubling associations with antisemitic groups such as the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), and American Muslims for Palestine (AMP).
Samirah is an adherent supporter of the BDS movement. In a 2014 Facebook post, he urged his friends to support the BDS movement while Israel was "most exposed." As a student at American University and then Boston University, he was an active member of SJP and credited the organization with helping convince students that "Israel REALLY sucks."
In a 2017 Facebook post, Samirah pledged sizeable funds to anti-Israel organizations, linking to AMP's talking points page. The page warns that "Zionist Jews" are trying to take over Jerusalem. The Anti-Defamation League traces AMP's roots to Hamas' propaganda and fundraising group called the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP). IAP's stated goal, according to internal documents, is to "increase the financial and moral support of Hamas." Furthermore, AMP is the leading sponsor of SJP in America and was founded by Hatem Bazian, a former 'Antisemite of the Week'.
In 2019, Samirah offered a haphazard apology for his antisemitic statements, portraying himself as a victim of a smear campaign.
Fast forward to today, Ibraheem Samirah continues to vilify the Jewish people and nation and spread antisemitism. For example, in a tweet from this month Samirah falsely compared the Russian invasion of Ukraine to the democratic state of Israel, invoking the antisemitic trope of financial and governmental control by Jews.
In 2021, when the DC chapter of the Sunrise Movement expelled three Jewish groups from an event over their support of the Jewish nation, Samirah tweeted his support for Sunrise DC and promoted an atrocious antisemitic trope of Jewish domination and "Zionist Supremacy" frequently expressed by vile antisemites such as David Duke.
Also in 2021, Samirah outrageously claimed that the Jewish nation was behind all of the "oil wars", including the Iran-Iraq war of 1981-1988, and the “burning” of our planet.
Despite attempting to withdraw his college-era antisemitism and apologize, Samirah continues to deflect, claiming that charging him with antisemitism is "Islamophobic".
Ibraheem Samirah's hatred of the Jewish people and its homeland, the State of Israel, will never change as his past and present bigotry continues. Thankfully, when this antisemite ran for re-election in November 2021, he lost!