Sirene Abou-Chakra, the newly appointed head of global philanthropy for General Motors, has a lengthy history of anti-Israel tweets on her public X account.

A native of Dearborn, Mich., Abou-Chakra, who took over the auto company’s mammoth philanthropy arm in June, previously served as the chief development officer for the city of Detroit and also spent a decade with Google as an account executive. 

But it’s her extensive anti-Israel social media history that raises questions about how her hiring will impact GM’s relationship with the Detroit-area Jewish community, in addition to its extensive business relationships with the Jewish state.

“The country was built on lies and justifies its ongoing savagery on continued lies,” Abou-Chakra wrote of Israel in a since-deleted post on X in September 2022. 

The tweet was a response to a post from Matt Duss, a former advisor to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), criticizing Israel over the death of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in 2022. Israel has said the Al Jazeera journalist, who was killed in the West Bank town of Jenin during a raid by the IDF, was hit during an exchange of fire between Israeli forces and Palestinian terrorists. 

One day later, Abou-Chakra reposted a tweet from the “Electronic Intifada” account citing reporting from CNN about Abu Akleh’s death with the quote: “Just a reminder as the Israeli PR machine continues to spew lies.”

In a tweet posted in late June of that year, Abou-Chakra wrote that “Israel is not a democracy when its Arab citizens aren’t afforded the same rights and when journalists are shot indiscriminately (35 killed since 2000).”

Four days after that post, Abou-Chakra responded to a post asking if Israel would “ever admit or apologize” for Abu Akleh’s death, writing, “The list of major newspapers and NGOs pointing to an Israeli execution grows by the day. And no, Israel won’t apologize because this is in character.”

In July of 2024, Abou-Chakra claimed that the pro-Hamas protests in Washington during Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to a joint session of Congress were “planted” by pro-Israel actors. 

“Haven’t seen this at any pro Palestine rally all year and there have been thousands. *He* comes to town and all of a sudden ‘Hamas’ graffiti, anti semitic dolls, and American flags are burned? I have a hard time believing this wasn’t planted by the other side,” she wrote.

During the protest at Union Station, demonstrators assaulted a police officer while he was making an arrest; spray-painted “Hamas is comin” on a statue outside the station, along with other pro-Hamas graffiti; carried Hamas flags; called for a “final solution”; burned an effigy of Netanyahu and carried another showing him with horns covered in blood; and took down and burned an American flag outside the station before replacing it with a Palestinian flag.

In a November 2019 tweet that has been deleted but was featured in a Deadline Detroit article at the time, Abou-Chakra criticized Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer for visiting Israel. Notably, Whitmer’s trip included a stop at GM’s headquarters in Herzliya, which was opened in 2008 and currently employs more than 700 employees.

“Apartheid is the Israeli regime restricting @RashidaTlaib movements in Palestine yet inviting @GovWhitmer to discuss trade. 2 US government officials from Michigan. 1 major difference,” Abou Chakra wrote. “Arabness is a crime in Israel, and this week 8 from the same family in Gaza paid that price.”

Spokespeople for GM did not respond to Jewish Insider’s multiple requests for comment on Abou-Chakra’s social media posts. 

The posts, almost all of which were still online prior to JI first reaching out to GM on Wednesday, had been taken down by Thursday morning. Despite this, the automaker’s press office declined to respond to a subsequent message.