Some of Mona Seif's tweets in favor of terrorism.

Mona Seif, an Egyptian political activist who has advocated in favor of Hamas  rocket attacks against Israeli civilians, has been named as a final nominee for the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders, an award sponsored by Human Rights Watch.

Seif is notorious for having posted several pro-terror statements on Twitter. “We the Egyptian ppl DO NOT WANT OUR GAS TO BE EXPORTED TO ISRAEL. Sinai ppl are our heroes everytime they blow up the pipelines#FuckISrael”, is one among many. On April 30th, Seif wrote  “all my anti israel tweets were written in English precisely so that the international community celebrating our revolution understands that we support the resistance of the palestinian nation against israel.”

In a recent similar scenario, Samira Ibrahim a fellow Egyptian activist who was due to receive an award from the US State Department, originally denied posting antisemitic and pro-Hitler tweets, before eventually admitting to “previous anti-Zionist statements”. Her award was subsequently cancelled.

Several Egyptian activists have criticized the choice of Seif. Amr Bakly of the Cairo Liberal Forum tweeted “#Martin_Ennals_Award not for a terrorist supporter. Mona Saif is a terrorist supporter.”

Hillel Neur, executive director of UN Watch, and NGO that monitors the United Nations, sent a letter to Kenneth Roth of Human Rights Watch asking him to distance his organization from Seif. At the time of publication, there has been no response from Human Rights Watch.