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.”

  • SkyezOpen@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    There hasn’t been outrage because blowing up people with pagers is actually the most targeted thing Israel has done in the past year. Certainly a step up from killing hundreds of refugees to maybe take out one hamas guy.

    • WanderingVentra@lemm.ee
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      3 days ago

      They killed children in that pager attack. Which I guess is part for the course, so ya, nevermind, you might be right.

      • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        Which pager strike in particular do you disagree with? AFAIK the targets were pretty open about their relations to Hamas and Iranian funded extranational militants.

        IMO we should have just stopped giving Israel shells and rockets a long time ago and instead given them a very small amount of spec ops equipment like the pagers.

        • Kalysta@lemm.ee
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          2 days ago

          Yes. The 9 year old girl was TOTALLY a Hezbollah militant.

          Get real. Most of the people killed were civilian government workers and members of their families.

          It would be like giving congress exploding pens. Yes, many of the members are deplorable. But handing them mini explosives is an act of terrorism.

          • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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            2 days ago

            Ah thats fair, I was unaware of the attacks on Tuesday and Wednesday September 12 and 13th.

            Dozens of mourners gathered Wednesday in the Lebanese village of Nabi Sheet to pay respect to Fatima Abdullah

            I had only heard about the earlier strikes.

        • leftytighty@slrpnk.net
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          2 days ago

          I’m not commenting on the pager attack when I refer to “accused hamas guy” but I’ll leave it as an exercise to you to figure out why and how the pager strike might have led (and did lead) to civilian casualties.

          Yes more precise than “was in a WhatsApp group with the cousin of a suspected Hamas member so the AI told us to bomb him at home with his children” but if that’s the bar…

          • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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            2 days ago

            You replied to a comment about blowing up a hamas guy with pager by saying the hamas guy is only an accused hamas guy, but you were not referring to the blowing up of a hamas guy with a pager?