MSNBC’s “very high standard” on facts is not as high it may claim as it welcomed so-called human rights attorney and Professor Noura Erakat accused Israel of ethnic cleansing and genocide. Additionally, Erakat pretended to be a military expert as she claimed Israel hasn’t achieved anything, ignored evidence of terrorist activity at Gaza Hospitals, displayed a shocking bit of hypocrisy, called Palestinians in prison for terrorism “hostages,” and memory-holed the over 1,200 Israelis that were killed on October 7. Just a typical Monday on The ReidOut.
Host Joy Reid began by using Hamas’s propaganda that does not distinguish between combatant and non-combatant deaths or deaths caused by malfunctioning terrorist weapons, “I want to start with the question of these releases on both sides. It's been 40-some odd days and 14,000 deaths. I have seen some of your interviews in which you questioned whether this many deaths were needed to get these prisoners out. What do you make of the fact this pause is happening now, so many deaths later?”
Erakat wasted no time getting to the lies:
Thanks, Joy. I’ve actually been really clear that I think that Israel has waged, now we're on day 52, a campaign that is not a military campaign but what is very clearly an ethnic cleansing campaign that is not achieved any military advantage. After 52 days and an incredible humanitarian toll of 14,800 deaths including 6,000 children, 4,000 women, 36,000 injured, 60 journalists, where my colleague -- points out that Israel has killed more U.N. staffers than Hamas leaders.
On one hand, Erakat wants to condemn Israel for the aforementioned dubious casualty reports, but on the other she wants to condemn Israel for urging Palestinians to evacuate the combat zone.
Secondly, there is more to fighting an enemy army than killing its leaders, but Erakat was not done playing military analyst:
They have not achieved anything through that campaign, that onslaught of what legal scholars and genocide scholars has described as genocidal. In fact, the agreement they had just agreed to in terms of the exchange of hostages for hostages, many of these Palestinians should be understood as hostages as they're not prisoners, they did not have adequate due process. Many of them, 2,000 of the 8,000 in captivity are held under administrative detention without charge or trial. This very same agreement was extended in the first week after October 7th. Israel could have achieved it immediately.”
Again, there is a lot there. First, Israel is not waging genocide, that’s simply a lie told by political hacks. Second, Palestinian prisoners are not hostages. For example, the prisoner CBS celebrated was caught on video. Third, it is true that Hamas was talking of truces early on, but that simply ignores all the people who were not taken hostage, but simply murdered after several preceding ceasefires.
Undeterred by facts, Erakat kept rolling, “It could have achieved it before the ground incursion that began on October 27th. It could have achieved it before the gutting and the incursion of Al-Shifa Hospital, and now 26 out of 35 hospitals.”
Nothing about the terrorist infrastructure there, but Erakat continued, again ignoring all the people Hamas murdered:
Israel did not increase its negotiating leverage, but what it did do was mete out this incredible, incredible high civilian humanitarian harm, then we are pointing out that the purpose was not in fact to release the hostages which they could have released through this diplomatic exchange, this diplomatic process, a political process, but was in fact a campaign intended to do what many Israeli leaders have told us, which is to turn Gaza into a parking lot, which is to ethnically cleanse the north of Gaza, below the Wadi-Gaza Line.
Speaking of ethnic cleansing, it appears Erakat is simply upset that Israel won’t allow Hamas to ethnically cleanse Israel which is a perverted thing for a “human rights” activist to be upset over.
Here is a transcript for the November 27 show:
MSNBC The ReidOut
11/27/2023
7:23 PM ET
JOY REID: I want to start with the question of these releases on both sides. It's been 40-some odd days and 14,000 deaths. I have seen some of your interviews in which you questioned whether this many deaths were needed to get these prisoners out. What do you make of the fact this pause is happening now, so many deaths later?
NOURA ERAKAT: Thanks, Joy. I’ve actually been really clear that I think that Israel has waged, now we're on day 52, a campaign that is not a military campaign but what is very clearly an ethnic cleansing campaign that is not achieved any military advantage. After 52 days and an incredible humanitarian toll of 14,800 deaths including 6,000 children, 4,000 women, 36,000 injured, 60 journalists, where my colleague -- points out that Israel has killed more U.N. staffers than Hamas leaders.
They have not achieved anything through that campaign, that onslaught of what legal scholars and genocide scholars has described as genocidal. In fact, the agreement they had just agreed to in terms of the exchange of hostages for hostages, many of these Palestinians should be understood as hostages as they're not prisoners, they did not have adequate due process.
It could have achieved it before the ground incursion that began on October 27th. It could have achieved it before the gutting and the incursion of Al-Shifa Hospital, and now 26 out of 35 hospitals. It's precisely why we can see now, if there has been no military advantage, if no -- Israel did not increase its negotiating leverage, but what it did do was mete out this incredible, incredible high civilian humanitarian harm, then we are pointing out that the purpose was not in fact to release the hostages which they could have released through this diplomatic exchange, this diplomatic process, a political process, but was in fact a campaign intended to do what many Israeli leaders have told us, which is to turn Gaza into a parking lot, which is to ethnically cleanse the north of Gaza, below the Wadi-Gaza Line.
Now, 1.7 million Palestinians or 70 percent of the population has been displaced, and former Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked says that they won't return, but they should be distributed as refugees across the world.
This is why we're saying now it's not enough that we just focus on the refugees, because even those Palestinians that have been returned into the general population can be rearrested under a military occupation where there is no due process or oversight, what is an apartheid regime, and that Israel must be held to account for this amount of destruction that it caused. We cannot turn our eye or attention away from it.
