A photo of President Obama’s half-brother, Malik, who served as the best man at his brother’s wedding, has surfaced showing him wearing a special scarf emblazoned with anti-Israel slogans used by the terror group Hamas.
One saying on the scarf: “WE ARE COMING,” the Daily Mail reported. And the other: “From the river to the sea.” That reference is to Palestinians’ beliefs that land currently occupied by Israel — from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea — actually belongs to them.
The photo was taken in 2010 at an event in Yemen and posted on the website of the Barack H. Obama Foundation, a group founded by Malik that is unaffiliated with the president. The name of the foundation actually is in honor of the father that Malik and the president share, the Mail reported.
A former Muslim Brotherhood member named Walid Shoebat pointed out the photo on his blog earlier this week.
The White House has tried to distance the president from his brother. But a few months ago, Malik said in an interview with GQ that the two actually talk on a regular basis.
“Of course we’re close,” he told the magazine. “I’m the one who brought him here to Kogelo in 1988. I thought it was important for him to come home and see from whence his family came, you know, his roots.”
He also said in an interview with the Mail in 2013 that his brother is “always at the end of a phone line if I want to talk.”
Aside from its famous name, the Barack H. Obama Foundation garnered national attention in recent months due to the IRS targeting of conservative and tea party groups. While some tea party groups reported the IRS took up to three years to process their nonprofit permit applications, Malik’s foundation was able to receive its tax exempt approval in 28 days.
The organization’s final approval was signed by Lois Lerner, the IRS official who was pressured into resigning over the tea party application scandal.
• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
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