Despite this history of extremism, CNN’s senior Middle East editor, Octavia Nasr, expressed her admiration for Fadlallah on her Twitter page when news of his death broke. She said she was “sad to hear” of his passing, as he was “One of Hezbollah’s giants I respect a lot.” This led to her involuntary departure from the network. She then said she regretted the tweet, but only went so far as to say he “was declared a terrorist” but had “what many considered a more moderate voice of Shia Islam than what was coming out of Iran.”
“Nasr had a role that helped shape CNN’s overall news coverage of the Middle East. As a senior editor that apparently reported to a senior VP, Nasr presumably had a hand in story selection, assignment, and editing and shaping the final product from her reporters,” wrote Ed Morrissey.
Nasr isn’t the only American to embrace Fadlallah and Hezbollah. Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter met with him in June 2009, one month after Noam Chomsky did the same. Helen Thomas, who recently retired after saying that Israeli Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine,” said “Thank God for Hezbollah” in 2002. She also blamed Israel for causing “99 percent” of terrorism in the world and compared Palestinians fighting Israel to “those who resisted the Nazi occupation.”
Fadlallah also had connections in the American-Muslim community. The Investigative Project on Terrorism discovered that a charity in Dearborn, Michigan named the Al-Mabarrat Charitable Organization-USA Inc. worked with the Al-Mabarrat Association in Lebanon owned by Fadlallah. The American charity has operated since 1991 even though it is illegal to make financial transactions with Fadlallah or Hezbollah. The Muslim owner of a restaurant chain involved in the charity was indicted in 2002 for funneling money to Lebanon. He had connections to “the highest levels” of Hezbollah,” including Fadlallah’s charity. After his death, three mosques in the Detroit area held services to honor him.
While Fadlallah was widely revered, Middle East expert Martin Kramer says his influence had waned since the 1980s. Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah took many of his followers as Fadlallah became less involved in politics and Iranian clerics started to undermine him. His poor health also took away from his charisma, and the rise of the Iraqi Shiite clerics in Najaf since 2003 led to a competing voice. Fadlallah’s death is causing marches and public expressions of appreciation for him but in Najaf, “No banners or open displays of mourning were seen as clergy in Najaf expressed discomfort over the ayatollah’s legacy.” Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki is paying his respects as Fadlallah was an early player in the Dawa Party, but the Iraqi Shiite clergy are much less enthusiastic about him.
Fadlallah may not have been the Iranian regime’s best friend, but the embrace of him by Nasr, Carter, and Chomsky, is scandalous. It was his voice and credibility that helped set the stage for the loss of hundreds of lives to acts of terrorism. If a senior editor for CNN saw him as an admirable moderate, then the reliability of the media’s reporting on the Middle East has to be cast into serious doubt.
