Virginia school board member slams Battle of Iwo Jima as 'evil
>'Just a few days ago was Japanese Day of Remembrance,' Omeish said Thursday, during a discussion with other board members.
>'Something for us to certainly reflect on… 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.'
>Omeish is also the daughter of 55-year-old Esam Omeish, the chief of General Surgery at Inova Alexandria Hospital, and former President of the Muslim American Society (MAS). Essam is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Dar Al-Hijrah mosque, also in Fairfax.
>The mosque previously employed a man suspected of working with Al-Qaueda. That man, Anwar al-Awlaki, was killed by a US government drone strike, ordered by President Barack Obama, in 2011.
>Notably, three future September 11 attacks hijackers separately attended al-Awlaki's sermons in Fairfax in the 1990s and early 2001 before carrying out the terror attacks.
>Despite hiring al-Awlaki himself, Omeish's father was appointed to serve on the Virginia Commission on Immigration in 2016 by State Senator Tim Kaine, but resigned after a video from a 2020 rally showed him calling for support of the 'jihad way' as a solution to the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict.