By Mohammad Hashim
In an interesting revelation, a report on Saturday that three high-profile Muslim anchors of the American news television channel MSNBC, owned by NBC Universal, have been sidelined.
The Semafor report said Mehdi Hasan, Ayman Mohyeldin and Ali Velshi have been “quietly taken out of the anchor’s chair” amid the Israeli regime’s no-holds-barred bombing of the besieged Gaza Strip.
The network reportedly did not air the Thursday night episode of The Mehdi Hasan Show on its streaming platform Peacock and also reversed its plan to replace Joy Reid with Mohyeldin this week for the channel’s 7 p.m. show.
The report, citing “two network sources with knowledge of the plans”, said Velshi will also be replaced by Alicia Menendez this weekend. Menendez hosts American Coices on Saturdays and Sundays.
Hasan is a British-American television journalist of Indian descent who has anchored the popular The Mehdi Hasan Show on Peacock since October 2020 and on MSNBC since February 2021.
Mohyeldin is an Egypt-born, New York-based journalist for NBC News and MSNBC who currently hosts the weekly prime-time show ‘Ayman’ on MSNBC.
Velshi is a US-based Canadian journalist, who has been reporting for NBC News since October 2016 and also serves as a news host for MSNBC channel.
NBC has termed the schedule changes as “coincidental,” refuting claims that the high-profile Muslim broadcasters are being snubbed amid the cessation of Israeli hostilities against Palestinians.
However, the Semafor report stressed that staff members at MSNBC have been “concerned by the moves”, feeling all three hosts have “some of the deepest knowledge of the conflict.”
It said the move to sideline the three anchors comes as the MSNBC network, which is aligned closely with the Democratic Party, has “swung into intense solidarity” with the Israeli regime.
“That shift has come with heated internal and external objections to anything that breaks with that solidarity, and has come with social media criticism of Hasan, Mohyeldin, and Velshi,” the report stated.
Following the Hamas operation, US politicians, including President Joe Biden, quickly jumped in defense of the occupying regime and peddled blatant lies about children beheaded and women raped.
Interestingly, the three MSNBC journalists, including Hasan, have been vocal against the operation launched by the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas on the occupied territories last week.
Hasan, who has a massive social media following and is known for his argumentative style of on-air debating, took to his X handle (formerly Twitter) on October 8, a day after the Hamas operation, lecturing his 1.3 million followers on “morality” of the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
“This conflict for me has always been about morality. Morally, you cannot justify the killing of Palestinian civilians, even if you say it’s fighting terrorism. But morally, you also cannot justify the killing of Israeli civilians, even if you say you’re fighting occupation,” he wrote.
It was a conscious and concerted attempt on the part of the British-American journalist to play both sides, to advocate the case of Palestinians, and also to be apologetic for the Israeli occupation.
He somehow tried to question the legitimacy of the Palestinian resistance group to launch the Al-Aqsa Storm operation even if they were occupied, subjugated, humiliated and mercilessly killed every day.
Hasan also fell for the hoax that hundreds of people were “massacred” at a music festival.
“Israel says 260 dead at music festival attacked by Hamas. I cannot imagine how horrific a massacre this must have been. 260 people gunned down. To put that in context, that’s the equivalent of more than five Pulse nightclub shootings. Heartbreaking,” he wrote on X.
It was part of the bigger misinformation campaign against the Palestinian resistance movement, which took the music festival participants as prisoners and treated them in a dignified manner as seen in videos circulating widely online.
To put his case as a neutral journalist who cares for Israelis, the MSNBC anchor reacted strangely to a photo of a demonstration by pro-Palestine activists outside the Israeli regime’s consulate in New York.
“These people are an embarrassment and their cheering is reprehensible,” Hasan wrote.
Mohyeldin, much like his MSNBC colleague, has been very consciously trying to appease his employers by being soft on the Israeli apartheid regime and amplifying voices against the resistance.
On October 8, a day after the Hamas operation, he shared a series of posts on X that were circulated to vilify the Gaza-based resistance group and to portray Israeli soldiers and settlers as victims.
He even shared an article that claimed Iran helped in plotting the attack on the Israeli regime.
Velsh, like the other two, has also used his social media platforms, including X, to make a case for himself as someone who despises the Palestinian resistance movement.
On October 10, he shared an article about Hamas, calling it an” important read to understand what you need to know about the group behind the deadly terror attack in Israel.”
He clearly sees the Hamas operation as a “terror attack”, not a legitimate military action against the occupying regime. He also conveniently dismissed the fact that the attack targeted occupiers.
On Saturday, he posted on X that he was leaving the occupied territories, adding to speculation that he has been sidelined from his job despite extra effort to take the hypocritical position on the conflict.
All three of them – Hasan, Mohyeldin and Velshi – despite trying to present themselves as “good boys” have received a bad report card from their bosses. That’s how much Americans value free speech.
Mohammad Hashim is a political and media analyst with a focus on West Asia
(The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of Press TV
