Ali Velshi’s Delusions MSNBC anchor illustrates the extent of the Left’s detachment from reality.Robert Spencer
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/05/ali-velshis-delusions-robert-spencer/
Ali Velshi is an anchor and correspondent for MSNBC, but he is much more than that as well. He is a made guy, an accepted member of one of today’s most powerful Mafia groups, the nation’s Leftist political elite class: Velshi is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Economic Club of New York, and a member of the Board of Directors of Seeds of Peace, an organization dedicated to combating an entire laundry list of sins the Left regularly claims to find among its opponents: “Racism, Sexism, Classism, Political Violence, Colonialism, Military Occupation, anti-Semitism, and Islamophobia.” As such, Ali Velshi is a typical and indeed exemplary Leftist; not only does he hold the opinions that the Leftist establishment wants you to accept, but he is one of the principal missionaries charged with imparting these views to the masses. And he is just as deluded, hateful, and out of touch with reality as you’d expect.
As a practicing Muslim who has railed against “Islamophobia,” Velshi is also vociferously anti-Israel. On a May 2021 MSNBCbroadcast, Velshi ranted against the Jewish state, declaring that“idea that it’s even remotely controversial to call what Israel has imposed on Palestinians a form of apartheid is laughable.” In reality, of course, there is no substance whatsoever to this “apartheid” claim; it is an invention of the foes of Israel that is used to turn international public opinion against Israel, but it falls apart upon even the most superficial examination.
Apartheid was the system of racial segregation and discrimination in South Africa that lasted from 1948 into the 1990s. Black South Africans were excluded by law from operating businesses or living in certain areas, and public transportation and public services were segregated. Those who claim that Israel is an apartheid state note that Palestinians live in areas that are separate from the State of Israel, into which they can only pass for work through checkpoints where the wait is sometimes considerable.
This is, however, not because of apartheid, but because of terrorism. The checkpoints are designed to stop Palestinian jihadis from entering Israel, and they have been quite successful. Meanwhile, Arabs enjoy full legal rights in Israel, with no discrimination. Numerous Arabs live within Israel itself and are presumed loyal to the Jewish State. An Arab party forms part of the country’s governing coalition; a black party never held such power in apartheid South Africa. Israeli Arabs serve in the Knesset. The chairman of Bank Leumi, Israel’s oldest banking corporation, is an Arab, Dr. Samer Haj Yehia.
Velshi never reports such facts. He seems interested only in keeping the flame of hatred of Israel burning brightly. In that May 2021 broadcast, he added that although Hamas “may not be in the best long-term interests of the Gazans,” and admitted that Gazans had chosen “a government that most of us wouldn’t prefer,” nonetheless, “peace hasn’t really worked out” for Gazans. He declared: “Israel needs a new approach to the Palestinians and America needs a new approach to Israel.” In other words, America should abandon Israel.
Velshi is just as divorced from reality when it comes to America itself. During the Antifa riots in Minneapolis in May 2020, as the city burned, Velshi didn’t tell his hapless audience that the Left was out of control and on a mission of destruction. Instead, he put as positive a spin on the matter as he possibly could: “I want to be clear on how I characterize this,” he said. “This is mostly a protest. It is not generally speaking unruly.” In its irenic and propagandistic unreality, this was right up there with CNN’s characterization of the Kenosha, Wisconsin riots of August 2020 as “fiery but mostly peaceful.”
While in Minneapolis, Velshi did all he could to stoke hatred of the police, claiming that when they tear-gassed protestors, they were actually gratuitously tear-gassing the media: “Nobody was doing anything,” Velshi insisted. “They pulled in. They opened fire.” He claimed: “There has been no provocation, Joshua. There was nothing that happened whatsoever. The police pulled into this intersection, unprovoked, right into the middle of the crowd, split the crowd, started firing in both directions. They now have fired at us.”
Velshi later doubled down, continuing to insist that the police tear-gassed the journalists on purpose, and the propagandists hadn’t simply been standing too close to the action: “We got hit, unfortunately, with tear gas, without our masks on. Because it was that fast. We have, by the way, had a good sense of when the tear gas is going to come. The police have generally been pretty orderly about it. But what happened here, there was no warning whatsoever. They literally pulled into the station, jumped out of their car, and they just came in and started shooting. We were very close. We weren’t, by the way, anywhere near the front of the crowd. We were maintaining security protocol. We were probably in the last third of the crowd. And they intercepted the crowd. They just broke the crowd, which put us very, very close to the police and they fired on us. There were flashbangs that came out. There were canisters that came out. And you saw, they actively aimed their guns at people.”
Sure they did. But for the Left, the agenda always trumps reality. In the classic movie The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (watch it tonight), the newspaper editor says, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” For Velshi and his colleagues, it’s “When the facts don’t fit the narrative, print the narrative.”
Now Velshi is pushing hard for World War III, calling on NATO to stop Putin in Ukraine. Velshi thundered: “We are past the point of sanctions and strongly-worded condemnations and the seizing of oligarchs’ mega-yachts. It is no longer sufficient as the evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity continue to grow. Vladimir Putin has no regard for life or humanity or even the rules of war. He’s proven that time and time again, and he has also pursued the indiscriminate killing of civilians time and time again — twice before in Ukraine and in Chechnya. The global world order and potentially democracy’s survival hang in the balance. If this is not the kind of moment that the United Nations and NATO and the U.N. and the G-20 and the Council of Europe and the G-7 were made for, what is the point of these alliances if not to stop this? The world cannot sit by as Vladimir Putin continues this reign of terror.” He called for “direct military involvement” against Russia.
Now, there are plenty good reasons why Putin must be stopped, but when someone as reckless and anti-American as Ali Velshi is calling for military involvement in Ukraine, it’s a good reason in itself to pause and consider all the options. For Ali Velshi has shown time and time again that he is on the side neither of truth nor of justice, to say nothing of the American way. Like so very many Leftists today, he lives not in the real world, but in the fantasy web of the Left’s narrative, populated by legions of rogue racist cops, Israeli segregationists, and saintly Antifa rioters. He stands as an ongoing reminder of the fact that the Left is at war with reality. In the final analysis, this is a war it cannot, and must not, win.
Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 23 books including many bestsellers, such as The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), The Truth About Muhammad and The History of Jihad. His latest book is The Critical Qur’an. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.
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