The person newly appointed by Twitter to oversee its news coverage of the Middle East and North Africa has posted praise for antisemitic preacher Louis Farrakhan and claimed that Israel was “not born” but “dropped like a bomb” in the Middle East.
Fadah Jassem came under fire on the platform on Monday after she announced her appointment with the post: “Cats out the bag, I’m thrilled to say that I join Twitter as Editorial Curation Lead for MENA today,” followed by a series of regional flags that omitted Israel.
Social media users were quick to raise concerns about her objectivity. The watchdog group StopAntisemitism.org tweeted: “Hey @FadahJassem — seems you forgot something.”
The JC can also reveal her history of inflammatory tweets. In September 2010 she claimed Israel was “not born” but “dropped like a bomb” in the Middle East.
In another tweet posted in 2010 she praised antisemitic Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan saying, “Listening to some Louis Farrakhan speeches… great example of faith transcending boundaries.”
In December 2010 she posted what she claimed was a quote by Farrakhan which read: “We give you our tax dollar to support Israel every year”.
In a 2011 tweet about Israel, Ms Jassem said: “They need to arrange another puppet before this puppet leaves. Israel is shitting itself. US needs its billion $ investments to pay off.”
Ms Jassem will form part of Twitter’s editorial curation teams. The team does not produce original journalism, but is responsible for creating Twitter “Moments”, or highlighting news stories from a particular region or event to users.
According to Twitter curation teams “find and highlight great Tweets.”
After her the tweets were highlighted by antisemitism campaigners, Ms Jassem apologised “for forgetting the Israeli flag with reference to MENA as I did others."
Referring to her past tweets she said: “I can see that I have been ill-informed with some tweets when younger.”
In response to Emanuel Miller, an analyst with Honest Reporting, she said: “I apologise for any offence caused by these particular tweets.”
Twitter has been approached for comment.
