'Self-obsessed' Ivanka Trump stereotyped Arabs as terrorists, 'ex-best friend' claims

In an emotional account of her former "best friend", journalist Lysandra Ohrstrom claimed Ivanka Trump was supposedly quick to misinterpret Arabic as synonymous with terrorism and said her "pro-Palestinian stance" contributed to the break of their relationship.

The former friends had met during their time studying in New York.

"...she had started dating Jared Kushner, whose family was Orthodox Jewish, and my pro-Palestinian stance began to chafe," Ohrstrom wrote in Vanity Fair.

"Since 2007, I’ve worn a necklace with my name written in Arabic, and Ivanka grew increasingly irritated by it. Sometimes, she would randomly say: 'I hate that thing.' Then one night in the middle of dinner, she glanced at the necklace and said, 'How does your Jewish boyfriend feel when you are having sex and that necklace hits him in the face? How can you wear that thing? It just screams terrorist'," she added.

After meeting at an elite all-girls school in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York, the Brooklyn-based freelance journalist said her decade-long friendship with President Donald Trump's eldest daughter started to fragment when she started her career freelancing in the Middle East.

"While Ivanka was laying the foundation for her conquest of Manhattan, I was experiencing a new reality in Lebanon as it was rocked by a string of political assassinations and bombings and a decimating war with Israel… I remember her being the only person I knew who didn’t ask me what the war was like," Ohrstrom recalled.

She said Ivanka "loved to talk about herself and was shamelessly vain, but she was also fun, loyal…" and that it "made no sense" to her that Ivanka embraced "her dad’s banana republic-style administration."

Soon after the news that her father had lost the elections, Ivanka stood by him and tweeted he "will always go to the mat fighting for the hardworking men & women of this great Country!"

Ohstrom wrote that she hopes Ivanka "wasn’t able to drown out the applause of the city she once aspired to rule, cheering and celebrating her political downfall. I was with them, crying with relief, matched only by the regret and shame I feel for not holding my former friend to account sooner," she wrote.

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