Michael F. Brown
Mondoweiss / January 18, 2025
Journalists Max Blumenthal and Sam Husseini posed hard-hitting questions – a “humanitarian intervention” as the former called it – to Secretary of State Antony Blinken in the midst of his press conference Thursday.
CNN anchor Pamela Brown immediately referred to it as “cringeworthy heckling” by, she erroneously claimed in her initial take, “activists.” The CNN website refers to them as “protesters.”
This commentary comes from a network that has frequently ignored the Gaza genocide much of the world sees.
The cavalier dismissal is infuriating – and yet not in the least surprising for CNN.
CNN domestic is not even trying for even-handedness with a seven to one ratio of Israeli to Palestinian speakers during the time I watched on Wednesday. The march of Israeli speakers continued Thursday and Friday. The network simply refuses to provide significant space to Palestinians – and is silent when questioned – to speak of genocide, occupation, apartheid and dispossession.
Palestinians speaking about the war crimes and genocide is not what CNN wants to convey to viewers. Instead, CNN seeks to represent the Democratic-Republican establishment consensus.
Blumenthal, editor-in-chief of The Grayzone, went first.
VIDEO CLICK HERE
As Blinken extols the virtues of being on the receiving end of tough questions from the press, Blumenthal interjects, “Three hundred reporters in Gaza were on the receiving end of your bombs. Why did you keep the bombs flowing when we had a deal in May?”
Speaking directly to the man he lambastes as the “Secretary of Genocide,” Blumenthal adds, “Everyone in this room knows we had a deal, Tony.”
A stony-faced Blinken, who has pushed so much horror in Gaza, responds that he will take questions later.
Blumenthal continues undeterred: “Why did you sacrifice the rules-based order on the mantle of your commitment to Zionism?”
Posing questions that have been foremost in the minds of Americans with ties to Gaza who are both enraged and emotionally devastated by the last 15 months as the Democratic ruling class left them politically impotent, Blumenthal then asks: “Why did you allow my friends to be massacred? Why did you allow my friends’ homes in Gaza to be destroyed when we had a deal in May?”
Adeptly manoeuvring his way around the room and staying one step ahead of aides, Blumenthal accuses Blinken of waving the white flag in front of both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli fascism.
“Why did you allow the holocaust of our time to happen? How does it feel to have your legacy be genocide?”
Suddenly, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller sporting his well-known smirk looms in Blumenthal’s self-made video of the incident.
Without skipping a beat, Blumenthal says, “You too Matt. You smirked through the whole thing every day. You smirked through a genocide.”
Sam Husseini manhandled
Shortly after Blumenthal’s questions, independent journalist Sam Husseini interjects to ask if the Geneva Conventions apply to the Palestinians.
VIDEO CLICK HERE
The press conference moves on before Husseini exclaims that Miller doesn’t even know about the Hannibal Directive, the Israeli army’s doctrine that permits the killing of Israeli captives along with their captors and bystanders in order to prevent Israel’s enemies from using them as bargaining chips.
Meanwhile, an aide shouts at Husseini on behalf of genocide-promoter Blinken: “Respect, let’s have some respect,” as if that’s what Husseini owes someone armpit-deep in war crimes and insufficiently challenged for them.
The aide’s question – “Would you like to be escorted out?” – is met by Husseini’s terse rejoinder: “Go away.” In a line mainstream corporate media should learn, he then adds: “I’m a journalist. I’m not a potted plant.”
When Blinken claims everyone will have the opportunity to ask a question, Husseini fires back that Miller explicitly told him “he will not answer my questions. I am justified in what I am doing.”
There is then a brief pause of approximately 20 seconds when Blinken is speaking and it appears to the CNN viewer that the press conference will continue to move along.
Suddenly Husseini’s voice, under duress, rings out. “Get your hands off me!” he shouts in alarm four times.
Blinken looks on unmoved and as Husseini is being seized claims, “I look forward to answering questions in a few minutes.”
From a different angle it can be seen that security agents of the State Department – perhaps a quarter century younger than Husseini – have moved into position to remove him bodily from the press conference.
Husseini continues: “Answer a damn question. Do you know about the Hannibal Directive? Do you know about Israel’s nuclear weapons?”
As the security personnel ratchet up their force, Husseini says, “I was sitting here quietly and now I’m being manhandled by two or three people” as four agents are in sight behind him.
Husseini then highlights the hypocrisy of Blinken and his empty words about the press. “You pontificate about a free press.”
Then, as they begin to physically dislodge him, Husseini shouts three times: “You are hurting me.”
As a completely disconnected Blinken – far worse than any bystander – tells Husseini to “respect the process,” the Palestinian American journalist is lifted in the air and carried out even while somehow able to challenge Blinken on the administration’s efforts to undermine the International Court of Justice’s efforts on Gaza.
While carried down the row of journalists, an incredulous Husseini throws back at Blinken his words to “respect the process,” even then managing to note that everyone from Amnesty International to the ICJ is “saying that Israel is doing genocide and extermination.”
As he is nearly removed from the room, Husseini musters another question on the minds of those heartsick from the administration’s 15 genocidal months. “Criminal! Why aren’t you in The Hague?”
Blinken merely reads from his script in reply: “Finally, we’ve moved to modernize our diplomacy.”
It’s an apt image for our times. An administration that abetted Israel for 15 months in killing and injuring journalists and tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza, ends up at home roughing up a Palestinian American journalist in Foggy Bottom during what has been billed as Secretary of State Blinken’s final press conference.
One way or another, exported American violence always seems to come home.
Husseini told journalist Katie Halper he was then handcuffed in the hallway, hurting his shoulder and wrist. “It was all very thuggish,” he said.
The State Department’s own video of the press conference only shows Blinken during this time period and does not show the brazen assault on a journalist as motioned for by Miller – who has a history of suppressing the voices of Blumenthal and Husseini and clearly never could handle tough questioning from them.
Quite frankly, concerned Americans around the country have surely imagined – as Blumenthal says he had – what they would say if luck gifted them a chance encounter with the man who did so much to promote this genocide. As Blumenthal tweeted later, “Sam Husseini is a national treasure.”
I looked up the price of a plane ticket a couple of weeks ago from my nearest airport to The Hague in case I ever run into Blinken and get to convey my own thoughts.
It’s $672.
Much more likely, however, is that Blinken will spend decades never knowing when he will be publicly confronted and reminded of his complicity in the slaughter of thousands of Palestinian children. Simultaneously, I have little doubt that places such as Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government will invite him for speeches – as was done with US Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara even after the war crimes he pushed in Vietnam – or offer a sinecure.
This was confrontational journalism at its best, holding power to account, and a far cry from the stenography and boosting of genocide by the corporate hacks anchoring at CNN.
The Biden administration’s response to Blumenthal and Husseini is, as Sam Stern, director of advocacy at Freedom of the Press Foundation, says, “a gift” to President-elect Donald Trump. It normalizes “punishing journalists for asking questions officials don’t like.” Trump has previously advocated for violence against protesters and praised a body slam employed against a journalist.
Pamela Brown and CNN, for their part, are normalizing both the Gaza genocide and American government abuse of journalists. Brown did not respond to questions from The Electronic Intifada.
In a similar low, former US diplomat Aaron David Miller inveighed against Husseini.
“In 27 years at State, [I have] never seen a situation where a Secretary of State – a caring, compassionate man – is heckled in his own building by a heckler yelling ‘Why aren’t you in The Hague.’ A new low in civility and discourse.”
To call this Blinken’s “own building” is the hubris of a failed diplomat. But to call Blinken a “caring, compassionate man” is grotesque. A man who oversaw the Gaza genocide is not caring or compassionate but, as Husseini suggests, someone who should be on trial at The Hague.
Genocide and its promotion are the real lows, not the desperately needed words and questions of journalists calling out the actions of the country’s principal diplomat.
Michael F. Brown is an independent journalist
