News

NBC reportedly orders Mohyeldin to leave Gaza — after he criticized State Dep’t

Tyler Hicks photograph of beach massacre that appeared in New York Times
Tyler Hicks photograph of beach massacre that appears on the front page of today’s New York Times

Update: Glenn Greenwald reports that Ayman Mohyeldin has been pulled by NBC from Gaza:

Ayman Mohyeldin… who has received widespread praise for his brave and innovative coverage of the conflict, has been told by NBC executives to leave Gaza immediately. According to an NBC source upset at his treatment, the executives claimed the decision was motivated by “security concerns” as Israel prepares a ground invasion, a claim repeated to me by an NBC executive. But late yesterday, NBC sent another correspondent, Richard Engel, along with an American producer who has never been to Gaza and speaks no Arabic, into Gaza to cover the ongoing Israeli assault.

I’m speculating that the reason for Mohyeldin’s departure might be that he yesterday tweeted implicit criticism of the US State Department, and subsequently removed the tweet from his feed.

Tweet from Ayman Mohyeldin, subsequently removed
Tweet from Ayman Mohyeldin, subsequently removed

Here’s his Facebook post, more explicitly critical, also removed:

Mohyeldin tweet
Mohyeldin tweet

 

Original post: The killing of the four Palestinian boys on the Gaza beach yesterday is resonating throughout the US mainstream media as few events from the conflict have before. A monstrosity seems to be understood as… a monstrosity.

The New York Times has a riveting account of the slaughter by Tyler Hicks, maker of the photo above– which appears at the top of the front page of the Times — stressing the complete vulnerability of children. NBC News last night was made extremely uncomfortable by the murders. Brian Williams introduced them as part of “a cycle of violence,” and on Hamas’s balance sheet; and there is a controversy over the network’s failure to include an eyewitness report from Ayman Mohyeldin.

Ayman Mohyeldin of NBC witnessed the killings. But he was not featured on the broadcast last night. Jordan Charlton at Mediabistro/TV Newser states the controversy:

We’re hearing the decision to have [Richard] Engel report the story for “Nightly” [from inside Israel] instead of Mohyeldin angered some NBC News staffers. NBC News declined to comment to TVNewser on its editorial decision.

We have praised Mohyeldin often for his bold coverage. His twitter feed continues to be blunt about atrocities:

The killings have disturbed the D.C. establishment. Khaled Elgindy of the Brookings Institution, again from Ayman Mohyeldin’s twitter feed.

Here is celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain’s tweet, also retweeted by Mohyeldin, and referring to a heartbreaking photo in the NYT by Tyler Hicks:

Hicks has an astonishing report up at the New York Times on making the photograph that so disturbed Anthony Bourdain. Forgive the lengthy excerpt, but this is an exceptional account in the newspaper of record.

By the time I reached the beach, I was winded from running with my heavy armor. I paused; it was too risky to go onto the exposed sand. Imagine what my silhouette, captured by an Israeli drone, might look like as a grainy image on a laptop somewhere in Israel: wearing body armor and a helmet, carrying cameras that could be mistaken for weapons. If children are being killed, what is there to protect me, or anyone else?

I watched as a group of people ran to the children’s aid. I joined them, running with the feeling that I would find safety in numbers, though I understood that feeling could be deceptive: Crowds can make things worse. We arrived at the scene to find lifeless, mangled bodies. The boys were beyond help. They had been killed instantly, and the people who had rushed to them were shocked and distraught.

Earlier in the day, I had photographed the funeral for a man and a 12-year-old boy. They had been killed when a bomb hit the car in which they were riding south of Gaza City, severely injuring an older woman with them.

There is no safe place in Gaza right now. Bombs can land at any time, anywhere.

A small metal shack with no electricity or running water on a jetty in the blazing seaside sun does not seem like the kind of place frequented by Hamas militants, the Israel Defense Forces’ intended targets. Children, maybe four feet tall, dressed in summer clothes, running from an explosion, don’t fit the description of Hamas fighters, either.

Back to NBC. We’ve praised Brian Williams for saying that Palestinians have nowhere to hide in a lopsided conflict in which Palestinian civilians are the victims. Last night he became far more equivocal. He is surely under a lot of pressure. The murders led the broadcast, but here’s how Williams teed it up:

This cycle of violence continues. When Hamas launches rockets from Gaza, Israel hits  back, and today, sadly, our cameras were there when disaster struck, when civilians were hit and killed, including four children.

Engel can’t help but describe the matter as a monstrosity.

It was broad daylight, there was no warning, it wasn’t the precision war Israel says it’s fighting.

The footage of the families that Mohyeldin’s crew shot is simply crushing. “A mother asked, where is my son, where is my love?” Here is other video of the killings. Warning, it is highly disturbing.

Engel’s “precision” comment would seem to echo Human Rights Watch, which is quoted deep inside a New York Times story yesterday:

A Human Rights Watch report released Wednesday cited U.N. data showing that, as of Monday, more than three-quarters of the Palestinians killed were civilians, including 36 children, and that approximately 7,500 people had been displaced by the destruction of 1,255 homes. The Human Rights Watch report investigated four Israeli strikes — on the Fun Time Beach cafe in the southern city of Khan Younis; on a car carrying municipal workers in the Bureij refugee camp; and two on homes where victims included a pregnant woman and small children.

“Israel’s rhetoric is all about precision attacks, but attacks with no military target and many civilian deaths can hardly be considered precise,” Sarah Leah Whitson, the Middle East director of Human Rights Watch, said in the report. “Recent documented cases in Gaza sadly fit Israel’s long record of unlawful airstrikes with high civilian casualties.”

And in the category of Nothing ever changes, here is CNN’s Crossfire, with left and right agreeing that Israel should show “no restraint.” Newt Gingrich says that the U.S. would “annihilate” whoever was firing rockets at us. And the liberal Paul Begala echoes, “You’re exactly right.” Before blaming the Palestinians for electing a terrorist group to govern them.

On the positive side, the other day Jake Tapper said the following to an Israeli official:

TAPPER: [T]he blockade … as you know has resulted in among other things contributing to it a humanitarian crisis in Gaza where it’s tough to get food, it’s impossible to get employment. Isn’t it in the best interest of Israel to lift the blockade over Gaza and to allow some sort of revitalization of that area so that there aren’t millions of Palestinians surrounding your country who see no other option but violence?

No other option but violence. That shows some understanding. The tragic event on the beach yesterday is furthering that understanding in the U.S. mainstream, at tremendous cost to the people of Gaza.

Thanks to Annie Robbins.

92 Comments
Most Voted
Newest Oldest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

Mohyeldin’s report, lasting a few minutes (long for local news), was shown yesterday evening on the News at Six local news show on the NBC broadcast outlet in D.C., right after the first commercial break, so around 6:10 PM.

The beach story was also the lead item in the news summary that opens PBS’s News Hour last night.

By the way, Democracy Now! had a long report on the atrocity this morning, with a couple of eyewitness reports, one of which made it clear that the shells were fired from an Israeli gunboat (I have seen reports on line that the firing came from a helicopter gunship — those reports are apparently false; it’s a lot harder to understand how somebody on board a gunboat could have failed to recognize that the children were just children, a fact which probably explains the false reports).

Israel’s operations always run into this problem when the vermin כְּנִימָה, מַזִּיק, טַפִּיל שֶׁרֶץ; מישהו דוחה, מרגיז, בזוי they are exterminating are not seen as such in the TV rooms of the West. And not even a special from Regev can rescue the situation.

It was the same after the Qana massacre, after Sabra and Shatila, after Mohamed Al Dura.

Thanks for the overview of the coverage.

“The implications of the State Dept’s absolving Israel of any/all responsibility in killing of 4 children in Gaza are simply bone chilling.”

Not only bone chilling, but monstrous and @- the heart of the crisis– we are RESPONSIBLE for all that Israel does with impunity. Our SD denies that Israel has committed war crimes.

(Rania Khalek has an article about the reaction of the SD:
“US State Department blames Hamas for Israel’s murder of Gaza children”)

http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/us-state-department-blames-hamas-israels-murder-gaza-children

In a related matter Paris and several other cities in France have banned pro-Palestinian rallies. Not the Zionist ones. This is due to the recent “assaults” on Jews and their places of worship.

I was disgusted to see Wolf Blitzer this morning, obviously doing his masters a favor, trying desperately to prove that Israel is precise in hitting it’s targets, and then goes on to interview some guy from their armed forces, who did not want his face shown, explaining how “careful” they are in hitting civilians. It seems Dermers begging for American Jews to do hasbara for them, was heard by CNN.

This is nothing but a war crime. This is nothing but the desire to kill all Palestinians, not considering the massacre of innocent children, the usual brutality the world has witnessed for years. I am ashamed that US politicians and the media have the audacity to keep blaming the Palestinians even for their own massacre. I understand we have no leg to stand on, since we ourselves are guilty of massacring civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq. Still at least one would expect some pretense at being concerned for the deaths of innocent children and women, some due to our generous aid, and some by the weapons we have given this violent occupier? We are sending the obvious message to the rest of the world, that whatever Israel does, even if it kills innocent children, we will always give it unwavering support, and never find it responsible. By Israel butchering of civilians, and the US covering it’s ugly butt, Hamas seems to be getting more sympathy from the rest of the world. No wonder Desperate Dermer is begging for hasbara reinforcements. This entire fiasco seems to be backfiring on them, only emphasizing their brutal crimes. No one believes their crappy propaganda anymore.

Here is a very informative graphic showing data of the number of Palestinian children killed through the years, versus Israeli kids killed, and it is very, very telling.

http://www.countthekids.org