Pro-Zionist Supporters Salivating for the Firing of Briahna Joy Gray From The Hill
The antisemitic card was played once again by hardline pro-Israel supporters when Leftist Briahna Joy Gray was fired as a co-host of the show called Rising, which is associated with The Hill, which is owned by Nexstar, a center-right media company.
In one segment on Rising/The Hill, Gray was interviewing an Israeli who has a sister that is one of hostages of Hamas. Yarden Gonen was the interviewee and while she was justifiably concerned for her sister, she apparently used the same talking points as the Israeli government constantly uses in condemning Hamas. In other words, a strictly B/W view of the Israel-Gaza conflict.
But near the end of the interview, Gonen, who was quoted in The Wrap, (via Yahoo News) said, “I really hope that you, specifically, will believe women when they say they got hurt.” Gray appeared fed up and in response rolled her eyes and moved on to the next segment. While Gray’s reaction was not necessary, she listened to the accusations from Gonen about Hamas raping Israeli women on the October 7th attack.
The United Nations initially said it had reason to believe rapes were committed. But upon further investigation, Counterpunch asserted the following:
“…an investigation by Yes! examining both reports [from the New York Times and Physicians for Human Rights Israel], other media investigations, hundreds of news articles, interviews with Israeli sources, and photo and video evidence reveals a shocking conclusion: There is no evidence mass rape occurred.”
But the denial nevertheless has remained. Democrat Ritche Torres, another hardline Israel supporter, posted this on Twitter (X):
“The family member of an Israeli hostage pleads with Briahna Joy Gray to believe Jewish women who have been abducted, tortured and raped by Hamas. Instead of projecting empathy, as a normal person would, Gray rolls her eyes, her mouth dripping with contempt.”
It wasn’t that emphasized, but hardline Israel supporters still blow the accusations they make out of proportion. No evidence has been presented to back up the accusations. Perhaps there were incidents of rape, but not to the degree hardliners say. Besides, the Israeli death toll was 1,163 people, 55% of them being in the Israeli military.
The Hill has had a habit of not keeping co-hosts on the show and they have happened to be on the Left. Katie Halper, who is Jewish, is another leftist who was fired by Nexstar in 2022 for saying that Israel is an apartheid state. Halper was about to do a monologue on air when it was delayed because of a review of it. Eventually, Halper’s monologue was nixed by editor-in-chief Bob Cusak. According to Jacobin, Cusak was quoted as saying, it was “not in our sweet spot of coverage.” Halper understandably asked if the segment was stopped because it mentioned Israel. Cusak said it was the “rationale” since The Hill’s focus is mainly on domestic and not foreign affairs. But The Hill has had segments on issues related to foreign events before.
Regarding Nexstar, there’s more to the situation. Quoting Jacobin, “[O]ne thing that has changed on the show is a changeover in ownership of The Hill, which sold to media conglomerate Nexstar Media Group, Inc., for $130 million” in August of 2022. Then, the plot thickens, as “Psagot Value Holdings Ltd., an investment firm based in Tel Aviv, bought 6,100 shares in Nexstar, to the tune of more than one million.” Perhaps this Israel firm has had, at the least, minimal influence on what’s reported on The Hill.
Nexstar has also turned to politics, where donations have been going to Republicans, and to less of a degree to Democrats. “Over the 2016 election cycle, the company’s PAC gave 80 percent of its money to GOP-affiliated PACS, a number that rose to 100 percent in the 2018 cycle. Its CEO donated six times as much to high-ranking Republican congresspeople as he did to Democrats over the past ten years, no matter which party was in power.”
Further, “a Facebook report itself has commissioned determined the company’s censorship policies ‘have had an adverse impact’ on Palestinians, thanks to the company’s double standard on ‘moderating’ Palestinian posts versus Israeli ones.”
In an issue of Commentary, there is an article which spews glib insults at Gray. First, Gray is called a “current star Hamas surrogate.” This was brought on by a statement Gray made, and quoted in Commentary: “When Hamas is talking about eliminating Israel, it’s not talking about killing of all Jews, it’s talking about eliminating…an ethnonationalist state and having a state more like what we have in America.” This was at a debate with Commentary’s contributing editor Eli Lake participating.
After Gray’s statement, Lake “laughed his face off.” Lake perhaps has this illusion in his mind that Israel is a vibrant democracy. But, more than anything, it is indeed an ethnonationalist state. Moreover, an ultra-nationalist, fanatical theocracy, especially considering who is in power currently, and led by fascist Benjamin Netanyahu.
After a flurry of insults in the ensuing days, Gray cited the Hamas Covenant, where the word “Jews” is replaced by “Zionists.” Could it be that Hamas is being pragmatic? Not so by Commentary’s standards as the change of words “has much to do with Hamas’ laziness as its barbarism.” Apparently, Commentaryconveniently ignores Israel’s own barbarism, with over 35,000 Palestinians killed, about half being children. Plus, the suffering through mass starvation. But Commentary is more inclined to be hypocritical rather than admit to Israel’s attempted genocide.
The article makes the claim that Progressives have fallen for Hamas’ trickery in the changing of a word, and it adds that “it was not enough for the progressive activists of the world to shed their hesitation toward joining forces with a theocratic death cult.” This may be glib, but again, hypocrisy is evident.
There are other glib and hypocritical remarks in the article and the reader can view them with the link provided above.
The article ends with Gray being called an apologist for Hamas and somehow alludes to her overall intentions, that being, support Hamas not matter what it does, which is a B/W, simplified conclusion. The article also tries to associate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, once again the playing of the anti-Semitic card, which hardline Israel supporters have often done.
Besides the anti-Grayists, there were pro-Palestinian supporters who posted their opinions on The MajorityReport (via reddit) related to the Gray interview. Included are:
• “The issue I find with these people is that they show great amount of compassion and empathy to Israeli who got kidnapped and lost their freedom, but absolutely no regard to the tens of thousands of Palestinians who are slaughtered every day. It’s like the freedom of 1 Israeli is equal to the life of at least a thousand Palestinians, and that’s why I can’t take anything they say seriously, because of that hypocrisy I didn’t know existed.”
• “Yarden Gonen refrains from answering Briahna’s question – a question specifically about creating an opportunity to free her sister, which is bizarre to say the least. In the full interview [the other co-host] asks a similar question pointing to the cessation of violence in November, and again she seems disinterested in the well-being of her sister, and more interested in recycling, tired garbage propaganda that has been revealed to be false.”
• “…they literally don’t believe Palestinians are human beings.”
• “Zionists don’t put any value on any number of Palestinian lives.”
Thus, a sample of the common people criticized how the interview went regarding the opinions of Yarden Gonen, and criticized Zionists.
To get a more direct idea of the interview, the video of the segment was shown on The Rational Nationalprogram, showing the back-and-forth “dialogue” between Gray and Gonen.
Despite her eyeroll, Briahna Joy Gray is yet another example of a person with pro-Palestinian views who was censored by the pro-Israel/Zionist establishment. Never mind the right to free speech as put forth in the 1st Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
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