Fairfax County, Virginia, school board member Abrar Omeish stunned officials and constituents alike when she said the U.S. victory in the Battle of Iwo Jima “set a record for … human evil.”
“Something for us to certainly reflect on as we learn our history and think about it,” Omeish said at a meeting Thursday night. “The days when, you know, Iwo Jima unfortunately happened and set a record for really, what I hate to say, human evil is capable of.”
Questions remain as to whether Omeish was referring to U.S. efforts in the battle as the “human evil.”
The controversial school board member, who has bragged in the past about discriminating against Asian American students in her district, was speaking of the Biden administration’s “Japanese Day of Remembrance,” which commemorates President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1942 internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.
According to the New York Post, Omeish responded to a request for comment, saying, “it was not Iwo Jima that I was saying showed what evil humans are capable of — it was the incarceration of 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent.”
The Battle of Iwo Jima was a major victory for the American military during World War II, but came at the cost of many lives, being considered the bloodiest battle in the Pacific and one of the bloodiest in the entire war.
The early morning sun begins to rise behind the Iwo Jima Memorial. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
The battle was fought in 1945 to gain control of an island 660 miles from Tokyo, Japan. In total about 7,000 Marines perished, with 20,000 more wounded. The Imperial Army of Japan lost nearly all 18,000 soldiers stationed on the island, with only 216 surviving.
Victory at Iwo Jima is immortalized in Arlington, Virginia — next to Arlington National Cemetery — at the Marine Corps War Memorial showing Marines raising the American flag on the island after the hard-fought victory.
Omeish is the subject of other controversies, such as voting against a resolution to hold a moment of silence for victims of the September 11, 2001, Islamic terrorist attacks in New York City; Shanksville, Pennsylvania; and Arlington, Virginia.
“As a nation, we remember a jarring event, no doubt, but we choose to forget — as this resolution does — the fear, the ostracization and the collective blame felt by Arab Americans, American Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus and all brown or other individuals that have been mistaken for Muslims since that day over the past two decades,” she said. “Why are we forgetting the experience of these families? Their traumas?”
Breccan F. Thies is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @BreccanFThies.
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