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Katie Halper Violated Media Taboo Against Israel Criticism Luca GoldMansour ([link removed])


After turning in the draft of an op-ed monologue critical of Israel, journalist Katie Halper was fired from her new post at the Hill TV’s political commentary show Rising (Daily Beast, 10/4/22 ([link removed]) ). The
monologue, known as a “Radar” on Rising, was called “Israel IS an Apartheid State.”
Katie Halper on Israel: Separate and Unequal

In documenting ([link removed]'s%20status%20as%20an%20Apartheid%20State,%20Kate%20Halper%20crosses%20corporate%20media's%20strictest%20red%20line) Israel's status as an apartheid state, Kate Halper crossed one of corporate media's most policed red lines.

Halper (who has written for FAIR ([link removed]) ) used CNN’s Jake Tapper (9/21/22 ([link removed]) ) and Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt ([link removed]) ’s condemnation of applying the term "apartheid" to Israel, and their suggestion ([link removed]) that Palestinian-American Rep. Rashida Tlaib was antisemitic ([link removed]) for saying support for Israel was incompatible with progressivism, as a jumping point to examine Israel’s ethnonationalist violence.

In her commentary, Halper laid out the case that has been made by major human rights organizations like Amnesty International (2/1/22 ([link removed]) ) and Human Rights Watch (4/27/21 ([link removed]) ), and the Israeli human rights group B'tselem (1/12/22 ([link removed]) ), that Israel is in fact an apartheid state ([link removed]) . Along with substantial documentation, Halper contributed a personal perspective as well:

I was born in New York City. My great-grandparents...were from Eastern Europe. I could move to Israel today, buy a house, get a job, travel around with no problem. So could Jake Tapper and Jonathan Greenblatt. But a Palestinian like Rashida Tlaib can’t even visit her family home in what is now Israel.

The monologue was going to be Halper’s first as a permanent co-host, after having been a contributor for three years. Rising frames itself as a forum where "anti-establishment" or "populist" views from both the left and the right ([link removed]) can be freely exchanged and debated. Former co-host Ryan Grim, who personally delivered more than 150 monologues for Rising, noted there is "no approval process" for hosts’ commentaries (Intercept, 9/29/22 ([link removed]) ). Despite this, executives at Hill TV and/or its new parent company Nexstar Media saw Halper's criticism of Israel as a bridge too far.

First Halper’s superiors put the commentary under review. Then they told her that it would be nixed altogether, because of a brand-new policy barring opinion pieces on Israel, which even the producer was unaware of. Finally, they fired her (Daily Beast, 10/4/22 ([link removed]) ).


** 'A systematic effort'
------------------------------------------------------------

Halper wasn’t the first journalist silenced for criticizing Israel, and she won’t be the last. In her response to the firing ([link removed]) and in subsequent tweets, Halper pointed to several other recent examples:
* CNN’s firing ([link removed]) of Marc Lamont Hill for calling ([link removed]) for a free Palestine “from the river to the sea” (FAIR.org, 12/11/18 ([link removed]) ).
* The Guardian’s firing ([link removed]) of Nathan J. Robinson for satirically claiming on Twitter that Congress cannot authorize new spending without a portion of it going to Israel (FAIR.org, 2/22/21 ([link removed]) ).
* AP’s firing of Emily Wilder after she was targeted by a right-wing smear campaign for her pro-Palestinian activism as a college student (Democracy Now!, 5/25/21 ([link removed]) ; FAIR.org, 5/22/21 ([link removed]) ).
* Journalist Abby Martin being
banned from the University of Georgia for refusing to sign a pledge ([link removed]) that she would not participate in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel (Mint Press, 2/10/20 ([link removed]) ). (Numerous academics, like Angela Davis ([link removed]) and Norman Finkelstein ([link removed]) , have also faced retaliation for their critical views of Israel.)

Twitter: After years of covering the Gaza Strip as a freelance photojournalist for the New York Times...

Photojournalist Hosam Salem (Twitter, 10/5/22 ([link removed]) ) disclosed being banned by the New York Times for his pro-Palestinian views.

Just this week, New York Times freelance photojournalist Hosam Salem reported ([link removed]) that the Times fired him after the “Israel lobby organization Honest Reporting, which exists to attack the Palestinian narrative in the West” (Mondoweiss, 10/5/22 ([link removed]) ), accused him of antisemitism for voicing support for Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation forces. Salem discussed his firing on Twitter:

What is taking place is a systematic effort to distort the image of Palestinian journalists as being incapable of trustworthiness and integrity, simply because we cover the human rights violations that the Palestinian people undergo on a daily basis at hands of the Israeli army.


** 'The best defense is a good offense'
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The firing of journalists like Salem, Wilder and Hill wasn’t in response to their violating any clear policy of their respective outlets. Instead, well-funded pressure groups are able to get pro-Palestinian journalists fired, especially when they can appeal to pro-Israel sympathies in media management ([link removed]) .

In Halper's case, her firing may be connected to Nexstar Media's August 2021 purchase of The Hill, including its TV outlet. Jacobin’s Branko Marcetic (10/1/22 ([link removed]) ) wrote of "signs of a possible tilt in The Hill’s editorial line on Israel":

In late August, Nexstar filled ([link removed]) the position of deputy managing editor of NewsNation, its cable channel, with Jake Novak, a journalist who spent the preceding year and a half as the media director of the Israeli consulate general in New York....

Six days before the announcement of his hiring, Novak led a presentation ([link removed]) at Bar-Ilan University titled, “Defending Israel Against Media Bias—How to Fight News Media and Social Media Bias Against Israel: The Best Defense Is a Good Offense.” It was an update of a talk he had given in 2016 about defending Israel’s reputation, which the host

described as “an absolute master class in public relations and diplomacy.”

As Marcetic noted, a pro-Israel bias in Nexstar should be of grave concern: Following its purchase of Tribune Media, it is now the largest local broadcast TV owner in the US.


** Lethal censorship
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Graphic depicting the fact that Israeli occupation forces committed 479 violations and crimes against journalists in the first half of 2022.

For journalists operating in Palestine, censorship takes on violent and deadly forms.

Getting fired is hardly the worst form of retribution experienced by journalists who expose Israeli crimes. The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate reports 479 violations and crimes ([link removed]) against Palestinian journalists by Israeli forces and settlers in just the first half of 2022. These include two killings, 35 shootings, and numerous assaults and arrests. On Wednesday, two Palestinian journalists were shot by Israeli occupying forces while covering an Israeli raid in the West Bank (Al Jazeera, 10/5/22 ([link removed]) ). Over 50 journalists have been killed by Israeli forces since 2001, including Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh, who was an American citizen (Vox, 5/13/22 ([link removed]) ; FAIR.org, 5/20/22 ([link removed]) ,
7/2/22 ([link removed]) ).

Washington's supply of weapons and aid to Israel is critical to Israel’s capacity to uphold apartheid (Al Jazeera, 6/4/21 ([link removed]) ; Belfer Center, 2/7/17 ([link removed]) ), so maintaining a positive opinion of Israel in the US public is of extreme importance to Israel. By censoring critical journalists like Katie Halper, US corporate media are thus playing a key role in supporting a system that has seen journalists killed, assaulted and detained in Israel/Palestine.
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ACTION ALERT: You can send a message to the The Hill at [link removed] or on Twitter: @HillTVLive ([link removed]) . Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your communication in the comments thread.
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