In his final piece to camera after spending five weeks in Ukraine covering the military invasion by Russia, MSNBC anchor Ali Velshi offered his analysis on the wider implications of the ongoing conflict in an appearance on the primetime Rachel Maddow Show.
Describing the “lesson” he has learned reporting from the besieged country, Velshi opined that the “growing atrocities against innocent civilians” were a sign that “the world needs to do better,” particularly because, in his view, “democracy and freedom are in peril.”
He further explained:
If it’s tough for NATO and the UN to prevent one country from actually invading another and subverting its population, imagine the struggle our world order has with those countries in which portions of the population are persecuted by their own governments. Afghanistan, Syria, China, Myanmar, Israel, India, to name just a few. And there are many more. And we, meaning the media, have to do better at covering vulnerable populations.” [emphasis added]
While the veteran reporter does not bother to elaborate further on his point, he appears to be suggesting Israel is guilty of persecuting “vulnerable” Palestinians.
As HonestReporting has detailed on numerous occasions at length, claims that Israel is oppressing any civilians are baseless. Often referred to as the “apartheid libel,” the unfounded accusation ignores several salient points.
First, since the Oslo Accords were signed in the 1990s, the vast majority of Palestinians live under the complete governance of either the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank or the US-designated terror group Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Second, when the PA was created, Palestinian leaders consented to the division of the West Bank provided it was given full civil and security control in areas that include all major Palestinian population centers. As agreed, Israel maintains security control in what is known as Area C of the disputed territory for safety reasons.
Third, Israel’s Arab citizens – that is, those whose government sits in the Knesset, or parliament – have full civil rights under the law and are thus treated as equals.
Furthermore, comparing Israel to any of the countries that Velshi lists is simply dishonest.
For example, he suggests Israel is similar to Afghanistan, which under the Taliban rule has seen strict laws imposed that strip women of their human rights; banned political opposition, and established a morality police to enforce its strict interpretation of Islamic law.
Or China, which has been accused of interning its Uyghur Muslim population in camps and harvesting their organs.
Yet, this is not the first time Velshi has used his large platform to unfairly demonize the Jewish state.
In May 2021 at the height of the Hamas-initiated conflict in which thousands of rockets were fired indiscriminately at Israeli cities and towns, Velshi attempted to justify the actions of the Gaza-based terrorist group.
“Israel has a right to exist and to defend itself. That’s an indisputable fact. But so do Palestinians. And that’s a fact that is often ignored. Palestinians are, at best, third class citizens in the nation of their birth,” Velshi posted on Twitter.
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Israel has a right to exist and to defend itself. That’s an indisputable fact. But so do Palestinians. And that’s a fact that is often ignored. Palestinians are, at best, third class citizens in the nation of their birth. #velshi— Ali Velshi (@AliVelshi) May 15, 2021
In 15 follow-up tweets, he also described Hamas as merely a “political party” and appeared to downplay its explicit call for the destruction of Israel: “What the U.S. also shares with Israel is the belief that Hamas, the political party that governs Gaza, is a terrorist organization that calls for the destruction of Israel. And yes, Hamas is supported by the majority of Palestinians in Gaza.”
This, despite the fact the Palestinian terror group was quite literally founded on a charter that explicitly sets out one of its primary aims as the annihilation of the Jewish state.
It is not the first time Velshi’s journalistic shortfalls have placed him on HonestReporting’s radar.
Just last month, he was rebuked on social media after failing to challenge a guest who effectively erased crimes committed by Nazi Germany against its own citizens, including almost 200,000 German Jews.
In a segment about the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Stanford University Professor Michael McFaul falsely claimed that Adolf Hitler didn’t kill any “ethnic Germans and German-speaking people.”
Velshi failed to call out McFaul’s falsification of a historical fact and instead moved swiftly on to the next question. Moreover, the Rachel Maddow Show, for which Velshi was acting as guest host, subsequently disseminated McFaul’s incorrect claims without any attribution.
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Image credit: YouTube/MSNBC screengrab
