CNN Fires Editor for Tweet

By COLlive and New York Times

Another mainstream U.S. journalist was exposed for her anti Israeli opinions.

Octavia Nasr, CNN’s senior editor for Middle Eastern affairs, was fired after posting a Twitter message saying that she respected the Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah.

Nasr, a 20-year veteran of CNN, wrote on Twitter after the cleric died on Sunday, “Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah… One of Hezbollah’s giants I respect a lot.”

Fadlallah supported suicide bombings against Israeli civilians, including the Mercaz HaRav massacre in 2008 that left 8 Yeshiva students in Jerusalem dead and 11 more wounded.

The Beirut, Lebanon-based cleric routinely denounced Israel and the United States and his writings and preachings inspired a generation of militants, and is credited with being the “spiritual mentor” of the Hezbollah terror organization.

Some supporters of Israel seized on the Twitter posting almost immediately, the New York Times reported.

A Web site called Honest Reporting that says it is “dedicated to defending Israel against prejudice in the media” asked, “Is Nasr a Hezbollah sympathizer? This is disturbing enough given that the group is designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. and is committed to the destruction of Israel. And which of Fadlallah’s individual views does Nasr admire?”

In a follow-up blog post on Tuesday evening, Nasr said she was sorry about the message “because it conveyed that I supported Fadlallah’s life’s work. That’s not the case at all.”

She said she used the words “respect” and “sad” because “to me, as a Middle Eastern woman, Fadlallah took a contrarian and pioneering stand among Shia clerics on woman’s rights.

“He called for the abolition of the tribal system of ‘honor killing.’ He called the practice primitive and nonproductive. He warned Muslim men that abuse of women was against Islam,” Nast wrote.

Her explanation was apparently not sufficient for her CNN bosses.

Parisa Khosravi, a CNN senior vice president, wrote in a memorandum, “At this point, we believe that her credibility in her position as senior editor for Middle Eastern affairs has been compromised going forward.”

Nasr left her CNN office in Atlanta on Wednesday.