CNN’s Activist Journalist Nidal Rafa Verbally Assaults Danny Ayalon in Media Central Debate, Finnish Journalist Tells Her to Shut It…….

Nidal Rafa: Activist journalism in its rawest

Debbie Schlussel: Imagine Being Married to This Chick: “Watch this tantrum she has with Israeli former US Ambassador Danny Ayalon, and remember that all CNN coverage of the Mid-East–especially Israel–is filtered through the overtly propagandized lens of pan-terrorists like her. You can’t trust a lick of it.

Tom Gross: A FAIR-MINDED REPORTER?: Rafa is an Israeli Arab, born in the Haifa area, and is well-known around town not only as a CNN producer but also as an extremely vocal critic of Israel. For example, she engaged in another anti-Israeli outburst at an IPCRI (Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information) event in Jerusalem in February.

On other occasions in 2007 and 2008, while employed by CNN, she has publicly called for Israel to cease to exist as a Jewish state. Several years ago, in an article on how Western reporters interview Palestinians about their views on terrorism, Israel’s leading liberal paper Ha’aretz noted that “Nidal Rafa [then working for another American TV network] decides what to translate [from Arabic for the American correspondent] and what to leave untranslated.”

The Ayalon-Zahlaka debate took place on March 3, 2009, at the offices of MediaCentral, a Jerusalem-based organization which provides balanced media services and resources that foreign correspondents in Jerusalem say they find increasingly useful.

I know Semi Kahan personally and greatly respect him, he’s a Finnish journalist who has covered the Middle East beat for decades, and is well known for his impartiality & fairness in his reporting, as well as for his gracious demeanor and politeness to others. It’s something that Nidal Rafa should have learned as human being and practiced as a journalist. But then she’s no journalist.

The whole debate can be viewed here