Day: November 21, 2023

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NBC News has cut ties with a Palestinian freelancer who was arrested in Israel on suspicion of inciting terror and identifying with a terrorist organization.

Mirvat al-Azzeh, who lives in East Jerusalem, was jailed Thursday after sharing four recent Facebook posts regarding Hamas’ sneak attack on Israel on Oct. 7 that killed more than 1,200 people, according to the Jerusalem Post.

It’s unclear what al-Azzeh, 45, wrote in those posts, though police described them at a hearing at the Jerusalem Magistrate Court as “inciting and glorying the horrible acts committed against civilians,” per the outlet.

NBC, owned by Comcast, said Monday that the journalist was no longer working with them.

“Before we recently retained Marwat Azza for services as a freelance producer, we were not aware of her personal social media activity that provided the basis for the Israeli investigation,” an NBC spokesperson told The Post, using an alternate spelling of her name.

“We understand the material under investigation is not related to any services she provided to NBC News.”

Her most recent byline on Nov. 12 reported that newborns at the al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City were dying as the facility ran out of resources.

NBC News had hired Azzeh as a freelance producer around Oct. 21, according to an NBC source close to the situation.

“A review of her limited work for NBC News did not uncover any issues,” the insider told The Post.

Palestinian journalist Mirvat al-Azzeh, 45, was arrested in Jerusalem after sharing four Facebook posts police said glorified terrorism, including Hamas’ Oct. 7 ambush attack on Israel.YouTube/@mohammedassar

Israeli authorities said al-Azzeh “arrived ready for arrest,” without her cellphone but with phone numbers written on her leg, the Jerusalem Post reported.

Al-Azzeh reportedly cooperated fully with Israeli police, who first requested permission from the prosecutor’s office to interrogate the journalist last month.

Permission was granted last week, according to the Jerusalem Post, when al-Azzeh admitted to the offenses.

“The woman in question is an ordinary woman, who works as a journalist and whose work is important to us all,” al-Azzeh’s attorney said, according to the Jerusalem Post.

“She was asked during her investigation about her employment. I believe she admitted to all the deeds described to her, and cooperated fully with the investigation. She did not attempt to conceal the offenses or claim that her accounts had been hacked. Even when she didn’t have a mobile phone, which is the main tool involved, she still said, ‘Yes, those are my posts.’”

After being arrested on Thursday, al-Azzeh was held until a Friday hearing, at which her detention was extended an extra four days, per the outlet.

It wasn’t immediately clear how much jail time al-Azzeh could be facing.

In al-Azzeh’s final byline at NBC on Nov. 12, she reported on the rapidly declining conditions at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.X/@IDF

Back in April, al-Azzeh shared a 24-minute post to YouTube titled “See the full story: An x-ray technician harasses journalist Mervat Al-Azza and grabs her breasts!!”

In the video, al-Azzeh describes, in Arabic, how she was assaulted at a West Bank hospital, but felt pressured by authorities to drop her complaint against her attacker and was ordered to undergo a mental health evaluation, according to a report of the incident in Middle East Eye.

“I cannot find a reason for this, I just see them making things harder for me,” al-Azzeh told the outlet at the time.

According to al-Azzeh’s LinkedIn page, she has been a freelance journalist since September 2018.

Her arrest comes as other mainstream US outlets have sparked outrage over relying on journalists who have expressed antisemitic sentiments in the past.

The New York Times recently rehired a Hitler-praising filmmaker to cover the Israeli-Hamas war.

Soliman Hijjy — who hailed the Nazi leader as recently as 2018 in a post on Facebook — boasted a byline at the Times nearly every day between Oct. 12 and Oct. 19, reporting from Gaza.

Palestinian filmmaker Soliman Hijjy is freelancing for the New York Times again, recent bylines at the news giant revealed, one year after the journalist came under fire for lauding Hitler.Soliman Hijjy/Facebook

Last year, this post by Hejji on Facebook was unearthed. It shows Adolf Hitler taking a selfie with an Arabic caption that translates to: “How great you are, Hitler.”via HonestReporting

Hijjy’s 2018 post — including a 2012 Facebook post where he wrote, “How great you are, Hitler” in Arabic alongside a Photoshopped image of Hitler seemingly taking a selfie — were unearthed last year, when pro-Israel outlets called out the Times for hiring antisemitic journalists as freelancers.

At the time, Hijjy didn’t appear to be working for the Times anymore, and had since taken down his controversial pro-Hitler posts.

Last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ripped mainstream Western media — including Reuters, the Associated Press, CNN and the New York Times — for working with photojournalists embedded with Hamas during the Oct. 7 massacre.

CNN ended up severing ties with a freelancer who was photographed getting a kiss from the terror group’s leader.

Brooklyn state Sen. Kevin Parker has been accused of raping a woman who was working with him to coordinate relief efforts for Haiti nearly 20 years ago, according to a new lawsuit.

The lawsuit was filed in Brooklyn Supreme Court on Friday by Olga Jean-Baptiste, who alleges the then-first-term state legislator raped her at her apartment in 2004 after discussing her humanitarian visit to the Caribbean island, which had just been ravaged by catastrophic flooding.

Jean-Baptiste, who was 31 at the time, had worked with Parker to gather and deliver necessities to Haiti ahead of her trip. When she returned to the US, Parker had asked if he could visit her apartment to pick up some photos and discuss her work there, according to the suit.

The two sat at Jean-Baptiste’s living room table where they chatted for some time. After Jean-Baptiste gave Parker the photographs, she stood up to say goodbye but the senator suddenly grabbed her by the wrists, she claims in the court doc.

Kevin Parker has been accused of raping a woman at her apartment in 2004, according to a lawsuit.William C Lopez/New York Post

“[Jean-Baptiste] was frozen in fear and was unable to cry out,” the lawsuit states.

She then alleges Parker took her “down the hallway of her apartment to her bedroom, made a sexual comment and put her face down on the bed.”

Then he raped her, Jean-Baptiste alleges in the suit.

She claims she never consented to any sexual acts.

The Post has reached out to Parker’s office and Jean-Baptiste’s attorneys for comment on the lawsuit. Neither immediately responded Sunday night.

A spokesperson for state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins said she is aware of the “disturbing” allegations.

The lawsuit claims Parker raped the woman after meeting with her to discuss her recent trip to Haiti in 2004.AP

“These allegations are extremely disturbing and we take them very seriously and we will continue to monitor this situation and we will take appropriate action as more information is learned,” the spokesperson, Mike Murphy, told The Post in a statement.

The lawsuit, first reported by amNY, was filed under New York’s Adult Survivors Act — which is set to expire next week. 

The law extended the statute of limitations for one year for sex crimes, allowing victims to sue their alleged abusers in court regardless of when the alleged crime occurred. Typically, survivors have less than five years to bring such claims in civil court.

The new allegations are not the first time Parker has been accused of assault.

The notoriously hot-headed Parker, 56, has had a history of anger issues since he was first elected to the state Legislature in 2002. His temper has often landed him in trouble.

He was arrested and charged with assault in 2005 after he punched a traffic agent for writing him a $55 ticket for double parking. After he agreed to take anger management classes, the charges were dropped.

Parker has a history of losing his temper in his 20-plus years in the state Legislature.ZUMAPRESS.com

Parker was also convicted of misdemeanor criminal mischief in 2010 after he damaged a camera belonging to a New York Post photographer outside his mother’s house in Brooklyn.

He was given three years’ probation and again ordered to attend anger management classes. Parker was also stripped of his role as majority whip, along with his chairmanship of the Energy Committee, as a result of the incident.

Then in 2019, the Democrat got into a shouting match with progressive state Sen. Alessandra Biaggi over an ethics complaint related to a social media post where Parker told a GOP operative to “kill yourself.”

Despite his controversies, he has been re-elected to the state Senate over and over again. He launched a campaign for city comptroller in 2021 but finished sixth in the Democratic primary.