Woke, anti-Israel leftists are melting down over news that left-wing network MSNBC “quietly” pulled three of their Muslim hosts from their respective anchor positions in the aftermath of the start of the Hamas terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians.
According to Semafor, the three were Ali Velshi, Mehdi Hasan, and Ayman Mohyeldin, all of whom are weekend anchors on the network:
MSNBC has quietly taken three of its Muslim broadcasters out of the anchor’s chair since Hamas’s attack on Israel last Saturday amid America’s wave of sympathy for Israeli terror victims.The network did not air a scheduled Thursday night episode of The Mehdi Hasan Show on the streaming platform Peacock. MSNBC also reversed a plan for Ayman Mohyeldin to fill in this week on the network for host Joy Reid’s 7 p.m. show on Thursday and Friday. Mohyeldin, an Egyptian-American journalist and veteran NBC News correspondent covered the conflict from Gaza for two years. In 2021, he aggressively questioned Israeli leaders on strikes on the territory. Two network sources with knowledge of the plans told Semafor that the network also plans to have Alicia Menendez fill in this upcoming weekend for Ali Velshi, a third Muslim-American host who on Sunday interviewed a spokesman for the Palestinian Authority.Some staff at MSNBC have been concerned by the moves, feeling all three hosts have some of the deepest knowledge of the conflict. NBC says the shifts are coincidental, and the three continue to appear on air to report and provide analysis.
Though NBC says the moves are “coincidental,” it sure doesn’t sound like it:
The moves come as MSNBC — like the Democratic Party with which it’s often aligned — has swung into intense solidarity with the Jewish state after the murderous Hamas attacks. That shift has come with heated internal and external objections to anything that breaks with that solidarity, and has come with social media criticism of Hasan, Mohyeldin, and Velshi. Hasan has also been vocal on X, formerly known as Twitter, condemning the Hamas attack and calling attention to the plight of civilians in Gaza.[…]But over the past decade, NBC and MSNBC have struggled to cover the flare ups of violence in the Middle East without internal controversy, which has largely centered around three of the network’s Muslim anchors, who are among the highest profile Muslim voices in American journalism: Mohyeldin, Hasan, and Velshi.
Mohyeldin, Hasan, and Velshi, I should point out, all used to work for Al Jazeera, which is nothing more than a propaganda outlet for its funder, the Qatari government, which has provided safe haven to Hamas’ leaders.
Hasan, in particular, is… well let’s just say that you can take Mehdi out of Al Jazeera but you can’t take Al Jazeera out of Mehdi:
What a stark contrast between Hasan’s bodyguarding of Qatar, with his constant attack-dog stance versus the sole Jewish-majority country, the State of Israel. Hasan stated in 2021 that he considers himself “an anti-Zionist and critic of the Israeli state and its ongoing ethnic cleansing project,” and calls Israel “a government that practices apartheid.”As the official mouthpiece of the emirate of Qatar, Al Jazeera gives Qatar outsized heft in regional diplomacy, which it uses to promote the Islamist terrorist group Hamas, which it physically hosts and funds by millions annually.[…]Hasan has urged support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, which calls not for peace, but for Israel’s destruction. He criticized the United Arab Emirates for playing Israel’s anthem, “Hatikvah,” during the peacemaking visit of President Isaac Herzog.
Here’s Hasan during his days as a columnist for The Intercept acting as an apologist for Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar on the issue of BDS:
Here’s Hasan during his time as a presenter for Al Jazeera equating non-Islamists to cattle:
In response to news that MSNBC has for now shifted Mohyeldin, Hasan, and Velshi away from their anchor roles, they were accused of “racism” by some, while some members of AOC’s Squad including AOC herself fretted over the move and what it meant for diversity in the newsroom:
Hikind is probably not far off the mark:
As it turns out, most Americans don’t care to tune in to a network that has come off as little more than a grotesque mouthpiece for the terroristic Hamas government. After all, even if they did want to get the Hamas perspective they could just go straight to the source – Al Jazeera – rather than MSNBC, right?
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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