Continuing to show an aversion to Israel and the safety of the Jewish people, Comcast-owned MSNBC decided on Wednesday’s ReidOut to go another step lower as Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi lambasted the idea of Israelis being able to defend themselves and compared the Jewish state to a white mob in the Jim Crow era that murdering hundreds of African-Americans.
Of course, host Joy Reid and J Street head Jeremy Ben-Ami sang Khalidi’s praises as a necessary voice in a growing chorus of Americans who’ve come to be disgusted with Israel.
It was partway through the show’s last segment when Khalidi boasted that “it’s not just a very large number of...men and women in Congress,” but also the news media and social media platforms that are “finally beginning to air both sides of the dispute” and posting images that you “cannot unsee” that have turned people off from Israel.
As the Washington Examiner had observed, it’s the idea that more people have come to believe Hamas wasn’t “the bad guy here” even though it exists to kill as many Jews as possible.
Khalidi careened off the edge, comparing Israelis taking out Islamic terrorists to a white mob in Tulsa murdering what were likely hundreds of African-Americans and injured hundreds more over two days in 1921 when “Black Wall Street” was burned.
And to go down yet another level in Dante’s Inferno, he demanded the global conversation change from Israel having a right to defend itself to the terrifying idea of “Palestinians hav[ing] the right to defend themselves” against violent Jews (click “expand”):
KHALIDI: And I think that you have changes that are going on, things like the Tulsa riots, things like Black Lives matter, are seen as connected by a very large number of people. Not just in the Democratic Party but particularly young people on campuses, young people all over the country and I think this is something that’s actually happening not just in the United States. There’s a lot of pushback. There will be even more pushback, but I think people are moving in the direction of understanding that much — many of these bromides, Israel has a right to defend itself. Do Palestinians have the right to defend themselves? Israel's security? The most insecure people in Palestine and Israel are Palestinians. We talk about Israel's security. If people are people and we believe in human rights, which the United States supposedly stands for, then the kinds of things that we expect for ourselves, we should expect for people, not just in Israel but also in Palestine.
REID: Yeah, indeed. And —
KHALIDI: And you’re seeing that coming through.
Rewind to the beginning and things weren’t any better.
Reid painted Israelis as genocidal maniacs, telling Khalidi that “52,000 of the two million people in Gaza have been displaced....including 400 buildings, homes, hospitals, and schools” with Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) playing the role of terrorists in leveling Gaza’s “two primary care health centers” and their “only COVID center.”
That, dear NewsBusters readers, is what one would call a useful idiot.
Anyone with a functioning knowledge of how Hamas works would know that they intentionally put their own people in danger, launch rockets from civilian areas, and build up weapons depots in places like hospitals and schools. And that doesn’t even touch on things like what happens when rockets fail to launch and land back in Palestinian neighborhoods.
As our friends at the Federalist have pointed out, “[t]he only reason that Israel conducted any airstrikes was that” Hamas had “instigated violence by indiscriminately shooting thousands of missiles” into not just “their usual targets in southern Israel, but also civilian centers in Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv,” which ended up striking “schools, hospitals, and homes.”
Back on MSNBC, Khalidi lamented that Israel has “used American weapons...in violation of American law” to inflict pain on Palestinians and that President Biden hasn’t gone to the U.N. Security Council to go after Israel.
“I would put a lot of this down to the willingness of this administration to grant impunity to Israel, no matter how egregious its violations and how many people died. 227 is a lot of people. Most of them innocent civilians,” he added.
Reid and Ben-Ami went right along with this narrative and cheered the Squad’s growing clout on the left despite the fact that Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) has articulated a vision where Israel would all but cease to exist (click “expand”):
REID: And, I mean, to that point, it is not even just this administration, Jeremy Ben-Ami, but that is the politics in the United States. The United States is not neutral. It has never been neutral. Every administration says the same words and sends the same money. There have been some slight changes. More toward the J Street-sounding position by some in the Democratic party. You have even Bob Menendez, who’s pretty hawkish, coming out and saying he’s “deeply troubled by the reports of American [sic] military actions.” You've had younger members of Congress. The Cori Bushes of the world, the AOCs, and we do have a Palestinian member now, Rashida Tliab. Representative Ocasio-Cortez, Mark Pocan, and Rashida Tlaib — they are lead sponsors of a bill to actually get at that money, to say they want to block the $735 million in military aid going to Israel. That feels like real change, or is it — or is it?
BEN-AMI: It's a sea change. It's an absolute change. And it’s not just a handful of members at one end of the caucus. Today, you had nearly 140 members of the Democratic caucus, nearly two-thirds of the members, called for an immediate cease fire, making it very clear to President Biden that what Professor Khalidi is saying is — is true, which is the United States is not doing everything it can to stop this and its two-thirds of the Democrats in Congress. And you had 29 senators on Sunday, led by the newest Senator Jon Ossoff, a young Jewish member, standing up and saying this has to end. So I don't think it is a minor group at one end of the spectrum. I think this is a sea change and where the center of the Democratic Party is, the center of public opinion is at.
REID: And that — I think feels right to me as well, Rashid Khalidi, you know, and all my life since I was a kid watching this on Nightline and seeing even Netanyahu — Benjamin Netanyahu when he was more of a commentator, being very, very hawkish. And it never felt like there was a critical mass of movement in Democratic politics in this direction. It does feel real. Is that the reason that you're seeing the President have to change slightly his rhetoric? He can't escape this. He was in Michigan. Rashida Tlaib is the congresswoman there. He wants to talk about other stuff. He can’t.
After Khalidi leveled his insane comparison between Israel and Jim Crow southerners, Reid didn’t bat an eye as she boasted to Ben-Ami’s approval that more and more people are calling Israel an “apartheid” state with Palestinians robbed of what they believe to their land.
Ben-Ami wrapped by crediting Khalidi’s for raising “a real point” about the need for the U.S. to become more aggressive in denouncing Israel’s actions to defend itself and lamenting Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud Party becoming “align[ed]” with Donald Trump and the GOP because “it is a huge strategic mistake for those of us who care about the future of Israel.”
Seeing as how Ben-Ami’s J Street had a conference speaker that equated Netanyahu to anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan, the aptest reply would be what Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) once told NBC’s Chuck Todd: “One of us is right and the other is you.”
MSNBC showing a desire for Israel to not be allowed to be exist was made possible thanks to the endorsement of advertisers such as CarFax and Farmer’s Insurance. Follow the links to see their contact information at the MRC’s Conservatives Fight Back page.
