Rania Khalek


Rania Khalek is a Lebanese American writer and political activist. She has written for politically progressive/left wing publications, including The Nation, The Intercept, Al Jazeera, Salon, Vice, AlterNet, Mondoweiss, and Truthout. In 2017 she co-hosted the podcast show Unauthorized Disclosure with Kevin Gosztola at Shadowproof. Khalek previously served as an associate editor for the pro-Palestinian website The Electronic Intifada.

Career

Khalek has reported on the Israel-Palestine conflict and the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Islamophobia, the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen, the Syrian Civil War, United States foreign policy in the Middle East, US presidential elections and the United States criminal justice system.
She was a contributor to AlterNet from 2011 to 2017. Khalek contributed to Truthout between 2012 and 2014. She was a columnist for Extra!, the magazine of Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, from 2013-2015. She launched the weekly podcast, "Unauthorized Disclosure," with Gosztola in 2014.
Khalek was a contributor to The Electronic Intifada from 2013-2016. She served on the editorial board for a few years but stepped down from her position in October 2016.
Khalek became a contributor for Maffick Media's "In the Now" video channels. Maffick receives funding from its parent company, Ruptly, a subsidiary of the television network RT. RT is a subsidiary of ANO TV Navasti in Moscow, which is the umbrella non-profit media organization that is funded by the Russian government.
She has appeared on Al Jazeera English, The Majority Report with Sam Seder, The Jimmy Dore Show, and RT America. She was a correspondent for grassroots media project Redfish, whose staff were primarily involved in Russian state media and whose main broadcast outlet was RT.

Political views

In 2016 Khalek and other activists protested a speech at Washington, D.C.'s Newseum given by Avital Leibovich, a retired colonel in the Israel Defense Forces and director of the Jerusalem office of the American Jewish Committee, declaring, "free Palestine".

Reception

She trended on Twitter in 2019 when Ilhan Omar, a member of Congress, retweeted Khalek, who in turn defended Omar for her opposition to perceived U.S. efforts to change the government of Venezuela, a position which was commented as "controversial" by The Jerusalem Post. “This is the best and most detailed statement I’ve seen so far from a Democrat on Venezuela,” Khalek wrote on Friday. “Omar, as well as her other colleagues who spoke out, should be commended for opposing Trump’s coup attempt, this will surely provoke malicious attacks from the pro-war crowd. Very brave.”
During the 2016 presidential election campaign, after Khalek wrote that "Clinton is also dangerous to world stability. And unlike Trump, she has the blood on her hands to prove it," James Kirchick described Khalek as one of a group of progressives who, in Kirchick's opinion, were "behaving like Weimar-era German communists, who, on Joseph Stalin’s orders, attacked Social Democrats as “social fascists” rather than battle Nazi brown-shirts."
On 9 March 2018, the Southern Poverty Law Center published an article The multipolar spin: how fascists operationalize left-wing resentment in which Khalek and several other left-wing journalists were mentioned. The journalists complained that the article falsely portrayed them as "white supremacists, fascists, anti-Semites, and engaging in a conspiracy with the Putin regime to promote such views". As a result the SPLC retracted the article and issued a lengthy apology.
According to Jonathan Marks, a professor of political science at Ursinus College, Khalek is "not a marginal figure" within the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions of Israel movement.
Khalek has criticized The Nation magazine on the grounds that while the magazine has published numerous articles in support of the Palestinian cause, it nonetheless "reinforces" the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories and Israel's treatment of Palestinians "by privileging Jewish voices over Palestinian ones." Eric Alterman took issue with Khalek's statement on his blog for The Nation, accusing her of antisemitic implication, "have you noticed what the magazine’s real problem is? Too many Jews!" In response to Alterman's comment, The Nations editors pointed out that Khalek had not said too many Jews write for The Nation but rather that "The Nation has published more Jewish than Palestinian voices". In contrast, in an article for CounterPunch, Mark Hand praised Khalek for her "honest reporting on Israel and the military"
Khalek wrote of Syria,"Much of the debate over U.S. intervention in Syria boils down the conflict there to a clash between the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and an armed rebellion in which al-Qaeda affiliates play a significant role. Typically ignored in that conversation are the voices of the non-violent opposition movement that took to the streets to challenge Assad in March 2011, and which has persisted against great odds."