Mehdi Hasan Fired by MSNBC, Calls It His Decision

Mehdi Hasan, the virulent critic of Israel and defender of Islam, has recently lost his job at MSNBC. He will lose his Sunday night program as well as his separate program on the Peacock streaming services. Characteristically, he has lied about this development, describing his firing as his decision: “I’ve decided to leave.” More on Mehdi Hasan, and why his departure is a good thing, can be found here: “‘New year, new plans,’ says Mehdi Hasan, announcing ‘MSNBC’ departure,” JNS, January 8, 2024:

The cable-TV news network MSNBC canceled “The Medi [sic] Hasan Show” in November in the early months of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. As of Sunday, the popular program host has decided to step away from the station.

Hassan was fired, period. It was not his decision to “step away from the station.” Hasan wants to convince the world that MSNBC would have been happy to keep him on, but that isn’t true: he had been told to go. He’s decided to seek “new opportunities, new challenges.” Or perhaps he just wants to return to his previous employer, Al Jazeera, where he can be as viciously anti-Israel as he wants to be, and the AJ audience, and the Qatari government that owns the station, will lap it up.

Two events led to his departure First, there were his comments made on Hamas after October 7, defending that group’s atrocities as legitimate “resistance” and blaming Israel for its supposed mistreatment of the Gazans as the cause of the latest conflict. His evident sympathy for Hamas after October 7 was simply too much for MSNBC executives to stomach. Second, Jon Levine had reminded the world of disturbing statements made by Mehdi Hasan in the past. One of them, from 2009, described non-Muslims as “animals.” This, along with his sympathetic coverage of Hamas after the October 7 atrocities, is what led to his departure from MSNBC.

He announced his plans in a video, saying: “Tonight is not just my final episode of the ‘Mehdi Hasan Show,’ it’s my last day with MSNBC. Yes, I’ve decided to leave.”

The now-former MSNBC contributor has long been a harsh critic of Israel. He has called non-Muslims “animals.”

“You cannot kill your way to victory over a foreign, occupied people,” Hasan wrote on Nov. 9.

Gazans are not an “occupied people.” There has not been a single Israeli, soldier or civilian, in Gaza since 2005. And Israelis are not mad-dog murderers, as Hasan’s phrase about “killing their way to victory” implies. The IDF soldiers are carefully dismantling Hamas as a military force, and doing so under extraordinarily difficult conditions of urban warfare, made worse by Hamas’ practice of hiding weapons, rocket launchers, command and control enters, and combatants, in and around civilian buildings such as schools, apartment buildings, and mosques. What would Mehdi Hasan have the IDF do? Leave Hamas alone until such time as a trial of sorts could be held at the International Court of Justice to hear testimony about Hamas’ attack, and come to a considered judgment? How many months would that have process have taken, which Hamas would use to shore up its defenses, further torment its hostages, and seek diplomatic support from the Arab countries? Hamas committed atrocities on October 7. The evidence, in the form of the mutilated, burned, and beheaded bodies, and of the videos made by the Hamas murderers themselves, and of the eyewitness testimony of Israelis who had survived the attacks, was overwhelming. And Hasan knows, as we all do, that Hamas leaders have said they intend to repeat the October 7 attacks, again and again and again.

“My ‘Mehdi Hasan Show’ commentary on how Israel’s killing of innocents in Gaza only strengthens Hamas and its recruiting efforts—as America discovered the hard way in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

There is no evidence that Israeli attacks on Hamas have led to greater recruitment by the terror group. Hasan does not know what the final result of the war will be, once Hamas is destroyed: will it be more popular than ever, and able to reconstitute itself, as he appears to think? Isn’t it more likely that the people of Gaza, looking at the destruction Hamas brought upon the Strip, will turn against it as they consider how much has been reduced to rubble because of Hamas’ insistence on hiding its weapons and men in the middle of civilian areas and buildings? We have already seen videos of ordinary Gazans cursing Hamas. So great is their fury that they no longer are scared to speak out against the group in public.