Katie Halper faced the real cancel culture — speaking out on Israeli apartheid

Episode 93 Sneak Peek

This week, we’re welcoming journalist and leftist political commentator Katie Halper back to the show. She’s been on KK&F previously to talk about electoral politics and momentum in the labor movement. Now we’re inviting her back on to hear her firsthand experience being silenced for calling attention to Israeli apartheid on a show supposedly featuring diverse political viewpoints. It goes to show what a powerful stifling effect Zionism has on American political discourse. And as Katie points out, she’s among many prominent left voices who have actually faced cancel culture for voicing support for Palestine — when the right-wing commentators who hand-wring on mainstream media outlets about the “woke mob” are the ones whose voices are always heard the loudest.

Ryan Grim’s reporting for the Intercept explains how Halper, a regular on Hill TV’s Rising, prepared a segment on Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s message to fellow progressives in Congress: “I want you all to know that among progressives, it becomes clear that you cannot claim to hold progressive values yet back Israel’s apartheid government.” In her monologue, Katie provided the evidence showing that Israel is an apartheid state, looking at the testimonials and information from organizations like the UN, ICC, and B’tselem, a human rights group in occupied Palestine. The segment was first halted, then stopped entirely, and Katie was told that The Hill would “not be needing [her] to appear” on the show in future.

What happened to Katie has happened to so many others who have tried to call attention to Israeli apartheid and human rights abuses perpetrated against Palestinians. In mainstream media, so much air time is eaten up by the so-called “cancelled” right-wing commentators, who maintain that since not enough of their books are being bought or because university students won’t attend their talks about why trans people shouldn’t have rights or unions are destroying society, they’re clearly being oppressed. Why, then, do we hear so much from them? And why can’t we hear more about how our own country has a profit motive in supporting Israeli apartheid? We’ll be digging into these questions with our guest in this week’s episode, and we’ll hope you’ll join us to hear a perspective that is actively being suppressed even on outlets that claim the values of open-mindedness and intellectual diversity.

If you can’t wait until Saturday for your weekly dose of KK&F (that’s Friday for paying subscribers), check out the following news coverage on our other regular shows. Over on Breaking Points, here’s Krystal and Saagar discussing Ukraine’s reaction to a peace deal proposal from Elon Musk. And here’s Kyle breaking down the shocking news of Trump’s announcement of a lawsuit against CNN. There’s no shortage of important topics to dive into this week — consider checking out our shows on YouTube before joining us for a new episode of KK&F in just a few days.