Ryan Girdusky clashed with British-American journalist Mehdi Hasan on Monday night.

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.”

  • @[email protected]
    47•26 days ago

    Not mines, IEDs. It was an indiscriminate terrorist attack on a civilian population using improvised explosive devices.

    • RubberDuck
      8•26 days ago

      Indiscriminate it was not. It was hyper targeted at everyone in the command chain that got a beeper. It’s not as if they sold them through normal stores to the general population.

      • @[email protected]
        7•25 days ago

        It was indiscriminate and it was mass terrorism.

        As of 22 September 2024, the death toll from the attacks was 42, including at least 12 civilian deaths. More than 3,500 people were injured.

        At least 12 people were killed in the first wave of attacks, including civilians such as two health workers, a 9-year-old girl and an 11-year-old boy. The adult son of Ali Ammar, a Hezbollah member of Parliament was killed; Prime Minister Najib Mikati visited southern Beirut to pay his respects. More than 2,750 people were wounded. In the second wave on 18 September, at least 30 people were killed and 750 others were injured. One eye doctor at Mount Lebanon University Hospital reported that a number of those injured showed signs of something being blown up directly in their face, with some losing one or both eyes, while others had shrapnel in their brains. The Lebanese health ministry reported that 300 people had lost both eyes and 500 people had lost one eye as a result of the pager attacks. Other doctors saw severe hand, waist and facial injuries, reporting patients with fingers torn, hands amputated, eyes popped out of the socket and facial lacerations.

        Health Minister Firass Abiad said the vast majority of those being treated in emergency rooms were in civilian clothing and their Hezbollah affiliation was unclear. He added the casualties included elderly people as well as young children. According to the Health Ministry, healthcare workers were also injured and it advised all healthcare workers to discard their pagers. On 26 September, Abdallah Bou Habib, Lebanon’s Foreign Minister, confirmed that most of those carrying pagers were not fighters, rather civilians like administrators. Qassim Qassir, a Lebanese expert on Hezbollah, said the attacks mostly struck civilian workers, leaving its military wing largely unaffected. An unnamed source said 1,500 Hezbollah fighters were taken out of action due to injuries, with many blinded or having lost their hands.

        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Lebanon_pager_explosions

        • RubberDuck
          1•25 days ago

          A supply chain of a terrorist organisations was infiltrated and they where sold devices fitted with explosives and then distributed it within their organisation.

          Everyone with a pager (and later also other devices) fell within the Hezbollah hierachy. The fact Hezbollah has infiltrated every level of society and has Docters and many others in their ranks does not make them invalid targets.

          Besides, judging from the videos, we saw people standing next to whoever had the pager where mostly fine. The children dieing is horrible.

          So calling it indiscriminate is more than a stretch. And the collateral damage is wayyyyy lower than with the rest of how Israël behaves.

          • @[email protected]
            4•25 days ago

            Israel has never stopped ethnic cleansing of native populations

            Hezbollah exists out of resistance to Occupation and Invasion by Israel

            “International humanitarian law prohibits indiscriminate attacks – meaning attacks that fail to distinguish between civilians and military targets. It also prohibits the use of the type of booby-traps that appear to have been used in these attacks.

            https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/09/lebanon-establish-international-investigation-into-deadly-attacks-using-exploding-portable-devices/

            “Such attacks could constitute war crimes of murder, attacking civilians, and launching indiscriminate attacks, in addition to violating the right to life,” the experts said.

            https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/09/exploding-pagers-and-radios-terrifying-violation-international-law-say-un

            Just because Israel routinely violates international humanitarian law and targets civilians doesn’t make this any less of a violation of international humanitarian law and a war crime

            • RubberDuck
              1•25 days ago

              The settler colonial project of Israel is filled with rabid fascists, I agree whole heartedly. The current government of Israel is peak of that performance.

              But trying to paint this as a boobytrap, and targeting civilians. I don’t think anyone buys that for a minute.

              And this was hardly indiscriminate. It was pagers that where handed directly to Hezbollah and distributed by Hezbollah through their network. It’s not as if these where sold by shops in Lebanon to normal Lebanese.

              And collateral sucks, but this still had less than the bomb that was dropped on the appartment complex with the command bunker under it filled with Hezbollah staff.

              • @[email protected]
                6•25 days ago

                But trying to paint this as a boobytrap, and targeting civilians. I don’t think anyone buys that for a minute

                Well, human rights organizations and international law disagree, and I agree with them. Both those articles discuss that in detail, including how it was a booby trap and indiscriminate.

                Nor is Hezbollah solely an armed resistance militant group. They are also a prominent political group and maintain a multitude of social services like hospitals, those people are civilians not militants. This did not solely target militants, in fact is mostly didn’t.

                • RubberDuck
                  1•25 days ago

                  That’s fair!

                  I think International law does not disagree, it might be something that can be litigated. The pagers where specifically for hezbollah members, not civilians. I’ll expect “boobytraps and civilians” to be a losing argument, time will tell.

                  And, a terrorist organisation that takes over a region, intertwines itself with civil society to get legitimacy while at the same time sabotaging the countries government with threats of terror… is still a terrorist organisation. And anyone working for them a terrorist. I.e. Someone doing the bookkeeping for a terrorist group is still a terrorist.

                  Hezbollah started in direct resistance to Israeli occupation of Lebanon, I wonder what would have happened if they had not continued Post occupation or at least not shot at Israel and allowed for the Lebanese government to try and work with Israël on a peaceful border and other things that stood between the countries and their peoples.

                  • @[email protected]
                    4•25 days ago

                    I don’t really see the use of the labeling of terrorist here, it’s reductive to a detriment. I could just as easily call Israel a terrorist state, and by looking at cases of actual acts of terror, it’s clear that Israel does magnitudes more. But while acknowledging acts of terrorism is important, giving the label of terrorist to an entire group is not really useful.

                    It’s much more useful to look at the aims and actions, in which we see that Israel is a Settler Colonialist Ethnostate with actions of Ethnic Cleansing, Occupation, and Apartheid. We see that the aims of resistance groups are anti-colonialist, with actions of ending Occupation. We see that one is a reaction to the other, Israel’s perpetual violence towards native peoples is the underlying cause of these conflicts. Solutions to ending the violence of anti-colonialism can only come from ending the underlying violence of the colonialism.

                    Both the Occupier and the Occupied can and do use acts of terrorism to further their aims, but the aims are diametrically opposed. The aim of the occupier is to continue the occupation, that requires violence to maintain. The aim of the occupied is to end the occupation, by any means possible.

                    We see that permanent occupation develops into an Apartheid, as the settlers / occupiers have rights upheld by the State and Military, while the natives / occupied have no rights and subjected to violence from both the Settlers and Military. The State, who holds the monopoly on power, uses terrorism to suppress resistance to the occupation in order to maintain it. The occupied, having no power, uses terrorism as a means to resist the occupation.

                    Israel has no interest in peace, it has interest in land grabbing, which is in complete opposition to peace. This is fundamental to Zionism. Which is why an end to Zionism and a regime change, where a Secular Bi-National One-State that gives equal rights to Palestinians and Israelis is the only way for the conflict to really end. Not only with Palestinian resistance, but with all resistance groups that were created by Israeli occupation.

                    In the link to my comment about the history of the Israel - Palestine conflict, in the One or Two State Solution, I have links where historians Avi Schlaim and Ilan Pappe discuss the realities of the current state of Israel and the Occupied Territories, and why they have to come to see a One-State Solution as the only genuine permanent solution to the conflict. I highly recommend it and their works.

    • @[email protected]English
      3•26 days ago

      indiscriminate terrorist attack on a civilian population

      You’re describing what the Palestinians did to Israel on 10/7, and have continued doing this entire time, when they launch rockets at Israeli population centers.

      • @[email protected]
        21•26 days ago

        population centers

        Why does one side have population centers and the other human shields? It’s wrong regardless.

      • @[email protected]
        12•26 days ago

        That’s also bad. Both of the sides are bad, and the Palestinian civilians are caught in the crossfire.

      • @[email protected]
        11•26 days ago

        I didn’t realize that HAMAS was as large an organization as the Israeli government and armed forces.

        We’re also talking about a completely different country from Palestine that had nothing to do with any part of any of these conflicts, and even then, an indiscriminate terrorist attack on Palestinian civilians wouldn’t be justified by HAMAS’s terrorism. That’s like saying that the US bombings on Iraqi civilians are justified by Al Qaeda’s attack on the WTC on 9/11.

        • @[email protected]
          1•25 days ago

          Hezbollah has been firing rockets into Israel for a year now. It’s hard to claim they have nothing to do with any part of these conflicts

          • @[email protected]
            7•25 days ago

            Hezbollah only exists because of Occupations and invasions by Israel

            1982

            The 1982 Lebanon war began on 6 June 1982, when Israel invaded again for the purpose of attacking the Palestine Liberation Organization. The Israeli army laid siege to Beirut. During the conflict, according to Lebanese sources, between 15,000 and 20,000 people were killed, mostly civilians.

            On 16 February 1985, Shia Sheik Ibrahim al-Amin declared a manifesto in Lebanon, announcing a resistance movement called Hezbollah, whose goals included combating the Israeli occupation. During the South Lebanon conflict (1985–2000) the Hezbollah militia waged a guerrilla campaign against Israeli forces occupying Southern Lebanon and their South Lebanon Army proxies.

            Israeli Withdrawal

            Throughout the painstaking process of confirming the Israeli withdrawal, Hizballah was at pains to declare its commitment to recovering the last millimeter of Lebanese territory, but it also acknowledged that it would not act hastily to reinitiate violence. In sum, Hizballah’s behavior and deference to state authority have worked to its political advantage. It reaped recognition in an unprecedented meeting between Nasrallah and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who praised Hizballah’s restraint and its promise of cooperation. The meeting with Annan offers a remarkable contrast with Hizballah’s earlier days, when it was hostile to the UN and especially to the UN force in the south.

            Without an agreement between Syria and Israel, there will be little pressure on Hizballah to disarm. Syria’s calculated strategy is to allow Hizballah to serve as a constant reminder of the consequences of continuing to occupy the Golan Heights.This is a role that Hizballah is happy to play, given its enmity toward Israel. At the same time, it remains profoundly aware of the political costs of bringing destruction down on the heads of its supporters, and this further reduces the prospect that Hizballah will initiate attacks on Israel

            2006

            The doctrine is named after the Dahiya suburb of Beirut, where the Lebanese paramilitary group Hezbollah has its headquarters, which the Israeli military leveled during its assault on Lebanon in the summer of 2006 that killed nearly 1,000 civilians, about a third of them children, and caused enormous damage to the country’s civilian infrastructure, including power plants, sewage treatment plants, bridges, and port facilities.

            It was formulated by then-General Gadi Eisenkot when he was Chief of Northern Command. As he explained in 2008 referring to a future war on Lebanon: "What happened in the Dahiya quarter of Beirut in 2006 will happen in every village from which Israel is fired on… We will apply disproportionate force on it (village) and cause great damage and destruction there. From our standpoint, these are not civilian villages, they are military bases… This is not a recommendation. This is a plan. And it has been approved.” Eisenkot went on to become chief of the general staff of the Israeli military before retiring in 2019.

            While it became official Israeli military doctrine after Israel’s 2006 attack on Lebanon, Israel’s military has used disproportionate force and targeted Palestinian, Lebanese, and other civilians since Israel was established in 1948 based on the ethnic cleansing of indigenous Palestinians, including dozens of massacres to force them to flee for their lives.

            2007 - Present

            Until recently, the border had been relatively quiet. Occasional rockets or drones crossed from Lebanon into Israel without leading to serious escalation, while Israel violated Lebanese airspace more than 22,000 times from 2007 to 2022.

            While the withdrawal was certified by the United Nations, Lebanon disputed it, arguing that the Shebaa Farms was part of its territory, and not part of the Syrian Golan Heights, which Israel continues to occupy.

            So there are two separate issues here that lead to the current dispute: the first is that Israel occupies the Golan Heights and treats it as its own territory in violation of international law, and the second is that there was already a pre-existing disagreement between Syria and Lebanon over the border, prior to the Israeli occupation.

            • @[email protected]
              1•25 days ago

              It was created and grew popular to make Israel withdraw, but today it mainly exists to make sure Iran’s interests in Lebanon are ‘defended’.

              • @[email protected]
                3•25 days ago

                No, it’s still due to resistance against Israeli Occupations and defense against Israeli Invasion, which they did again, after bombing the Capital along with many other cities, killing thousands of civilians.

                • @[email protected]
                  1•25 days ago

                  Yeah, after Hezbollah attacked them they’re back. Good thing the Lebanese have Hezbollah to defend them from this cycle

          • @[email protected]
            6•25 days ago

            And yet, that still doesn’t justify killing civilians randomly.

            And Israel has been running a military campaign to exterminate Palestine since the 1950s. It’s hard to claim their hands are clean in any of these conflicts.

            I still remember when they were offering Israeli citizenship with the purchase of former Palestinian homes to American Jews in the 2000s.

            • @[email protected]
              1•25 days ago

              Claiming they were justified in attacking israel is very different from claiming they have nothing to do with the conflict though. If you feel that firing rockets at israeli civilians is fine and good, say that instead of pretending hezbollah was uninvolved

          • @[email protected]
            5•25 days ago

            They were firing rockets into the Shebaa farms, which Israel acknowledged is not part of Israel. Israel started doing airstrikes into Lebanon and then Hizbullah retaliated.

      • @[email protected]
        9•25 days ago

        This is a genocide on an incarcerated population, within an Apartheid State, founded on Ethnic Cleansing

        Ethnic Cleansing is fundamental to Zionism

        Zionism’s aims in Palestine, its deeply-held conviction that the Land of Israel belonged exclusively to the Jewish people as a whole, and the idea of Palestine’s “civilizational barrenness" or “emptiness” against the background of European imperialist ideologies all converged in the logical conclusion that the native population should make way for thenewcomers.

        The idea that the Palestinian Arabs must find a place for themselves elsewhere was articulated early on. Indeed, the founder of the movement, Theodor Herzl, provided an early reference to transfer even before he formally outlined his theory of Zionist rebirth in his Judenstat.

        An 1895 entry in his diary provides in embryonic form many of the elements that were to be demonstrated repeatedly in the Zionist quest for solutions to the “Arab problem ”-the idea of dealing with state governments over the heads of the indigenous population, Jewish acquisition of property that would be inalienable, “Hebrew Land" and “Hebrew Labor,” and the removal of the native population.

        Settlements and Occupation

        Israel justifies the settlements and military bases in the West Bank in the name of Security. However, the reality of the settlements on-the-ground has been the cause of violent resistance and a significant obstacle to peace, as it has been for decades.

        This type of settlement, where the native population gets ‘Transferred’ to make room for the settlers, is a long standing practice.

        The mass ethnic cleansing campaign of 1948:

        Further, declassified Israeli documents show that the Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip were deliberately planned before being executed in 1967:

        While the peace process was exploited to continue de-facto annexation of the West Bank via Settlements

        The settlements are maintained through a violent apartheid that routinely employs violence towards Palestinians and denies human rights like water access, civil rights, etc. This kind of control gives rise to violent resistance to the Apartheid occupation, jeopardizing the safety of Israeli civilians.

        The apartheid regime is based on organized, systemic violence against Palestinians, which is carried out by numerous agents: the government, the military, the Civil Administration, the Supreme Court, the Israel Police, the Israel Security Agency, the Israel Prison Service, the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, and others. Settlers are another item on this list, and the state incorporates their violence into its own official acts of violence. Settler violence sometimes precedes instances of official violence by Israeli authorities, and at other times is incorporated into them. Like state violence, settler violence is organized, institutionalized, well-equipped and implemented in order to achieve a defined strategic goal.

        Apartheid Evidence

        Amnesty Report

        Human Rights Watch Report

        B’TSelem Report with quick Explainer

        Visualizing the Ethnic Cleansing

        Peace Process and Solution

        Both Hamas and Fatah have agreed to a Two-State solution based on the 1967 borders for decades. Oslo and Camp David were used by Israel to continue settlements in the West Bank and maintain an Apartheid, while preventing any actual Two-State solution

        How Avi Shlaim moved from two-state solution to one-state solution

        ‘One state is a game changer’: A conversation with Ilan Pappe

        One State Solution, Foreign Affairs

        Historian Works on the History
      • @[email protected]
        6•26 days ago

        Say what you want about Americans, we have yet to respond to a terror attack with fucking genocide.

        • @[email protected]
          2•25 days ago

          You can see footage of some Hezbobros blowing up in the middle of a supermarket, with the people standing around them being unharmed. They were intended to maim the user of the device, the explosives were too small to cause much more. Sure, there are a handful of civilians hurt or even killed but this is was a lot ‘cleaner’ than throwing bombs from planes or Hezbollah’s own preferred method of firing rockets over the border.

          As per Wikipedia, Hezbollah has to kill one civilian for every 2 soldiers. With the pager attacks, Israel hit 2750 Hezbobros and ‘only’ killed 2 kids.

          • @[email protected]English
            4•25 days ago

            They were intended to maim

            I’ll take warfare tactics you don’t expect from first world nations for $1000, Alex.

              • @[email protected]English
                4•25 days ago

                I think being designed to maim is but one of multiple problems with this approach, which would overall not be served by more explosives.

                • It looks like a pager. Yes, supply chain attack blah blah only purchased by Hezbollah folks. But if it gets stolen or found by a civilian, there is nothing about it to suggest it could be lethal or that they should leave it alone. It isn’t just not marked as lethal, it’s explicitly disguised as something mundane.

                • Hezbollah folks could be sitting next to an innocent civilian in any number of contexts.

                • Related to but distinct from my first point, there is an endless list of possible ways that a pager belonging to a hezbollah operative could wind up in the hands of an innocent, or in a position to harm an innocent instead of the target, and none of them are things that could be controlled or monitored for the fleet of explosive pagers. Once sold, there was literally no way to have any idea who would actually be harmed when the triggering page was sent.

                Just call it terrorism perpetrated by a state actor, and we have no argument.

                • @[email protected]
                  1•25 days ago

                  All of your problems are just one and the same: statistical probability of civilian casualties. And the nice thing with discussing the ethics of the choice to do it here is that we have the exact results. Around 2750 Hezbros hit with around 10 civilian deaths.

                  When they destroyed ISIS in Mosul 8 years ago, they turned that dial up all the way to a 1-on-1 ratio. 10.000 innocents for 10.000 Isibro’s.

                  When they destroyed them in Raqqa, they went even higher, to around 1.5.

                  And if it makes you happy to call it ‘terrorism’ when you see civilian casualties, go ahead.

                  • @[email protected]English
                    3•25 days ago

                    Their “success” was entirely down to luck, and all my problems were to illustrate the uncertainty built into every second that elapsed from the time they sold the pagers until the time they were detonated.

                  • @[email protected]
                    1•25 days ago

                    All of your problems are just one and the same: statistical probability of civilian casualties.

                    “All of your problems boil down to the fact it’s indiscriminate. Get over it. The problems end when you do.”