Shaima Dallali was confirmed as the next president of Britain’s National Union of Students in March and is already in hot water over antisemitic social media posts.
The National Union of Students is a confederation of 600 British student unions representing seven million students. Dallali, who is currently President of City, University of London Students’ Union, begins her two-year term atop the NUS on July 1.
In the bio line at the top of her now-closed Twitter page, which goes by the twitter handle, @TunisianRose, Dallali wrote in Arabic, “death for the sake of Allah is our most exalted wish,” a Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood slogan. Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The rest of her bio said in English, “One day I’m going to pray in Al-Aqsa.”
Dr. Paul Stott, head of the security and terrorism unit at the London-based Policy Exchange think tank told the Daily Mail, “It is hard to know whether to laugh or cry that a student activist, opposed to Government counter-extremism policies, used an online slogan on her social media profile that is taken from the Muslim Brotherhood, and means ”death for the sake of Allah is our most exalted wish”.
He added, “Her leadership of the National Union of Students will discredit every campaign the NUS touches.”
Dallali has a separate, active Twitter handle, @ShaimaDallali.
The tweet referred to the Battle of Khayber in 628 C.E. An army of Muslims led by Mohammed overran an the Khayber oasis in the Arabian peninsula inhabited by Jews and defended by a network of forts.
Scholars suggest that the terms of surrender set a precedent in Islamic law for the status of dhimmis, or non-Muslims living under Muslim rule.
Dallali apologized for that tweet and removed it, calling it “wrong” and “unacceptable.” She said she posted it as a teenager.
Other contentious tweets cited in British media reports include:
• Labeling Jordanian-Emirati preacher Waseem Yousef a “dirty Zionist” after he criticized Hamas for firing rockets at Israeli civilians.
• Praising firebrand Islamic preacher Yusuf al-Qaradawi as a “moral compass” even though he is banned from entering the US, Britain, France and Germany for incitement.
• A prayer for the soul of Hamas commander Ahmed Jabari on the day he was killed in an IDF targeted assassination in 2012. Jabari was connected to several suicide bombings in the 90s and masterminded the 2006 kidnapping of IDF soldier Gilad Shalit.
• Tweets saying former UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn should never have been suspended over antisemitism in his party.
• Tweets criticizing Britain’s Union of Jewish Students for “bullying” pro-Palestinian student leaders.
Image Source: Twitter screenshot