Mark Steyn once observed that while Barack Obama is probably not a secret Muslim, if he was, “what would he do differently?”
The same question might be asked of The Project’s Waleed Aly. Aly is the Australian left-media’s favourite telegenic “moderate Muslim”. But, like a great many other “moderate Muslims”, he seems to have a penchant for saying things which don’t seem so, well, moderate, after all.
After all, Aly has admitted that he probably wouldn’t have married his wife had she not converted to Islam. He also repeatedly handwaves away Islamic terrorism as a mere “irritant” – in stark contrast to his on-air histrionics in the wake of the Christchurch massacre.
Now, he’s giving uncritical air-time to anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
The Project has been slammed for airing a controversial segment in which Israel was blamed for the deadly Beirut explosion.
To whom did Aly turn for informed commentary on the disaster? An explosives expert? A commentator well-versed in geopolitics?
No, a…photographer.
Host Waleed Aly interviewed photographer João Sousa, who is based a kilometre from where the explosion detonated in Lebanon’s capital, on Wednesday.
Aly asked Mr Sousa whether locals were accepting of the blast being blamed on ‘poorly stored ammonium nitrate’ in the area.
‘No. I would say 99 per cent of the people I’ve spoken with … they all feel that that’s not necessarily the correct explanation,’ Mr Sousa responded.
‘People are more likely to believe that this was an attack, a military attack, possibly by Israel than an accident.’
Aly’s fawning cadre of Twitter admirers have tried to defend their poster-boy airing this garbage by pointing out that they were not his views, but his guest’s.
That may be true enough, but Aly, who has no compunctions about riding roughshod over interviewees when it suits him, didn’t raise a single objection.
Which is even more damning, considering that Aly opened his segment with a fake-news attack on President Trump for supposedly calling the blast an “attack” (he didn’t, of course, but that didn’t stop Aly thundering at his straw-man).
So, why his complicit silence when, just seconds later, his own guest openly called the blast an “attack”? And worse, blamed it on The Jews.
To compound their shame, The Project have tried to Memory Hole the segment by deleting it from their social media channels.
Chairman of the Anti-Defamation Commission Dr Dvir Abramovich [said…] “I communicated my profound concerns and disappointment that the photojournalist interviewed yesterday was given a free ride by Waleed Aly to claim, without a shred of evidence, sources, facts or confirmation that Israel might have been responsible for the explosion and the heartbreaking loss of life,’ he said.
‘Allowing such wild and unfounded accusations that defame Israel to go unchallenged by the interviewer, and then to post it online was highly irresponsible.
Victorian Liberal MP David Southwick also criticised The Project.
‘Instead of running stories like this maybe show how Israel was one of the first to respond with medical assistance.’
Historian Daniel Pipes argues that a key question to separate genuinely moderate Muslims from closet jihadists is to ask: Who was responsible for the 9/11 attacks? It being a common anti-Semitic conspiracy that it were the Joos wot dun it.
It might be similarly instructive to ask Waleed who he thinks is responsible for the Beirut explosion.
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