Heather at Crooks and Liars has this:
Glenn Greenwald took on Dylan Ratigan fill-in Eliot Spitzer on MSNBC over Israel’s raid on the flotilla and the Gaza blockade and frankly it was refreshing to see this sort of debate that is not all pro-Israel all the time on one of the cable news shows. Glenn has a bit more on this at Salon.
Talking about Israel with Eliot Spitzer on MSNBC:
I was just on MSNBC talking about Israel, the Gaza blockade and the flotilla attack with Eliot Spitzer, who was guest-hosting for Dylan Ratigan. It was a rather contentious discussion, though quite illustrative of how Israel is (and is not) typically discussed on American television, so I’m posting the whole 8-minute segment below. Two points: (1) before I was on, Spitzer had on an Israel-defending law professor, followed by Netanyahu’s former Chief of Staff, and both of them (along with Spitzer) were spewing pure Israeli propaganda in uninterrupted and unchallenged fashion; at the end of Spitzer’s discussions with them, he asked them to “stick around just in case,” and once I was left, he brought at least one of them back on to respond to what I said without challenge; (2) literally 90 seconds before my segment was about to begin, the new cam and sound system I just acquired stopped working, forcing me to unplug everything and use only my laptop cam and mic, which caused the technical aspects to be less than ideal (though still perfectly workable).
Most of the interviews I’ve seen with him are worse than this one with that awful web cam of his, so I hope he’s got something better if he’s going to keep coming on television. It’s hard to make your points if the viewers can’t hear what the hell you’re saying, but anyway, back to the subject at hand.
sluggahjells at Daily KOS made a few points about the interview that I agree with.
What makes this interview so important to watch is that it features a perspective that isn’t common place on Israel in American television.
The ugly nature of the Netanyahu’s Administration preference to keep the Gaza blockade going on and claim that the blockade is “To make the people of Gaza go on a diet” is really disturbing. And you’ll never here what Greenwald said in a regular discussion about Israel here on our sad cable television news stations. Instead, you’ll get the usual cautious dribble of support that preceded no matter how heinous the crimes that transpired under Israel’s watch are.
Because sometimes the truth, especially in regards to international news in the Middle East, can be too much for the networks to bare. And that was certainly the case with TV’s potential next network man in Spitzer, when he had to deal with a completely honest broker like Greenwald is.
The other thing Glenn pointed out is that Israel and the United States do not have the rest of the world with us on this one. The humanitarian crisis in Gaza is untenable and when you’ve got this coming out in reports the problem is not going away any time soon.
