Young Muslim woman who snapped defiant selfie posted anti-Semitic tweets
The young Belgian Muslim woman who snapped a selfie in front of right-wing extremists in an act of defiance had posted a series of anti-Semitic statements, it has emerged.
Zakia Belkhiri, 22, was photographed in front of activists of Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest) who were protesting in Anvers, Belgium, against Muslim Expo, a local fair dedicated to Muslim culture.
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Her pictures went viral on social media and Zakia quickly became an Internet sensation.
But a look at her old tweets reveals a more disturbing side. In November 2012, she apparently wrote: "Hitler didn't kill all the Jews, he left some. So we know why he was killing them."
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In another Facebook post from 2014, she reportedly used an expletive to describe Jews, adding: "I hate them so much".
After these allegations emerged on social media, Zakia deleted all her social media accounts. An outcry followed.
On Saturday, the Belgian student attempted to justify her remarks saying: "My opinion many years ago was meant on the Zionist back then, that spread hate instead of love so to all the other Jews peace be upon you!"
Later, Belkhiri published a statement on her Twitter account, in which she apologised "to everyone in the Jewish community which I've hurt with my comments of several years ago".
"Ignorant as I was years ago, I thought that all Jews supported the crimes of Israel because Israel claims itself to be the Jewish state," she wrote, adding that she regrets her former way of thinking from when she was "younger and ignorant".
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