A pair of far-left activist journalists on Thursday heckled US Secretary of State Antony Blinken during his final press conference at the State Department.
Blinken began the presser by offering remarks on the Biden administration’s foreign policy before taking questions, but Max Blumenthal and Sam Husseini refused to wait until the secretary had finished speaking before shouting him down.
“Are you compromised by Israel?” Blumenthal shouted, as he filmed himself, indicating he had planned to cause a scene.
Blumenthal, the anti-Zionist Jewish editor of the publication the Grayzone who his the son of former Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal, claimed Blinken was “sacrific[ing] the rules-based order on the mantle of your commitment to Zionism,” adding “you helped destroy our religion, Judaism, by associating it with fascism.”
He also accused Israel, and Blinken, of “genocide” and said Israel was perpetrating “the Holocaust of our time.”
Shortly after security guards escorted him from the briefing room, Husseini — who previously interrupted Blinken — began shouting the secretary of state down, calling him a criminal.
He had to be picked up and dragged out of the room by multiple security guards, who he claimed “manhandled” him as he continued to shout.
Blinken told him to “respect the process” and save questions for later.
“Everybody from Amnesty International to the ICJ say Israel’s doing genocide and extermination, and you’re telling me to respect the process? Criminal,” Husseini responded while being dragged out of the room. Then, he repeated three times, “Why aren’t you in the Hague?”
????????BREAKING: Blinken gets the farewell he deserves.
Reporter Sam Husseini was just physically dragged from U.S secretary of state Antony Blinken’s press briefing, he said “Why aren’t you at The Hague?”
Following this, Journalist Max Blumenthal confronted Blinken during his… pic.twitter.com/9uxcOGNc6U
— Suppressed News. (@SuppressedNws) January 16, 2025
Following the interruptions, Blinken answered a series of questions about Israel, expressing confidence that an announced hostage-ceasefire deal would move forward on Sunday despite ongoing spats over its content. He also advocated normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel — a key goal of the Biden administration prior to Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel. And he called for the establishment of a Palestinian state, a goal of the Biden administration that the Israeli government opposes.
He also said the Biden administration had had differences with Israel over its conduct in Gaza and said Israel had achieved its military goals there “some months ago.”
“On the ceasefire, yes, I am confident, and I fully expect that implementation will begin, as we said, on Sunday,” he said. “Look, it’s not exactly surprising that in a process and a negotiation that has been this challenging, this fraught, you may get a loose end. We’re tying up that loose end as we speak.”
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