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.”
So Palestinians don’t have a valid claim, either? Only recency? If that’s the case, then Israelis have the most valid claim because they’re currently there.
I think arguments about who has a claim aren’t the real question here. Recency vs historic rights to a region aren’t enough and really never have been. The whole argument comes down to who has the power to hold the region and any arguments to the contrary are naive. Israel has the power, Palestinian’s didn’t want to play ball, so Israel took the ball home. A large part of Israel being able to hold the region has come down to geopolitics and capitalism. A lot of companies have headquarters and branches in Israel which makes a lot of money. Hamas, like the Taliban, are not expected to be good for big business. On top of that, Israel is friendly and cooperative with western allies and is one of the few such in the region. The west is not going to trade a friendly but harshly conservative Israel for an unfriendly and even more conservative Hamas.
You can talk all day about who deserves what, who has rights to what, and what the moral thing to do is. At the end of the day the world is going to follow the Golden Rule, “He who has the gold makes the rules.”