Ryan Girdusky clashed with British-American journalist Mehdi Hasan on Monday night.
CNN has banned a conservative commentator from appearing on the network again after he told a Muslim journalist “I hope your beeper doesn’t go off,” an apparent reference to the spate of exploding pagers in Lebanon that killed members of the Hezbollah militant group last month.
Ryan Girdusky made the comment during a heated debate with Mehdi Hasan, a prominent British-American broadcaster and an outspoken critic of Israel’s war in Gaza, on “CNN Newsnight” with host Abby Phillip.
The guests were discussing the racist jokes made by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, which overshadowed former President Donald Trump’s rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden on Sunday and continue to make headlines two days later.
As the debate turned fractious, Girdusky and Hasan sparred over whether the latter had been labeled an anti-Semite. “I’m a supporter of the Palestinians, I’m used to it,” Hasan said.
Girdusky replied: “Well I hope your beeper doesn’t go off.”
I’m still flabbergasted that there hasn’t been more of an international outrage concerning those pagers.
The use of mines as an indiscriminate weapon are already frowned upon,
And here they are using them, scattered throughout a civilian population with absolutely no regard to who could be standing next to their target.
Un-fucking believable.
They bombed dozens of hospitals and orphanages across two countries and also started a starvation siege since that time.
There is no outrage left
There is no outrage left
This really hit me. As in maybe it explains some things since the internet was created. It’s indeed so hard to keep up.
It’s indeed so hard to keep up.
I know it’s different, but that reminds me of the Gish gallop.
“The Gish gallop is a rhetorical technique in which a person in a debate attempts to overwhelm an opponent by presenting an excessive number of arguments, with no regard for their accuracy or strength, with a rapidity that makes it impossible for the opponent to address them in the time available.”
Oh no… Israel is doing the Gish gallop but for human rights atrocities… this explains it perfectly.
Yup with both parties supporting it. Such a grand time.
There hasn’t been outrage because blowing up people with pagers is actually the most targeted thing Israel has done in the past year. Certainly a step up from killing hundreds of refugees to maybe take out one hamas guy.
Accused hamas guy
Which pager strike in particular do you disagree with? AFAIK the targets were pretty open about their relations to Hamas and Iranian funded extranational militants.
IMO we should have just stopped giving Israel shells and rockets a long time ago and instead given them a very small amount of spec ops equipment like the pagers.
Yes. The 9 year old girl was TOTALLY a Hezbollah militant.
Get real. Most of the people killed were civilian government workers and members of their families.
It would be like giving congress exploding pens. Yes, many of the members are deplorable. But handing them mini explosives is an act of terrorism.
Ah thats fair, I was unaware of the attacks on Tuesday and Wednesday September 12 and 13th.
Dozens of mourners gathered Wednesday in the Lebanese village of Nabi Sheet to pay respect to Fatima Abdullah
I had only heard about the earlier strikes.
I’m not commenting on the pager attack when I refer to “accused hamas guy” but I’ll leave it as an exercise to you to figure out why and how the pager strike might have led (and did lead) to civilian casualties.
Yes more precise than “was in a WhatsApp group with the cousin of a suspected Hamas member so the AI told us to bomb him at home with his children” but if that’s the bar…
You replied to a comment about blowing up a hamas guy with pager by saying the hamas guy is only an accused hamas guy, but you were not referring to the blowing up of a hamas guy with a pager?
Read the second sentence in that comment slowly
They killed children in that pager attack. Which I guess is part for the course, so ya, nevermind, you might be right.
It was a terrorist attack. We must condemn all terrorist attacks
Not mines, IEDs. It was an indiscriminate terrorist attack on a civilian population using improvised explosive devices.
indiscriminate terrorist attack on a civilian population
You’re describing what the Palestinians did to Israel on 10/7, and have continued doing this entire time, when they launch rockets at Israeli population centers.
population centers
Why does one side have population centers and the other human shields? It’s wrong regardless.
One side at least wants to pretend to have military targets?
You know that is actually insightful to the PTSD that many IDF soldiers are experiencing.
I’m sure the IDF soldiers feel very bad about all the women and children that they’ve driven bulldozers over.
Didn’t forget they’re not allowed to rape POW’s. And that’s a perfectly fine reason to riot.
That’s also bad. Both of the sides are bad, and the Palestinian civilians are caught in the crossfire.
I didn’t realize that HAMAS was as large an organization as the Israeli government and armed forces.
We’re also talking about a completely different country from Palestine that had nothing to do with any part of any of these conflicts, and even then, an indiscriminate terrorist attack on Palestinian civilians wouldn’t be justified by HAMAS’s terrorism. That’s like saying that the US bombings on Iraqi civilians are justified by Al Qaeda’s attack on the WTC on 9/11.
Hezbollah has been firing rockets into Israel for a year now. It’s hard to claim they have nothing to do with any part of these conflicts
Hezbollah only exists because of Occupations and invasions by Israel
1982
The 1982 Lebanon war began on 6 June 1982, when Israel invaded again for the purpose of attacking the Palestine Liberation Organization. The Israeli army laid siege to Beirut. During the conflict, according to Lebanese sources, between 15,000 and 20,000 people were killed, mostly civilians.
On 16 February 1985, Shia Sheik Ibrahim al-Amin declared a manifesto in Lebanon, announcing a resistance movement called Hezbollah, whose goals included combating the Israeli occupation. During the South Lebanon conflict (1985–2000) the Hezbollah militia waged a guerrilla campaign against Israeli forces occupying Southern Lebanon and their South Lebanon Army proxies.
Israeli Withdrawal
Throughout the painstaking process of confirming the Israeli withdrawal, Hizballah was at pains to declare its commitment to recovering the last millimeter of Lebanese territory, but it also acknowledged that it would not act hastily to reinitiate violence. In sum, Hizballah’s behavior and deference to state authority have worked to its political advantage. It reaped recognition in an unprecedented meeting between Nasrallah and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who praised Hizballah’s restraint and its promise of cooperation. The meeting with Annan offers a remarkable contrast with Hizballah’s earlier days, when it was hostile to the UN and especially to the UN force in the south.
Without an agreement between Syria and Israel, there will be little pressure on Hizballah to disarm. Syria’s calculated strategy is to allow Hizballah to serve as a constant reminder of the consequences of continuing to occupy the Golan Heights.This is a role that Hizballah is happy to play, given its enmity toward Israel. At the same time, it remains profoundly aware of the political costs of bringing destruction down on the heads of its supporters, and this further reduces the prospect that Hizballah will initiate attacks on Israel
2006
The doctrine is named after the Dahiya suburb of Beirut, where the Lebanese paramilitary group Hezbollah has its headquarters, which the Israeli military leveled during its assault on Lebanon in the summer of 2006 that killed nearly 1,000 civilians, about a third of them children, and caused enormous damage to the country’s civilian infrastructure, including power plants, sewage treatment plants, bridges, and port facilities.
It was formulated by then-General Gadi Eisenkot when he was Chief of Northern Command. As he explained in 2008 referring to a future war on Lebanon: "What happened in the Dahiya quarter of Beirut in 2006 will happen in every village from which Israel is fired on… We will apply disproportionate force on it (village) and cause great damage and destruction there. From our standpoint, these are not civilian villages, they are military bases… This is not a recommendation. This is a plan. And it has been approved.” Eisenkot went on to become chief of the general staff of the Israeli military before retiring in 2019.
While it became official Israeli military doctrine after Israel’s 2006 attack on Lebanon, Israel’s military has used disproportionate force and targeted Palestinian, Lebanese, and other civilians since Israel was established in 1948 based on the ethnic cleansing of indigenous Palestinians, including dozens of massacres to force them to flee for their lives.
2007 - Present
Until recently, the border had been relatively quiet. Occasional rockets or drones crossed from Lebanon into Israel without leading to serious escalation, while Israel violated Lebanese airspace more than 22,000 times from 2007 to 2022.
While the withdrawal was certified by the United Nations, Lebanon disputed it, arguing that the Shebaa Farms was part of its territory, and not part of the Syrian Golan Heights, which Israel continues to occupy.
So there are two separate issues here that lead to the current dispute: the first is that Israel occupies the Golan Heights and treats it as its own territory in violation of international law, and the second is that there was already a pre-existing disagreement between Syria and Lebanon over the border, prior to the Israeli occupation.
And yet, that still doesn’t justify killing civilians randomly.
And Israel has been running a military campaign to exterminate Palestine since the 1950s. It’s hard to claim their hands are clean in any of these conflicts.
I still remember when they were offering Israeli citizenship with the purchase of former Palestinian homes to American Jews in the 2000s.
Claiming they were justified in attacking israel is very different from claiming they have nothing to do with the conflict though. If you feel that firing rockets at israeli civilians is fine and good, say that instead of pretending hezbollah was uninvolved
This is a genocide on an incarcerated population, within an Apartheid State, founded on Ethnic Cleansing
Ethnic Cleansing is fundamental to Zionism
Zionism’s aims in Palestine, its deeply-held conviction that the Land of Israel belonged exclusively to the Jewish people as a whole, and the idea of Palestine’s “civilizational barrenness" or “emptiness” against the background of European imperialist ideologies all converged in the logical conclusion that the native population should make way for thenewcomers.
The idea that the Palestinian Arabs must find a place for themselves elsewhere was articulated early on. Indeed, the founder of the movement, Theodor Herzl, provided an early reference to transfer even before he formally outlined his theory of Zionist rebirth in his Judenstat.
An 1895 entry in his diary provides in embryonic form many of the elements that were to be demonstrated repeatedly in the Zionist quest for solutions to the “Arab problem ”-the idea of dealing with state governments over the heads of the indigenous population, Jewish acquisition of property that would be inalienable, “Hebrew Land" and “Hebrew Labor,” and the removal of the native population.
Settlements and Occupation
Israel justifies the settlements and military bases in the West Bank in the name of Security. However, the reality of the settlements on-the-ground has been the cause of violent resistance and a significant obstacle to peace, as it has been for decades.
This type of settlement, where the native population gets ‘Transferred’ to make room for the settlers, is a long standing practice.
- The Transfer Committee, and the JNF Ethnic Cleansing, which led to Forced Displacement of 100,000 Palestinians throughout the mandate before the Nakba
The mass ethnic cleansing campaign of 1948:
Further, declassified Israeli documents show that the Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip were deliberately planned before being executed in 1967:
While the peace process was exploited to continue de-facto annexation of the West Bank via Settlements
The settlements are maintained through a violent apartheid that routinely employs violence towards Palestinians and denies human rights like water access, civil rights, etc. This kind of control gives rise to violent resistance to the Apartheid occupation, jeopardizing the safety of Israeli civilians.
The apartheid regime is based on organized, systemic violence against Palestinians, which is carried out by numerous agents: the government, the military, the Civil Administration, the Supreme Court, the Israel Police, the Israel Security Agency, the Israel Prison Service, the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, and others. Settlers are another item on this list, and the state incorporates their violence into its own official acts of violence. Settler violence sometimes precedes instances of official violence by Israeli authorities, and at other times is incorporated into them. Like state violence, settler violence is organized, institutionalized, well-equipped and implemented in order to achieve a defined strategic goal.
Visualizing the Ethnic Cleansing
Peace Process and Solution
Both Hamas and Fatah have agreed to a Two-State solution based on the 1967 borders for decades. Oslo and Camp David were used by Israel to continue settlements in the West Bank and maintain an Apartheid, while preventing any actual Two-State solution
How Avi Shlaim moved from two-state solution to one-state solution
‘One state is a game changer’: A conversation with Ilan Pappe
Historian Works on the History
-
Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History - Nur Masalha
-
The Concept of Transfer 1882-1948 - Nur Masalha
-
A History of Modern Palestine - Ilan Pappe
-
The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine - Rashid Khalidi
-
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine - Ilan Pappe
-
The 1967 Arab-Israeli War: Origins and Consequences - Avi Shlaim
-
The Biggest Prison on Earth: A History of the Occupied Territories - Ilan Pappe
-
The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-development - Sara Roy
-
10 Myths About Israel - Ilan Pappe (summery)
Say what you want about Americans, we have yet to respond to a terror attack with fucking genocide.
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What’s even crazier for me to wrap my head around is those pagers were a safer method for civilians than what they’ve been doing. They’re indiscriminately leveling city blocks killing thousands of innocents.
well we know who could be standing next to their target- another brown person in a majority muslim country. IE, nobody western supremacist racist pigs give a fuck about which is why there was no punishment and there will be no punishment against israel for any single thing they do. if it were gonna happen it would have by now. it’s not as tho once they get to that 300,000th dead palestinian suddenly the “rules based order” is gonna enact some of those “consequences for breaking the rules” on israel. not gonna happen. someone needs to dylan crooks netanyahu.
The conflict is not one based on racism, it’s literally based on religion and at least 3 groups of people in a small area using their religion to justify the murder of others. Full stop. Jews are not white. Jews who were expelled from Israel and became Europeanized are essentially genetically identical to the Jews that remained. Skin color is not race, but making this conflict about race makes that individual racist
Wait… what?
I’m I reading that right?
12 people killed. 6 of which were 2 children and 4 healthcare workers.
But 2,800 wounded? So all of that wasn’t even about neutralizing targets, but maiming?
How many were set off? I have a hard time believing a 12killed : 2800wounded ratio…
EDIT: Google says bout 5000 pagers
CNN: reports 37killked but 3,000 wounded.
Yeah no, the exploding pagers and radios, which were from an intercepted supply specifically for Hezbollah, was far more targeted than anyone could reasonably ask for.
Like yes, Israel’s overall actions in Gaza and Lebanon have been horribly ruthless and against civilian well-being. And there is the broader context of Palestine. But this is what you’re outraged by?
If everything between bombing Hezbollah and targeted attacks like the pagers/radio are off the table, like what would you actually do if a non-governmental military was indiscriminately firing hundreds of rockets into your cities for an entire year? Seriously, how would you actually respond if you were in the leadership position?
Idk dude, generally things like booby traps are considered illegal in part because they’re not selective. Like if someone breaks in and you kill them with a gun it’s self defense, but if it’s a booby trap then we view it differently. Disguising bombs as typical civilian items seems pretty messed up.
Did you forget that
every “responsible” western power(Edit: Ottawa treaty) the US and Ukraine (who was a signatory of the Ottawa treaty) also has an arsenal of anti-personnel and anti-vehicle mines which are specifically meant to be hidden and disguised? Quite literally booby traps with long-lasting risks for civilian lives. Many children have lost their lives due to mines, yet they are still deemed acceptable in war.Anything that risks civilian lives is pretty messed up. But even compared to the mines being used in Ukraine, the pagers/radios were far more targeted and posed less risk to civilians.
Did you forget that every “responsible” western power also has an arsenal of anti-personnel and anti-vehicle mines which are specifically meant to be hidden and disguised?
This is not true.
Oh snap, that’s awesome! I wasn’t aware of this. I assumed NATO would be consistent with the US on mines. Thank you for sharing this.
I’ll modify my argument to “Even the US and Ukraine use mines”
It’s interesting though, according to my research the distinction between mines and weapons lie in how it’s activated. For example, the C19 ex-Claymore is now remote detonation only to comply with the Ottawa treaty because it can only be activated remotely and cannot be used with an indiscriminate activator like a tripwire. Therefore it is a weapon. With this les, the pagers/radios are more akin to weapons rather than mines.
So booby traps are allowed, as long as someone is there to decide when to press the button, which the Israelies clearly did.
The use of mines as an indiscriminate weapon are already frowned upon,
Did you forget that every “responsible” western power also has an arsenal of anti-personnel and anti-vehicle mines which are specifically meant to be hidden and disguised?
No, I didn’t forget. Someone even mentioned them in this same comment chain.
Okay, so let’s go with your position that attacking soldiers with explosive weapons in civilian areas are not justifiable.
Based on your beliefs, what do you see as a justifiable response to Hezbollah’s year long barrage of rockets and missiles into Israeli cities. Keep in mind Hezbollah by and large conducts these strikes directly embedded in or right beside civilian sites. And they also store weapons in civilian sites.
The goal now is not to say which is worse, there’s plenty of blame to go around. The goal is to understand how you think about conflict and the principles you believe in that shape your views.
let’s go with your position
This was never a debate, I was just saying that I feel like disguising bombs as everyday, civilian objects is bad. The comment where I even posted that I literally began with “idk dude” to make it clear I wasn’t trying to engage in debate about this topic. The only reason I even replied again was because land mines were mentioned in the context of “did you forget” when literally above in this comment chain land mines were already mentioned.
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No dude, it’s pretty reasonable for me to ask that they don’t kill children with IEDs.
Serious question, would you condone assassinating Putin with an IED even if several children were killed? Would it be better if they used a missile strike with 5x the civilian casualties because at least it isn’t an IED? Would it be better to do nothing and allow an opposing military force to continue bombarding your cities and your children with rockets and missiles?
I abhore the mass bombings and utter destruction Israel has wrought over the last year. It is beyond the pale. I would genuinely have prefered it if they could’ve taken out all of Hamas by blowing up cell phones in their pockets instead.
There’s no risk of Putin being at a random grocery store or hospital so your hypothetical doesn’t tea make sense.
That doesn’t answer the question. Let me rephrase to be more direct.
What do you believe makes for acceptable and unacceptable civilian casualties (e.g. children) in urban warfare and what principles do you draw on to form these beliefs? Please use an example from a side you feel are “the good guys”.
If you’re a pacifist or believe not a single civilian casualty is acceptable, what would your approach be to resolving a conflict where your civilian population is being attacked with rockets/missiles?
According to international law it’s acceptable when you’re being occupied, as is the case with Palestine. Not saying I agree, but the law makes a big distinction for those under apartheid.
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I mean it was wrong when the US bombed weddings in the middle east and was a bad look. Don’t even need hypotheticals.
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The only people who had those pagers were Hezbollah members. Hezbollah has been lobbing missiles into Israel, killing civilians including children and forcing an evacuation. They picked a fight, why should there be an expectation that Israel just sits back and takes it? Don’t get me wrong about Gaza, they have gone way too far there. But Hezbollah seems at least somewhat justified.
The only people who had those pagers were Hezbollah members.
Did they have camera’s in them to know that? and also know about people in the surrounding area?
Hezbollah has been lobbing missiles into Israel, killing civilians including children and forcing an evacuation.
And you think this is the appropriate response to that?
I get the Israeli people are absolutely tired of this shit. But what makes them think that kind of response isn’t going to do anything other than bolster the other sides hatred/resolve?
As they indiscriminately kill more, they are recruiting more to the cause. When someone loses their kids/brother/father/home/etc. That just makes them having nothing more to lose, and join the war. People don’t want to fight. People just want to live their lives.
Israel is the one with all the weapons/tech/money in this. If the Israeli people are tired of this shit, they need to look at a leader who’s not going to perform actions that just increases Hezbollah’s and Hamas’s numbers.
Girdusky appeared indignant on social media in the hours afterwards and said in a tweet “apparently you can’t go on CNN if you make a joke.”
“It was a prank, bro!”
The last refuge of the Trumpist shitheel.
Playing off hate as a joke, this is why it’s okay to punch nazis
Punching nazis always produces a smile if not a laugh
Yup, there’s also this idea that certain people like to posit that Nazis never laugh or attempt to make jokes. It’s not that you aren’t joking, it’s what your joke says about you.
I can understand that in a particular moment you’re not calling for the literal death of your political opponents, yet still believe you’d be pretty okay with the literal death of your political opponents, and your “joke” may well help me be more confident in my conclusion.
Yeah. This was definitely a joke. It’s also definitely not a joke whose teller I want anywhere near a political panel or as the guest on a news show. I wouldn’t think of this joke, it makes my skin crawl. The fact that he not only thought of it, but found it worthy of saying, speaks volumes as to how he thinks about people.
That’s because it’s true. Fascists fundamentally destroy humor. They aren’t joking when they say this stuff. They just say they are.
It’s so much more straightforward than people act like.
It’s always a joke when these folks get pushback.
That’s called a Schrödingers douchebag. Something is both a joke and not a joke until one is called out.
aka the Trump superposition.
I thought that was when he cheated on his wives
Yup. It came off as ignorant hate, not a joke.
“I’m a supporter of the Palestinians, so I’m used to it.”
“Well, then I hope your beeper doesn’t go off.”
“Did you just say I should die?”
“Are you a Hamas?”
That was my point. His response was, “It was a joke, bro” which is the last refuge of Trumpist shit heels like him. “I’m sorry that my racist, hateful comment offended you.”
Absolutely. I was supporting your point with the interview itself, since it wasn’t linked in the article.
Thanks! I misunderstood.
No worries. You’re totally right.
This goes back a long way. There are posts on neo-nazi BBS systems from the 80s where they are talking about the strategy of making a racist comment, then playing it off as a joke if there’s pushback, and noting that a given audience may be receptive to more extreme and overt racist messaging in the future.
Well, people like this Girdusky are a joke. At least that much is certain.
GOP: “stop canceling me!!! everyone should be able to say whatever they want!!!”
also GOP: “stop kneeling for the anthemmmmm!!!”
Israelis are now using the same arguments as they do in Israel on American TV.
Not even Western media can protect them from themselves anymore.
The absolute state of Hasbara.
western media will always only protect israel. this dude isn’t going to face any consequences. “banned from CNN”, yeah we’ll see about that. bro probably just had to get back to englin airforce base to post more zionist propaganda on reddit, he wasn’t ever asked to leave and certainly not told to never come back. mark my words, he will be back on CNN within the next two months.
I am moreso hinting towards completely insane Israeli articles such as this not getting western coverage: https://lemmy.world/post/21368819
What an utter piece of trash. I’m sure he’ll have a good home at Newsmax or whatever.
Who financed Hamas to destabilize the PLO? Israel.
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Going on Twitter to complain that your bigotry wasn’t well received and then suggesting that Qatar funding is partially to blame is peak irony
In person was all back tracking, and regret. Gets online, and is now a big, strong, keyboard warrior.
Mehdi is the GOAT.
Video clip of the comment and aftermath during discussion (via twitter): https://x.com/Acyn/status/1851085909435039789
“Are you a supporter of Hamas?”
“Are you a racist, violent person inciting violence against me?”
from the liver to the knee my internal organs shall be free
they got so comfortable… they at least used to hide under their hoods before.
To think, all they had to do was appeal to the lurking bigotry within societies to bring them out and normalize that sort of language. They are sort of screwed if they think they aren’t sliding into a world where the evangelicals being radicalized and increasingly in control of the nation financing and supplying it will come asking for their pound of flesh when the shift into a theocratically-narrative-driven oligarchy is established, and then take the whole body.
“I’ll bet you wouldn’t say that joke about Muslims or Jews”. The joke they actually have in mind:
what a goddamn idiot
Wouldn’t that be a slight death threat? Or no, because he said he hoped it didn’t happen, ignoring the tone?
It’s kinda hard to call that a threat. It’s more accurate to say it’s an accusation that the guy is a terrorist.
“it would be a shame if something happened to your family”
it’s a pretty standard form of threat in my opinion.
Not just any Muslim journalist, Mehdi is a die-hard anti-Israel propagandist, so much so that MSNBC dropped him for his abhorrent comments after the Hamas terrorist attack
Mehdi Hassan is amazing, what are you talking about.
They’re a Zionist. Don’t take their words seriously. 😁
TIL I’m a zionist 😁
You realize this comment is why people knee-jerk call those with this sentiment anti-semites, right? What part of Jews believing in restoring their ancient homeland makes them immediately dismissible? Not all zionists advocate genocide just like not all Palestinians advocate genocide.
The only part of your comment that wasn’t batshit insane conspiracy was msnbc dropping him, but you still got the reason wrong
What comment did you find so abhorrent?
Care to site that source?
Sure thing
https://freebeacon.com/latest-news/msnbc-scraps-anti-israel-host-mehdi-hasans-show/ https://www.politico.com/news/2023/11/30/msnbc-mehdi-hasan-show-canceled-00129435 https://www.commondreams.org/news/mehdi-hasan-canceled https://www.reddit.com/r/Palestine/comments/187m7v0/msnbc_cancels_mehdi_hasans_show_this_comes_after/
There are also a million right wing sources covering it of course, but I figure that lacks credibility in this context
