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Decensored News Profile picture
@decensorednews
Jan 23 • 17 tweets • 6 min read • Read on X
THREAD 🧵

In a November 4, 2024 audio recording provided to us by journalist @samhusseini, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller admits that he has been refusing to call on Sam as a matter of policy.

This was shortly after that day's press briefing:
2/ Having followed @samhusseini's appearances at these briefings closely since 2023, we want to emphasize that Miller only confirms in that recording what was already obvious for months: that Sam was completely blackballed. Image
3/ Miller refused to call on @samhusseini many times throughout his tenure.

Here he is in Sept 2023, for instance, conspicuously refusing to take Sam's question about Biden's meeting with Netanyahu days earlier.

This was less than two weeks before Oct 7:
4/ Miller only called on @samhusseini a couple times during the ~15 month period after Oct 7, 2023, one of which was in June of 2024, when Sam asked him about Israel’s “Hannibal Directive.”
@samhusseini 5/ Miller was so ill-prepared to answer @samhussein’s “Hannibal” question that he had to resort to claiming he's never even heard of it, then quickly calling on one of his lapdogs to change the subject:
6/ Our video of the “Hannibal” exchange (above) got over a million views on X, and Miller never called on Sam again.
7/ At times, Sam was able to interject a question without being called on, such as when he attempted to confront Miller about the State Department’s hypocritical condemnation of “political violence”:
8/ Or when @samhusseini attempted to question him about whether Israel had really accepted “committed to” a “ceasefire deal” in early June, as the Biden administration was claiming at the time:
9/ On both of these occasions, other reporters in the room — Ahmed Alhazeem and @nadia_bilbassy, respectively — helped Miller box Sam out and avoid his queries.
10/ People often ask why the other reporters in the room don't stick up for Sam. For some insight into the psychology of at least one of them, see this reply from @nadia_bilbassy to our thread about her assisting Miller (post #8 above), & our reply to her:
11/ In July, @samhusseini briefly chimed in to point out another elephant in the room: Miller’s incessant smirking.
12/ It had been widely discussed online for months...
13/ But @samhusseini was the one who brought it up to Miller directly. The video went extremely viral, with Sam's post about it getting over 41,000 likes:
@samhusseini 14/ “I'm sure you guys have all seen the clip now where a reporter’s like, “You're smirking.’... Finally someone f**king' says it...”

One of the many TikTok videos posted about this at the time (Google screenshot is from July 11):
Image
15/ That 13-second exchange is what Miller later cited as his excuse for his policy of not calling on Sam, which had clearly existed well before that, and for completely different reasons (Sam repeatedly nailing him and Patel with hardball questions).
16/ In case you missed it, here’s a video of Miller personally siccing armed “security” personnel on @samhusseini last week when he tried to ask Blinken a few of the questions they had been systematically avoiding all year. (See 0:38-1:06 in particular.)
17/ Full story: decensored.news/matthew-miller…

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More from @decensorednews

Decensored News Profile picture
Jan 17
NEW: We reconstructed @samhusseini's viral confrontation with Antony Blinken by combining footage from multiple sources, including @amrhsayed & @ryangrim. A must-see.

This was the culmination of months of State Dept stonewalling.

“Why aren't you in The Hague??”
Here's an example of why they stopped letting @samhusseini ask any questions. 👇 One of the very few times Miller called on him in all of 2024. Sam presses them about things that other reporters in the room won't (in this case the Hannibal Directive).
Sam's question to Blinken about the Geneva Conventions (vis-a-vis Gaza and Israel) — seen at the beginning our video of yesterday's exchange — is the same one that Blinken's evasive mouthpieces had given him (@samhusseini) the runaround on for months:
Read 5 tweets
Decensored News Profile picture
Jan 2
“I'm not exaggerating when I say that 99% of the people I talk to [in Gaza] just want to die and think that death will finally give them a rest from all this,” says Palestinian journalist @HossamShabat. “The Israeli government has created hell on earth for the people of Gaza.”

This — deliberately creating hell on earth for Gaza's civilian population — is exactly what Daniella Weiss, director of the Israeli settler organization Nachala, discussed and condoned in an interview with BBC News' Orla Guerin that was published in April of 2024.

She told Guerin that “Arabs will not stay” in Gaza and will be replaced by Jews. “Africa is big. Canada is big. The world will absorb the people of Gaza.”

“How will we do it?” she asked rhetorically. “We encourage it.”

When Guerin asked what happens to the Palestinians who want to stay in Gaza, Weiss repeatedly insisted that “The Arabs want to go.”

Her reason? “Normal people don't want to live in hell.”

Guerin: “What you're talking about sounds like a plan for ethnic cleansing.”

Weiss: “You can call it ethnic cleansing, you can call it refugees, whatever you want... apartheid... you choose your definition...”
For those who don't know, Weiss isn't just some random Israeli. Here's an edit of some of CNN & Channel 4's coverage of a conference she organized in early 2024.

Speakers included Itamar Ben-Gvir (national security minister) and Bezalel Smotrich (finance minister).

CNN has called her the “godmother” of the Zionist settler movement.

As seen around the 0:47 mark in this video, she freely admits that deliberately withholding humanitarian aid is one of the “methods” they're using to ethnically cleanse Gaza (i.e., create the “hell” on earth that she speaks of).

Weiss: “There will be no Arabs in [Gaza]... and we'll use different methods; one of them is not to give them any humanitarian aid, so the countries of the world will have pity on them and take them.”

Later in the video, she says that her organization gets funding and support from very “prominent” and “wealthy Jews” in the US.
WEISS: “I want to have for the Jewish nation the promised land from the Bible… from the Euphrates to the Nile…”

Q: “What about southern Lebanon?”

WEISS: “If it's—It is part of it! All of it! Even parts of Syria, part of Iraq, part of Iran. It's huge!”
Read 4 tweets
Decensored News Profile picture
Oct 15, 2024
WATCH: Asked about the Biden admin's newly-published letter to Israel, State Dept spox Matthew Miller admits a long-established fact — that the humanitarian aid that Israel is allowing to reach Palestinians in Gaza is at “very, very low levels” and that the situation is “dire.”

He claims that the election is “not a factor at all” in the timing of this letter, and implies that the fact that the 30 day implementation “window” ends after the election is purely coincidental.

Confronted by a CNN reporter about the fact that this man-made crisis is not new, and that Israel has been blocking huge amounts of aid for months, Miller claims they have “been having a number of ongoing conversations with” the Israelis prior to this letter.

(We have no way to verify that claim, but if that's true then it suggests that they knowingly failed to take the necessary action – or even give Israel an ultimatum – for months.)
Miller refuses to address what will supposedly happen if Israel doesn't start letting more humanitarian aid into Gaza

Q: “And the consequence if they don't do that is what?”

Miller: “So — I'm not going to speak to that today...” [long non-answer]

Q: “Um, yeah, but.... what's the consequence?”

Miller: “There are implications under US law, under policy, that I'm not gonna speak to here...”
Miller refuses to clarify what Israel supposedly has to do with regard to humanitarian aid to avoid potentially facing some kind of vague alleged consequences (that he won't articulate either)

@kylieatwood: “You're not going to lay out what that mark of success would look like?”
Read 5 tweets
Decensored News Profile picture
Oct 1, 2024
“The experience of isolation for years in a small cell is difficult to convey. It strips away one's sense of self, leaving only the raw essence of existence. I am yet not fully equipped to speak about what I have endured; the relentless struggle to stay alive, both physically and mentally. Nor can I speak yet about the deaths by hanging, murder, and medical neglect of my fellow prisoners...”

Julian Assange begins his testimony:
After thanking PACE and the many others around the world who have campaigned on his behalf for their efforts, Assange says “none of them should have been necessary.”

“But ALL of them WERE necessary, because without them, I never would have seen the light of day...”

“This unprecedented global effort was needed because, of the legal protections that did exist, many existed only on paper, [and] were not effective in any remotely reasonable time...”

“I eventually chose freedom over unrealizable justice...”

“Justice for me is now precluded, as the US government insisted on writing into its plea agreement that I cannot file a case at the European Court of Human Rights, or even an [FOIA] request over what it did to me as a result of its extradition request...”
“I want to be totally clear: I am not free today because the system worked.

I am free today, after years of incarceration, because I pled guilty to journalism.

I pled guilty to seeking information from a source.

I pled guilty to obtaining information from a source.

And I pled guilty to informing the public what that information was.

I did not plead guilty to anything else.”

—Julian Assange
Read 4 tweets
Decensored News Profile picture
Oct 1, 2024
WATCH: Journalist @samhusseini confronts French foreign minister @jnbarrot about his country's failure to properly implement the ICJ's orders in the genocide case against Israel

“You and most of the rest of the Security Council voted for a US resolution that FALSELY claimed that Israel agreed to a ceasefire resolution. Didn't that in effect give Israel a green light for further aggression?”

Barrot answers in French — even though he's fully fluent in English and answered the previous question in English — making it impossible for Sam (and other reporters) to follow up, and then walked off.

Sam: “Can you please give an English response?? You're literally speaking a different language!”
A few quick examples of Barrot speaking English. He sometimes does entire events and interviews in English.
Barrot also made a brief (~90 second) statement in French when he first approached the podium.

Here's a transcript and translation of that, created by feeding the audio into Google Translate:
Image
Image
Read 7 tweets
Decensored News Profile picture
Aug 14, 2024
WATCH: Russian ambassador @Dpol_un calls out the US at the UN Security Council for its ongoing role in Israel's genocide in the wake of the massacre at the al-Tabin school in Gaza City

“Expecting our Western—primarily American—colleagues, who are in cahoots with Israel, to express any compassion for the Palestinians is pointless. Therefore, it's important to regularly bring the truth about what's happening in Gaza to the international community through the Security Council...”

“Unfortunately what happened in al-Tabin can't be seen as a one-off or some awful criminal misstep...”

“There's an obvious conclusion that what is happening is nothing less than a deliberate choice by the Israeli leadership. Condemnation of the actions of West Jerusalem and calls for restraint will not work. The problem runs much deeper...”

“The UN Security Council is increasingly turning into a passive and powerless bystander, who can only report of worsening degradation of the situation and ritually express their concern...”

“14 members of the Security Council have essentially been held hostage by the US, who block any action towards an immediate ceasefire...”

“40,000 people have been killed [since Oct 16]... more than 90,000 have been injured... this is the price of inaction of multilateral diplomacy and shortsighted interest of some members of the Council, who, with their ‘Veto of Damocles,’ for six months have hindered even the slightest moves towards a ceasefire...”

“We call on the Council not to be under the thumb of Washington, who is concerned only with protecting the interests of Israel and profits from delivering weapons to hotspots...”

“We should think together about what measures can be taken to de-escalate in Gaza, and the region as a whole. If, for that, we need a Security Council visit ‘to the field,’ then that's what should happen...”

“The Middle East should be a priority for Council visits, which should not become political tourism to comfortable locations...”

From yesterday (Aug 13):
Ambassador @Dpol_un also discussed UN Security Council Resolution 2735—which was backed by the US and adopted in June—noting that Russia had abstained because they had “the most serious doubts” regarding its “feasibility”—doubts which, he says, have now been “confirmed.”

“[The resolution] contained three phases with extremely ambitious plans, from a comprehensive ceasefire to the start of a full-scale reconstruction of the Gaza Strip. Not a single one of these phases has materialized. Now, they all look absolutely surrealistic. And, unfortunately, the Security Council signed up for this surrealism...”

“But what's worse than anything is that it signed up to a blatant lie: the first operative paragraph stated that Israel agreed to the proposed conditions of the ‘deal.’ Israel’s representatives on many occasions, including in this room, said directly that they did NOT agree to it...”

“Moreover, the entire rhetoric of Israeli officials shows that Israel has no intentions at all to stop its military operation, whatever the position of the Security Council may be...”

“So what result, then, came from—to quote our American colleagues—their ‘active’ and ‘assertive’ diplomacy on the ground to bringing the parties to agreement, which the Security Council was told it should not interfere with?... We are not aware of any progress at all. The only ‘anti-result’ since the adoption of Resolution 2735 was the blatant, provocative assassination of the main negotiator for Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh – the former Palestinian prime minister – during his visit to Tehran...”
@Dpol_un Back in June, shortly after the adoption of UNSC Resolution 2735, journalist @samhusseini questioned US State Dept spokesman Matthew Miller about the apparent ulterior motives behind it—
Read 6 tweets

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