Actor Selma Blair is facing backlash online after an Islamophobic Instagram comment from last week went viral.
The comment was made on an Instagram video posted by Abraham Hamra one week ago, in which he calls out U.S. Reps. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., and Cori Bush, D-Mo., for being the only two members of Congress to vote against a measure that would prevent anyone who partook in the Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel from immigrating to the U.S.
Hamra, whose Instagram bio refers to him as a speaker and Syrian Jewish refugee, calls Tlaib a “liar,” “moron” and a “hateful antisemite” in the video and said “the truth is, the Jews have been victimized by the Arabs, and not the other way around.”
Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in Congress, said the bill was “redundant with already existing federal law.”
“It’s just another GOP messaging bill being used to incite anti-Arab, anti-Palestinian, and anti-Muslim hatred that makes communities like ours unsafe,” she said.
Blair thanked Hamra in a comment on the video, which was also shared one week ago and has since been removed from the post. NBC News viewed the post before it was removed. It’s unclear who took it down.
“Deport all these terrorist supporting goons. Islam has destroyed Muslim countries and then they come here and destroy minds,” Blair wrote in the post. “They know they are liars. Twisted justifications. May they meet their fate.”
Blair, an avid disability rights activist who has been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, faced backlash from posters on the social media platform X on Friday. Her account on the platform no longer existed Friday evening.
“Selma Blair going full speed ahead with bigotry and hate speech was not on my bingo card for 2024 but it’s a reminder that the genocide of Palestinians couldn’t have happened unless a lot of ‘regular people’ had been supporting their horrific oppression for decades,” one X user said Friday.
Another called Blair out for “revealing herself to be a raging Islamaphobic bigot.”
The Council on American–Islamic Relations condemned Blair and “encouraged her to apologize and dialogue with the Muslim American community.”
“No one is born a bigot, and we should never assume that someone is doomed to remain a bigot. Based on the hateful and ignorant remarks that Ms. Blair made, we doubt that she has ever engaged in any meaningful interactions with her Muslim colleagues in Hollywood or other members of the American Muslim community,” CAIR National Deputy Director Edward Ahmed Mitchell said in a statement.
“We encourage Ms. Blair to apologize, and we also invite her to dialogue with our community. We also call on Hollywood studios and agencies to stop punishing artists who express support for Palestinian human rights while ignoring hateful comments by artists who support the ongoing genocide in Gaza,” Mitchell continued.
Other celebrities, like Michael Rapaport and Debra Messing, commented in support of Hamra’s Instagram video as well, but their comments have not been removed.
Blair, who is Jewish, has yet to respond to the backlash. She has been outspoken about her support of Israel since the Oct. 7 attack. She did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday evening.
Tlaib was censured by the House in November for her comments and actions on the Israel-Hamas war.
