CNN Journalist Fired For Praising Radical Cleric

CNN's Octavia Nasr - who has been with the network over 20years and served as its Senior Editor of Mideast Affairs - was recently fired for Twitter comments praising a radical cleric who is widely known for his anti-Israel views and his strong criticism of American foreign policy in the Mideast region, alongside his connection (albeit no official role) with the Lebanese Shia party-cum-militia Hezbollah (designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. government):

octavianasrtweet 73AJe 19672

Nasr is wrong in her description of Fadlallah as a Hezbollah official. The cleric had strong disagreements with Hezbollah and only through his lot with them after Israel attacked his home and institutions in the 2006 war. Nonetheless, he was a major cleric in Shia Islam and his death saw large street mournings.

After pro-Israel lobby seized on Nasr's comments, it was only a matter of time before CNN would fire her. Pro-Israel groups like the media pressure organization ironically named 'Honest Reporting' to the hypocrites at the Simon Wiesenthal Center protested and demanded apologies. And so has come her end with the network.

The most amusing thing about this is not that Nasr would be so irresponsible as to utter a positive opinion of a figure she should know would be very controversial in American culture and would lead to consequences for her continuing employment, but that she would even hold such an opinion in the first place. Nasr is the daughter of a former Phalange official. The Phalange is a far-right Lebanese Christian sectarian party which had a thuggish and brutal militia in the Civil War. It was supported and armed by Israel, committed massacres against the Palestinians and today is a foe of Hezbollah. Lebanese Christians in general, let alone far-right ones, do not hold favorable opinions of anyone in Hezbollah. Nasr may not have inherited her father's far-right, anti-Palestinian politics, but it is still unexpected that she would hold a positive opinion of a reactionary cleric. Nasr is a Christian and was recently was a guest speaker at the Israeli consulate in Atlanta. Even if she was also pro-Palestinian why would that lend itself to support for an Islamic fundamentalism? I support Palestine, but would never mourn the lose of Fadlallah. So this is entirely odd that the Christian daughter of a far-right Phalange zealot who recently spoke at an Israeli function who offers words of mourning for a Hazbollah-tied man. Nasr has offered an explanation and clarification:

It was an error of judgment for me to write such a simplistic comment and I’m sorry because it conveyed that I supported Fadlallah’s life’s work. That’s not the case at all…

I used the words “respect” and “sad” because to me as a Middle Eastern woman, Fadlallah took a contrarian and pioneering stand among Shia clerics on woman’s rights. He called for the abolition of the tribal system of “honor killing.” He called the practice primitive and non-productive. He warned Muslim men that abuse of women was against Islam…

This does not mean I respected him for what else he did or said. Far from it.

It is no secret that Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah hated with a vengeance the United States government and Israel. He regularly praised the terror attacks that killed Israeli citizens. And as recently as 2008, he said the numbers of Jews killed in the Holocaust were wildly inflated.

But it was his commitment to Hezbollah’s original mission – resisting Israel’s occupation of Lebanon – that made him popular and respected among many Lebanese, not just people of his own sect.

I understand her point well, and she should not be fired due to it. But little good that did her against the pro-Israel Zionist zealots. This is the end of Nasr's career with the mainstream press.