{
  "id": 10070024,
  "title": "Mehdi Hasan’s hypocritical Ed Sheeran attack reveals his own double standard on Israel - opinion",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/26/mehdi-hasans-hypocritical-ed-sheeran-attack-reveals-his-own-double",
  "topic": "world",
  "section": "World",
  "published": "2026-09-26T21:54:47.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Jerusalem Post",
    "slug": "jerusalem-post",
    "url": "https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-909412"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Mehdi Hasan's recent criticism of Ed Sheeran for his silence on the Gaza situation highlights Hasan's own double standard regarding Israel. While Sheeran's silence is criticized as hypocritical, Hasan's own past reveals a disturbing pattern of minimizing bigotry when it suits his political or ideological views. In 2009, Hasan made inflammatory speeches comparing non-Muslims to \"animals\" and linked homosexuality to \"sexual deviance.\" However, he later apologized for these remarks, claiming they were \"dumb offensive ranty stuff\" from his twenties. Similarly, when Ilhan Omar's 2012 tweet criticizing Israel resurfaced, Hasan initially defended her, suggesting she had \"maybe unwittingly echoed tropes\" and insisted she hadn't said anything about Jews. This generous reading of her language ignores the classic antisemitic tropes that were at play. Hasan's refusal to apply the same charity to Israel or its defenders reveals a double standard in his approach to media criticism. The Israel-Hamas War further exposed Hasan's hypocrisy, as he inaccurately claimed responsibility for an explosion at Gaza's Al Ahli hospital, which was actually caused by a misfired Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket. Moreover, he placed the \"Gaza genocide\" on par with the Holocaust and Rwanda, suggesting that the perpetrators of these atrocities were not punished, unlike the Israelis. Hasan's claim that the Israelis are not shunned or de-radicalized is disputed, as Hamas, the party responsible for the conflict, has its own brutal methods of dealing with dissent. Furthermore, Hasan's ten-year stint as a presenter for Al Jazeera English, a network funded by the Qatari government with a problematic relationship with Hamas, raises questions about his journalistic integrity and impartiality. Despite spending eight years in this role, Hasan has only occasionally criticized Chinese officials on Uyghurs or prodded Gulf autocrats in the abstract, yet his fixation on Israel dominates his career. This singular focus on one small country on a planet of nearly two hundred does not emerge from nowhere; it finds its biggest audience during significant events like October 7. Hasan's fixation on Israel may stem from ideology or personal conviction, but it is clear that his media presence has been shaped by a consistent bias towards criticizing Israel while showing leniency towards other political actors.",
  "summary": "Mehdi Hasan criticizes Ed Sheeran over Gaza, yet his own record raises questions about the consistency of his moral standards.",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}