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 administrationโs foreign policy before taking questions, but Max Blumenthal and Sam Husseini refused to wait until the secretary had finished speaking before shouting him down.
โAre you compromised by Israel?โ 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 โsacrific[ing] the rules-based order on the mantle of your commitment to Zionism,โ adding โyou helped destroy our religion, Judaism, by associating it with fascism.โ
He also accused Israel, and Blinken, of โgenocideโ and said Israel was perpetrating โthe Holocaust of our time.โ
Shortly after security guards escorted him from the briefing room, Husseini โ who previously interrupted Blinken โ 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 โmanhandledโ him as he continued to shout.
Blinken told him to โrespect the processโ and save questions for later.
โEverybody from Amnesty International to the ICJ say Israelโs doing genocide and extermination, and youโre telling me to respect the process? Criminal,โ Husseini responded while being dragged out of the room. Then, he repeated three times, โWhy arenโt you in the Hague?โ
????????BREAKING: Blinken gets the farewell he deserves.
Reporter Sam Husseini was just physically dragged from U.S secretary of state Antony Blinkenโs press briefing, he said โWhy arenโt you at The Hague?โ
Following this, Journalist Max Blumenthal confronted Blinken during hisโฆ pic.twitter.com/9uxcOGNc6U
โ 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 โ a key goal of the Biden administration prior to Hamasโs 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 โsome months ago.โ
โOn the ceasefire, yes, I am confident, and I fully expect that implementation will begin, as we said, on Sunday,โ he said. โLook, itโs not exactly surprising that in a process and a negotiation that has been this challenging, this fraught, you may get a loose end. Weโre tying up that loose end as we speak.โ
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