Palestinian Envoy Booted Out

By COLlive reporter

A Palestinian diplomat’s job has been terminated Wednesday after she helped spread a video clip containing a poem calling for the to murder of Jews.

Linda Sobeh, the Palestinian chargée d’affaires in Ottawa, has been criticized for recommending to her followers on Twitter to “check this video out” with a link to an anti Jewish clip on YouTube.

The video shows a Palestinian girl, in tears, reciting a poem in Arabic, which includes a passage where millions are called “to a war that raze the injustice and oppression and destroy the Jews.”

Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird reportedly complained to Sobeh and her government after catching wind of the tweet, The Globe and Mail reported.

“We have taken the decision to limit communication with this official until a replacement is selected,” Mr. Baird’s spokesman, Chris Day, said in an e-mail.

In her statement to CBC, Sobeh explained that she forwarded the video without having viewed it. “I regret the unfortunate incident and it was a retweet unintentional and very unfortunate.”

She did, however, suggests that the incident was “intentionally magnified and misinterpreted by certain lobbying groups.”

“In no circumstances do I advocate for hate. I am a peace advocate,” she added.

Sobeh was filmed in January 2009 at a pro Palestinian protest in Houston, Texas, where one of the signs shows a caricature of an IDF soldier holding a baby by its feet and at gun point.

She goes on to say that she and her government agreed she be reassigned “to maintain a good, healthy relationship with Canada.”