Often, as Americans, we want to live in an old Coke commercial where everyone sings in perfect harmony on a hill while they’re holding their cola bottles. We don’t want to live in a world where evil humans just gun down peaceful concertgoers or kill unarmed civilians in house-to-house raids. Raping women, and then executing them. Taking hostages as human shields.
But that is what the terrorist group Hamas unleashed in its unceasing hatred of Israel. It’s hard to believe anyone would proudly line up on an American street corner after this mass murder and support the murderers. It’s not as hard to believe that American media outlets would treat it as a normal part of democracy.
“NBC News” tweeted out a story with this message: “In New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles, small but passionate groups of pro-Palestinian demonstrators gathered Sunday, and demanded that Israel end its decades-long blockade of the Gaza Strip.” People tweeted back that the Ku Klux Klan was also a “small but passionate group.”
NBC’s online story was headlined: “How some Palestinian émigré communities in the U.S. reacted to the Israel-Hamas war: Protesters said they were against the killing of civilians but wanted a Palestinian homeland to be established.” A whole series of Palestinian activists were quoted attacking Israel and claiming the media coverage was one-sided in Israel’s favor. Please.
On Sunday’s NBC Nightly News, the show's introduction plugged a story on “Rallies Across the US.” Reporter Kathy Park presented dueling protests in New York City with moral equivalence. “Tonight, the crossroads of the world becoming a deep dividing point, with Palestinian supporters on one side of the street.” She quoted two. One proclaimed he was there “to stand against the oppression that’s been occurring in Palestine over the last five decades,” and the second said “Palestinian people have had enough.”
On Monday’s streaming NBC News Daily, they turned to reporter Maggie Vespa in “Little Palestine” in Chicago. Likewise, she turned to a protester named Ezeh Judeh holding a sign that said “Resistance for Our Existence.” Judeh said “it doesn’t make it okay that civilians are being harmed, but we have been the civilians that have been harmed over 80 years now.”
Vespa says she pushed back on this argument, but we saw none of that on camera. Then she concluded “we know it’s hard for people at home” to hear, but “we just want to play that for you to kinda put that perspective on display." NBC didn't find the speaker at the protest calling the mass murder a "self-defense operation."
Doesn’t all this coverage sound like “there were very fine people on both sides,” as Donald Trump said in 2017 after protests in Charlottesville about removing Civil War statues? Back then, the very same NBC News posted this online headline: “Has Trump Lost His Moral Authority for Good?” That’s not to say the Democrats at NBC like Chuck Todd (whose name is on this article) felt Trump ever had any moral authority.
So why would NBC suggest that pro-Hamas protesters – who don’t want a “two-state solution,” but want the nation of Israel eradicated and the Jews liquidated – have just as much moral authority as the Israelis? How is “giving them a platform” not just like platforming neo-Nazis?
NBC and the other leftist networks should not pretend that these Palestinian activists on the streets believe in peaceful coexistence with Israel when they want an end to Israel. The left is always screaming that the media shouldn’t “normalize” and give a platform to Trump. But journalism like this suggests they’re fine with “normalizing” and platforming Hamas.
