Don't forget who enabled genocide
The New York Times is under fire for massive issues with their reporting on Gaza, and it made me think back to this absolutely bizarre "interview" I saw on Morning Joe a few months ago. And yes, Morning Joe is garbage, but Democracy Now! is sometimes a bit too heavy for me in the morning.
Morning Joe has consistently been awful on the topic, but this was beyond the pale even for them. On December 21, 2023, after lightly ribbing Jonathan Lemire and the state of the Red Sox franchise, the gang had a man on the program who went only by "Shahar." He says he's an IDF paratrooper, only in New York to recover from an injury, but was heading back to Israel that evening.
This is absolutely insane. This is not an interview, this is a man who has clearly had press training delivering well-rehearsed propaganda. Morning Joe may be on the info-tertainment side, but presumably NBC is still a news agency. Allowing an anonymous source to deliver his personal experiences without even attempting to provide evidence to support his claims is deeply unethical.
I was speaking at an event where a thousand plus mob just came knocking on the doors trying to get in, hitting police officers, yelling and cursing the mother of a hostage who only came to ask for her daughter to be released. I think something has changed since I lived [in the United States] seven years ago. Because what people don't understand is this is not a grey area anymore. It's not Israel and the Palestinians, it's literally good versus evil.
This presumably happened in New York. A thousand people broke down the doors of some event and started berating someone with a child being held hostage by Hamas. This would've been I think it would be pretty easy to back up that story. There must've been police reports. I bet he would've even taken some photos or video on his phone. Instead, it goes by unchallenged.
The whole thing is deeply disgusting, and I just have to wonder how it happened in the first place. Who booked this guy? However this happened, I don't think the Times are the only ones who ought to be doing some soul searching right now.