Shafaq News/Sarah Idan, a former Miss Iraq and now a candidate in the 2024 US Congressional elections, toured Israeli settlements along the Gaza border this week, in a show of solidarity with the Israel.
In a Channel 12 interview, Idan, who is running to represent California's 30th Congressional district, explained she was compelled to show the "October 7-deniers" among her social media followers the "truth" of what took place on October 7, when a group of Hamas fighters killed 1,200 Israelis in a surprise attack, taking another 240 hostages to Gaza.
The former miss Iraq whose Iraqi citizenship was stripped after making pro-Israel remarks in in 2919, said "it makes her sick to her stomach" to hear students on US campuses say the Hamas attack was an act of self-defense.
"I want them to see the horror that caused the war on Gaza. The world is shouting ‘Free Palestine’ and it was never about freeing Palestine. This is not about freeing Palestine — killing innocent families and burning them alive. This is not freeing Palestine, this is terrorism," she told Channel 12 on Tuesday.
In 2008, at age 18, Idan, having taught herself English while a refugee in Syria from the war in Iraq, offered her services as a translator to US forces in Iraq. During her military service, as she claimed in a recent X post, she aided US troops in fighting Hamas of Iraq, a group separate from the Palestinian organization.
"So us, the US military, and the Iraqi military were fighting [Iraqi] Hamas together. Tell me, if Hamas were trying to free Iraq, why were they trying to hinder the process of Iraqis establishing their own government and becoming independent?” she said on X.
The California district Idan is running for is currently represented by staunch pro-Israel Democrat Adam Schiff, who is vacating the seat in order to run for the US Senate in 2024. It includes the cities of Burbank, West Hollywood, and parts of Glendale and Pasadena.
Running as a Democrat, Idan intends to be "the anti-squad", she told Channel 12, referring to the group of hard-left Democrat progressives that have staked out positions highly critical of Israel, among them Reps. Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, and Ilhan Omar.
"It's not just about Israel. My Iraq is already lost. I lost my Iraq to the Iranian regime and to the radical Islamists and I could never live there. So the US is my only home and I need to protect my home and sadly, The Squad, when it comes to the Middle East, I feel like they have no experience, they’re being told what to say."
In this week's tour, the former beauty queen dressed to make a statement, wearing gray-streaked camouflage pants and a gray T-shirt reading" fight back", with matching gray and black nail polish and beige combat boots.
She called it her uniform in Iraq and said, "I thought, if I'm coming to a war zone, if anything happens to me, I want to die in this uniform. These boots have seen war, have seen explosions, suicide bombers, snipers, everything."
The 2017 candidate from Iraq for Miss Universe caused an international uproar after meeting and taking a selfie with Miss Israel Adar Gandelsman in Las Vegas, captioned," Peace and Love from Miss Iraq and Miss Israel." The pair remain close friends and met up this week in Tel Aviv's Hostage Square during Idan's third trip to Israel.
Within three days of posting that first selfie in 2017, the virulent backlash to the photograph caused her family to again become refugees as they were forced to leave Iraq, emigrating to the US.
She lost her Iraqi citizenship in 2019 following an address at the UN Human Rights Council in which she stated that the Israeli-Arab conflict was not based on genuine policy disagreements but was "deeply rooted in the belief systems taught in Muslim countries, which are antisemitic". She further said this "hatred and intolerance" was "reinforced by biased media".