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Why Is CNN Airing Palestinian Lies and Propaganda as Journalism?
At 2PM on October 7, as Hamas’ barbaric attack on Israel was still ongoing, Christiane Amanpour gave her CNN platform to Husam Zomlot, the Palestinian Authority (PA) ambassador to the UK, who blamed that day’s attack on Israel and compared it to Israel’s self-defense with almost no pushback from the anchor. Nine months later, with 120 Israelis and tourists still being held captive by Hamas, Amanpour continues to promote guests who distort reality.
On June 25, Christiane Amanpour interviewed Palestinian propagandist and founder of Al-Haq, Raja Shehadeh. Throughout the interview, both Amanpour and Shehadeh engaged in a tactic of reversing victim and offender, and their descriptions of events often bore little resemblance to reality. While acknowledging that the October 7 attacks occurred, and that Hamas’ killing of civilians was unjustified, both acted totally oblivious to the cause-and-effect relationship that attack had on subsequent events.
Among other topics, Amanpour and Shehadeh discussed Shehadeh’s new book titled, What Does Israel Fear From Palestine? In the wake of October 7, the title beggars belief. In 2005, Israel evacuated every single civilian and soldier from Gaza, leaving behind a greenhouse business that was gifted to the people of Gaza and a beautiful Mediterranean coastline for tourism. At that time, there was no occupation and no blockade, and the people of Gaza, functionally, had independence. In a 2006 election, their first opportunity for self-determination, the people of Gaza elected Hamas. Hamas then started wars with Israel in 2009, 2012, 2014, and 2021, culminating in 2023 in the vicious attack in which 1,200 Israeli men, women, and children were burned to death, raped, tortured, and killed, with another 240 were taken hostage to Gaza.
What does Israel fear from Palestine, indeed.
But Amanpour’s first question to Shehadeh about the book was, “given that Israel essentially has the balance of power, why do you think Israel fears Palestine? Do you think it does?”
Shehadeh replied, “I think they fear the very existence of Palestine, because if Palestine exists, then the Israeli myth, foundation myth would have to be amended, because the foundation myth of Israel was that they came to a land that was empty, that didn’t have any Palestinians or anybody, and they established Israel from year zero, and so to recognize Palestine would require reconfiguration of the Israeli myth, and that’s the main fear, I think.”
This is false, of course.
Early Zionists were well-aware that Arabs were living in the Ottoman- and then British-controlled region of Palestine, and, as Efraim Karsh has explained, “took for granted the full equality of the Arab minority in the prospective Jewish state.” The population of the region prior to waves of Zionist immigration was sparse, and the Arabs who lived there did not call themselves “Palestinians.” But no one thought that there were no people living there at the time. The relevant point is that there was no sovereign state there.
Amanpour then said to Shehadeh, “you come from a family that has been involved in the attempt to broker peace for decades, since ‘48 frankly, your father, when you were a teenager in 1967, submitted a peace proposal to the Israeli government on behalf of the Palestinians and of course all these decades later there is no peace. So Israel always blames the Palestinians for not grabbing a chance when it’s there, or walking away from all the best opportunities it’s given backed by the United States et cetera. Palestinians always blame Israel for, quote unquote, not being serious, for continuing to build settlements while talking the peace talk. What, given that, what is your actual hope for this dynamic to be broken? Do you think it ever will be?”
Amanpour’s question itself is remarkable, not least of all because Aziz Shehadeh doesn’t appear to have ever had any authority to act on behalf of anyone other than himself, or possibly, 50 other “prominent” individuals. He certainly was not acting “on behalf of the Palestinians.”
According to his obituary, he was “condemned by the Palestine Liberation Organization as ‘a traitor’ for proposing a separate Palestinian state alongside Israel,” and The New York Times reported that the Fatah Revolutionary Council claimed to have stabbed Aziz Shehadeh to death for advocating “capitulation, humiliating coexistence and liquidation of the Palestine cause.”
Yet, Amanpour speaks as if the elder Shehadeh’s proposal was in some way official. More to the point, though, after Arabs started two wars and lost territory in both, the proposal was for a return to a status quo ante that had never existed or been implemented, because it was rejected by the Arab side — the 1947 Partition Plan. It also demanded that the Jews share sovereignty over their newly liberated holiest city, after being denied any access at all to their holy sites within that city for 19 years. In other words, it was a pipe dream, not a plan.
Predictably, Amanpour’s guest responded by blaming the lack of peace on the settlements. But he never explained, nor did Amanpour ask him, why the settlements can’t become part of a future Palestinian state — or if they can, how they preclude the establishment of one.
“What did you learn from your father, again you were a teenager when that took place, and you went on to be a lawyer, you founded Al-Haq, the human rights group, you’re an activist. What did you learn from everything you saw as you were growing up, and has that been changed irrevocably, irrevocably since October 7, or not?” Amanpour then asked.
While Amanpour calls Al-Haq a “human rights group,” NGO Monitor has documented the group’s extensive ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a terror organization known for hijacking airplanes.
These ties include, “according to multiple Arabic-language media sources, Al-Haq General Director Shawan Jabarin represented the PFLP at a December 2011 meeting of … a reconciliatory body between Hamas, Fatah, PIJ, the PFLP, and other Palestinian factions.” Moreover, “Jabarin was convicted in 1985 for recruiting and arranging training for members for the PFLP.”
After paying lip-service to the idea that, “we have to find a way to live together,” Shehadeh replies, “but since October 7th [it] has become much more difficult because they dehumanize the Palestinians to such an extent, that it’s difficult now to imagine how we can make peace with them.”
Later in the interview, he repeats the claim that it is Israelis who have dehumanized the Palestinians of Gaza with their response to October 7, and not the attack itself that dehumanized — and terrorized — Israelis. This is a manipulative reversal of victim and offender. While October 7 is mentioned, the significance of the actual events of that day, and the effects of that attack on the prospects for peace, seem impossibly lost on both interviewer and guest.
Shehadeh goes on to claim that it the wake of the Oslo Accords, it was the Palestinian side that accepted coexistence and was “ready to live with the Israelis and to make peace based on justice and splitting the land between the two people.” But as both former US President Bill Clinton and his former American ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk have made clear, it was Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat who rejected the terms of Oslo.
Amanpour should have corrected her guest here, but she did not.
Amanpour does press Shehadeh about Hamas: “more and more, Palestinians in Gaza are daring to speak out against Hamas, and they’re basically saying these guys are useless at governance, they’ve rained — they’ve contributed to raining this hell on us. And we hear more and more about Sinwar himself and other Hamas leaders who essentially believe, and they’ve told journalists … the more blood, the more spotlight on our situation. And we spoke to a doctor who saved Sinwar’s life in an Israeli prison, and he said Sinwar told him … a thousand, ten thousand, a hundred thousand Palestinian deaths would be worth, like other liberation movements, he said Algeria, Vietnam, and et cetera, would be worth it if we got our rights. What do you think of that?”
Shehadeh replies, “Well, I think this is too harsh, but I think at the same time that Israel could not have continued to oppress the Palestinians and put them in an open-air prison and expect them to be calm and silent and not resist. And Hamas resisted, and they had the right to resist, because the blockade was an act of war on the part of Israel which continued for 16 years. And an act of war can be resisted under international law. And they resisted by breaking the barrier. So, they had the right to do that. What they didn’t have the right was to kill the Israelis — 1,000 Israelis along the– and that was, I think, a crime, of course.”
Here, Amanpour fails to call out her guest’s inconsistency. Although he attempts to make his case under international law, he fails to note that the 2011 Palmer Report found that blockade of Gaza was legal under international law. Amanpour, too, fails to note this, and allowed her guest to make the false claim that it was the blockade that was illegal and the October 7 attack that was legal. Although he takes pains to distinguish the attacks on civilians from the breaking of the barrier between Israel and Gaza and the invasion, he still justifies that invasion based on a false claim about international law. Again, it’s a reversal of victim and offender.
Amanpour moves on to the “universities [that] have been destroyed … cultural centers have been destroyed,” but is oblivious to the contradiction between the beautiful Gaza that was destroyed and Shehadeh’s description of it as an “open-air prison.”
She asks, “do you see an intent in terms of wiping out Palestinian culture or do you see it as part of the general destruction of Gaza in this pursuit of Hamas?” Shehadeh of course takes this hook, “I think there’s an intent to destroy Gaza and culture in Gaza. And I think that the denial by the Israelis about, just as there was denial about ‘48, there’s a denial about the destruction of culture in Gaza and the people of Gaza entirely.”
The fact that Hamas used homes, mosques, and schools not only to store but even to manufacture weapons, is irrelevant to both Amanpour and Shehadeh.
This is not journalism. This was nearly 13 minutes of anti-Israel propaganda under the imprimatur of CNN.
Karen Bekker is the Assistant Director in the Media Response Team at CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis.
The post Why Is CNN Airing Palestinian Lies and Propaganda as Journalism? first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Ukraine Condemns Russian FM Lavrov’s Comments Calling Zelensky a ‘Pure Nazi,’ ‘Traitor to Jews’
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov attends a press conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Feb. 18, 2025. Photo: Russian Foreign Ministry/Handout via REUTERS
Ukraine has lambasted Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov for calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a “pure Nazi” and a “traitor to the Jewish people,” describing his comments as antisemitic and urging Israel and Jewish organizations to condemn them.
Lavrov attacked Zelensky, who is Jewish, during a new interview published in Krasnaya Zvezda, the official publication of the Russian Ministry of Defense.
“Zelensky made a 180-degree turn from a person who came to power with slogans of peace, with slogans like ‘leave the Russian language alone, it is our common language, our common culture’ and in six months turned into a pure Nazi and, as Russian President Vladimir Putin correctly said, a traitor to the Jewish people,” Lavrov said in remarks echoing the Kremlin’s propaganda that the Ukrainian president is “nazifying” Kyiv.
Lavrov’s comments resembled previous rhetoric from Putin in 2023, when he called Zelensky a “disgrace to Jewish people.”
In response, the spokesperson for Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs denounced Lavrov’s remarks as “antisemitism,” noting the top Russian diplomat claimed in 2022 that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler “had Jewish blood.”
“Such statements are not just insane. They must be called out for what they truly are: antisemitism,” Heorhii Tykhyi posted on X/Twitter. “We urge Israel and Jewish organizations worldwide to condemn Lavrov’s repeated and outrageous falsehoods.”
“Zelensky is a pure Nazi and a traitor to the Jewish people”, said Russia’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov.
Just to remind, in 2022, this same person claimed that Adolf Hitler “had Jewish blood”.
Such statements are not just insane. They must be called out for what they truly…
— Heorhii Tykhyi (@SpoxUkraineMFA) March 2, 2025
As part of its ongoing propaganda campaign to undermine Ukraine’s sovereignty, Russia has relied on such rhetoric and claims invoking the Nazis for decades, insisting that Kyiv has no distinct culture or state and has always been part of Moscow’s “own history, culture, and spiritual space.”
For example, in an attempt to justify the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Putin labeled its leaders as “neo-Nazis” and invoked World War II rhetoric, claiming that Russia’s so-called “special military operation” was meant to “de-nazify” the country.
Jewish community groups and the international community at large have repeatedly denounced Russia’s use of Holocaust and World War II terminology to justify its invasion of Ukraine, which Kyiv’s allies have condemned as an aggressive land grab.
Lavrov’s remarks came after a tense meeting between Zelensky and US President Donald Trump last week, as early steps for ceasefire negotiations remain fragile. The high-level White House talks on Friday added further uncertainty to a potential US-Ukraine deal on natural resources and peace efforts with Russia.
During the meeting, Trump and US Vice President JD Vance called on Kyiv to express greater gratitude for US support and accept a ceasefire with Russia, despite the lack of clear security guarantees from Washington.
Speaking with reporters in the room, Trump told Zelenskyy that he is not in a position to make any demands and accused him of “gambling with World War Three.”
“You don’t have the cards … You’ve allowed yourself to be put in a very bad position,” Trump said, referring to the ongoing war with Moscow.
After the meeting, Russian officials praised Trump for his “proper slap down” of Zelensky and dismissed the Ukrainian president’s claims that Russia illegally invaded the country in 2022.
Kremlin spokesperson Dimitri Peskov reportedly told reporters that Trump’s shift in foreign policy “largely coincides with our [Russia’s] vision.”
During the London Summit with European leaders last weekend, Turkey offered to host peace talks between Ukraine and Russia. As a NATO member, Turkey had previously facilitated negotiations after Russia’s 2022 invasion and helped secure a grain export deal in the Black Sea. Ankara has emphasized that any future discussions must include both countries.
The post Ukraine Condemns Russian FM Lavrov’s Comments Calling Zelensky a ‘Pure Nazi,’ ‘Traitor to Jews’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Ivy League Schools Score Mediocre Grades in New ADL Campus Report Card
Pro-Hamas protesters at Columbia University on April 19, 2024. Photo: Melissa Bender via Reuters Connect
Ivy League institutions launched mediocre policy responses to rising anti-Jewish hatred during the 2023-2024 academic year, according to the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) Campus Antisemitism Report Card.
Released on Monday, halfway into spring term, the report lists grades that are based on two criteria, “what’s happening on campus” and “university policies and responsive action.” In total, the ADL assessed 135 colleges and universities across the US, only eight of which — Elon University, Vanderbilt University, University of Alabama, Florida International University, University of Miami, City University of New York’s (CUNY) Brooklyn College, CUNY Queens College, and Brandeis University — merited an “A” grade.
No Ivy League institution — save Dartmouth College, which notched a “B” grade — earned better than a “C,” a mark given to Brown University, Cornell University, Harvard University, and the University of Pennsylvania. Princeton University, Yale University, and Columbia University rated lowest, scoring “D” grades.
“I said it last year, and I’ll say it again: every single campus should get an ‘A.’ This isn’t a high bar — this should be standard,” ADL chief executive officer Jonathan Greenblatt said in a press release announcing the report. “While many campuses have improved in ways that are encouraging and commendable, Jewish students still do not feel safe or included on too many campuses. The progress we’ve seen is evidence that change is possible — all university leaders should focus on addressing these very real challenges with real action.”
Harvard’s receiving a “C” comes amid a period described by observers as a low point in its history. The institution, America’s oldest and arguably most prestigious, recently settled a merged lawsuit in which two groups accused it of refusing to discipline an allegedly antisemitic professor and other perpetrators of anti-Jewish discrimination, hate speech, and harassment. For months, the university’s legal counsel strove to dismiss the complainant’s charges, arguing that they lacked legal standing. Meanwhile, its highly reputed Law School saw its student government issue a defamatory resolution which accused Israel of genocide; its students quoted terrorists during an “Apartheid Week” event held in April; and dozens of its students and faculty participated in an illegal pro-Hamas encampment attended by members of a group that had shared an antisemitic cartoon earlier that year.
Antisemitic outrages have continued into the 2024-2025 academic year. In November, Harvard’s Office of the Chaplain and Religious and Spiritual Life was criticized by rising Jewish civil rights activist Shabbos Kestenbaum for omitting any mention of antisemitism from a statement precipitated by antisemitic behavior. The sharp words followed the office’s response to a hateful demonstration on campus in which pro-Hamas students stood outside Harvard Hillel and called for it to banned from campus.
“We have noticed a trend of expression in which entire groups of students are told they ‘are not welcome here’ because of their religious, cultural, ethnic, or political commitments and identities, or are targeted through acts of vandalism,” the office said, seemingly circumventing the matter at hand. “We find this trend disturbing and anathema to the dialogue and connection across lines of difference that must be a central value and practice of a pluralistic institution of higher learning.”
In response, Kestenbaum, said: “Harvard Jews were told by masked students ‘Zionists aren’t welcome here’ outside of the Hillel, the Chaplain Office finally released a statement that did not include the words Jew, Zionism, Israel, or antisemitism. A total abdication of religious responsibility.”
Columbia University’s poor mark reflects a widely held view that its officials have failed to prevent anti-Zionist activists — both professors and students — from fostering a noxious campus environment in which denigrating Jews and advocating for the destruction of Israel is defended as the pursuit of social justice.
As The Algemeiner has previously reported, Columbia University remains one of the most hostile campuses for Jews employed by or enrolled in an institution of higher education. Since Oct. 7, 2023, it has produced some of the most indelible examples of campus antisemitism, including a student who proclaimed that Zionist Jews deserve to be murdered and are lucky he is not doing so himself, brutal gang-assaults on Jewish students, and administrative officials who, outraged at the notion that Jews organized to resist anti-Zionism, participated in a group chat in which each member took turns sharing antisemitic tropes that described Jews as privileged and grafting.
Amid these incidents, the university has struggled to contain members of the anti-Zionist group Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), which just last month committed an act of infrastructural sabotage by flooding the toilets of the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) with concrete. Numerous reports indicate the attack may be the premeditated result of planning sessions which took place many months ago at an event held by Alpha Delta Phi (ADP) — a literary society, according to the Washington Free Beacon. During the event, the Free Beacon reported, ADP distributed literature dedicated to “aspiring revolutionaries” who wish to commit seditious acts. Additionally, a presentation was given in which complete instructions for the exact kind of attack which struck Columbia were shared with students.
CUAD struck Columbia again on Wednesday, occupying the Milbank Hall administrative building at Barnard College to protest disciplinary sanctions imposed on student activists as punishment for a previous incident. During the demonstration, a staff member was so badly assaulted as to require medical attention, according to a source with knowledge of the situation.
Amid these issues, many schools did see their grades improve over the previous year, the ADL said, explaining that over 50 percent of the schools included in the Campus Report Card — including Vanderbilt University, which did not earn an “A” last year while Harvard was given an “F” — moved to improve the campus climate for Jewish students.
“The improvement on campus is largely due to new administrative initiatives implemented in response to the campus antisemitism crisis,” ADL vice president of advocacy, Shira Goodman, said on Monday. “We’re glad that improving the campus climate for Jewish students was a priority for many of these schools, and we hope all colleges and universities understand the importance of developing and enforcing strong policies and procedures to create a safe and welcoming environment for Jewish students and all students.”
Higher education institutions have an added incentive to address antisemitism, as the reelection of US President Donald Trump in November brought to Washington, DC a chief executive who has threatened to tax the endowments of those that do not.
Shortly after taking office in January, Trump issued an executive order which directed the federal government to employ “all appropriate legal tools to prosecute, remove, or otherwise … hold to account perpetrators of unlawful antisemitic harassment and violence.” Additionally, the order initiated a full review of the explosion of campus antisemitism on US colleges across the country after the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, a convulsive moment in American history to which the previous administration struggled to respond during the final year and a half of its tenure.
“This failure is unacceptable,” Trump said. “It shall be the policy of the United States to combat antisemitism vigorously, using all appropriate legal tools to prosecute, remove, or otherwise hold to account the perpetrators of unlawful anti-Semitic harassment and violence.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Ivy League Schools Score Mediocre Grades in New ADL Campus Report Card first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Leftist Internet Personality Confronts Ritchie Torres Over Israel Support, Unleashes Lewd and Antisemitic Tirade
US Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) speaks during the House Financial Services Committee hearing in Washington, DC, Sept. 30, 2021. Photo: Al Drago/Pool via REUTERS
In a viral video which circulated over the weekend, a leftist social media influencer followed US Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) on the streets of New York City, hurling antisemitic, sexually explicit, and racially charged rhetoric at the lawmaker over his support for Israel.
The influencer, who goes by “Crackhead Barney,” confronted and grilled Torres about his stance on the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. The provocateur, whose real name has not been revealed to the public, taunted Torres as a “coon” and asked the lawmaker why he supports a so-called “genocide” in Gaza.
“Why are you sucking Zionist c—k?” Barney asked.
“You’re a coon. Why do you suck Zionist c—k? Is it the money?” the influencer asked. “Show us the money, Ritchie. Show us the money.”
When asked by Torres if she supports the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, the influencer responded “of course.” She then claimed that Israel “is the biggest terrorist organization.” The social media personality lambasted Torres as a “terrorist” and stated that he “sucks [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s c—k.”
The leftist firebrand accused Torres of accepting “genocidal money” and asked him if he was “going to kill more babies?” She also admitted to interrupting Torres’s event at Temple Emanu-El in Manhattan to protest the war in Gaza.
The content creator attempted to coax Torres multiple times into saying “Free Palestine,” a phrase which many observers interpret as a call for the destruction of Israel.
“Say ‘free Palestine’ and I will leave you alone,” Barney said.
“There is no universe in which I will say that,” Torres responded.
After finally relenting and allowing Torres to walk away, Barney shouted “free Palestine!” multiple times and said the lawmaker “supports the mass murder of babies.”
The internet personality has gained notoriety for ambushing celebrities and high-profile media figures in public, conducting impromptu interviews and engaging in provocative behavior. In the 16 months following the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, slaughter of 1,200 people throughout southern Israel, Barney has started targeting and harassing public figures supportive of the Jewish state. In April 2024, she made headlines after she confronted actor Alec Baldwin and pressed him to say, “Free Palestine.”
Torres, a self-described progressive, has established himself as a stalwart ally of the Jewish state. Torres has repeatedly defended Israel from unsubstantiated claims of committing “genocide” in Gaza. He has also consistently supported the continued shipment of American arms to help the Jewish state defend itself from Hamas terrorists. The lawmaker has directed sharp criticism toward university administrators for allowing Jewish students to be threatened on campus without consequence.
Warning: The video below contains lewd and explicit language.
I was walking on the streets of NYC when suddenly a pro-Hamas extremist began harassing me and hurling racial slurs. The confrontation illustrates just how unhinged the hate and harassment can be against those of us who have stood with Israel in the wake of 10/7.
Warning: the… pic.twitter.com/4QkzLAxNyx
— Ritchie Torres (@RitchieTorres) March 2, 2025
The post Leftist Internet Personality Confronts Ritchie Torres Over Israel Support, Unleashes Lewd and Antisemitic Tirade first appeared on Algemeiner.com.