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PortugueseCNN’s veteran anchor resigned after making anti-Israel remarks and inappropriate comments regarding disabled people on social media.
CNN veteran reporter Jim Clancy ended a 34-year career in an abrupt resignation on Friday and his Twitter account was shut down following a string of anti-Israel remarks he had made on a thread discussing the Charlie Hebdo massacre.
Neither Clancy nor CNN gave an explanation for his departure, which was reported by AdWeek, an American weekly, and confirmed by CNN.
Clancy posted a tweet on January 7 arguing that the cartoons posted by Charlie Hebdo, to which Islamic terrorists claimed to take offense, did not mock the prophet Mohammed. “The cartoons NEVER mocked the Prophet,” he wrote. “They mocked how the COWARDS tried to distort his word. Pay attention.”
Oren Kessler, a deputy director of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, tried to refute Clancy’s point, to which the journalist tweeted, “Hasbara?,” a Hebrew term used to describe public advocacy efforts by Israel. Clancy then continued to attack respondents as “pro-Israel” and “anti-Muslim,” even though Israel had not been mentioned in the discussion.
‘Pick on Some Cripple’
A long back-and-forth developed, during which some called into question Clancy’s objectivity as a journalist who frequently reports from the Middle East.
At one point Clancy wrote, “Pro-Israel voice [sic] try to convince us that cartoonists were really anti Muslim,” and he accused two Twitter accounts of being part of a public relations campaign for Israel. One of those accounts, called “Jews Making News,” is actually an anti-Semitic account “dedicated to fingering #Jewish main players & their minions in news stories.”
Clancy later told the Twitter account for Human Rights News, “You and the Hasbara team need to pick on some cripple at the edge of the herd.”
Jay Ruderman, head of the Ruderman Family Foundation, which is dedicated to advocacy and inclusion for the disabled, demanded an apology from Clancy as well as from CNN. Ruderman said that use of the term “cripple” was insensitive, and Clancy’s response was to block him from his Twitter account.
“If a news anchor had hurled a racial epithet, CNN’s response undoubtedly would have been swift,” Ruderman said in a statement. “The disability community expects CNN to extend the same sensitivity to people with disabilities as it does to other minority communities.”
Clancy subsequently re-tweeted a quote by radical leftist Noam Chomsky, which read: “Radical Islamic fundamentalists have been Washington’s most valued allies in the Middle East for 75 years.”
A CNN spokesperson said in a statement that “Jim Clancy is no longer with CNN. We thank him for more than three decades of distinguished service and wish him nothing but the best.” He offered no further explanation.
By: United with Israel Staff
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