CNN anchor Dana Bash clashes with pro-Palestine protester who ambushed her at Jewish event

CNN anchor Dana Bash has hit back at pro-Palestinian protesters who confronted her at a synagogue claiming she was ‘a mouthpiece for the genocide in Gaza’.

Bash was at Main Line Reform Temple in Philadelphia’s western suburbs on Thursday when she was ambushed by ‘Liz’, a Jewish activist from Codepink.

After the protest group posted an edited video to social media, Bash unleashed on them in a post on Twitter.

‘You came to a place of Jewish worship, stood on the Bhima, near the holy Torah scroll, and pretended to be congregants,’ she wrote.

‘You have no shame, no decency, and no clue what you’re talking about.’

Bash was there for a post-election analysis event when Liz wandered over to her saying she was ‘a member of this community’.

‘I want to tell you I’m really upset at what I perceive to be a conflation of anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism,’ she said.

‘This is just not true, and that is very anti-Semitic and very dangerous to our Jewish community and our Jewish values. 

‘When you do that, I just don’t know if you understand that you are being a mouthpiece for the genocide in Gaza. That is wrong. Genocide is the most anti-Semitic thing out there.’

Bash tried to leave, but stopped when Liz showed her something on her phone.

‘This woman is 90 years old, she’s a holocaust survivor. She stands outside the White House every single day because she lost people in the Holocaust and she’s aware that what is going on now is a Holocaust,’ she said.

‘Do you have an answer for me?’

Bash, finally able to respond, said: ‘I’m not here to debate. I will just say one thing. Being anti-Israel, anti-Israeli Government, is not anti-Semitic.’

Liz said the campus protests at universities across the US earlier this year were about that, and she knew because she had been to some and objected to how Bash portrayed them.

‘Have you been to the ones at my house where they call me Zionist trash and call for the intifada against me?’ Bash replied.

Intifada primarily refers to Palestinian uprisings against Israeli occupation, but when used in Arabic can mean any uprising.

Bash’s home was picketed by protesters in July, who shouted at her through a megaphone about her coverage of the UCLA protests.

Bash was at Main Line Reform Temple in Philadelphia’s western suburbs on Thursday when she was ambushed by ‘Liz’, a Jewish activist from Codepink

Bash tried top leave but stopped when Liz showed her something on her phone

Liz replied that she wasn’t going to ‘single out the extremists’ who picketed Bash’s house, but insisted she was wrong to say the campus protests were.

The video then abruptly skipped to Bash saying there were ‘many genuine pro-Palestinian protests’.

‘What I am talking about are when people say “from the river to the sea”, they wanna do away with the state of Israel,’ she said, before the video was cut again.

‘When they go to my house and go to other places…’ she said, before Liz interrupted.

‘Except that the Likud government says “from the river to the sea”,’ she said, prompting a bemused ‘what?’ from Bash.

The video the showed footage of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking Hebrew and a translation claiming he said the line.

Both hardline Israel and Palestinian groups want their respective states to comprise the entire area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

Some in Netanyahu’s cabinet say this to mean never allowing a Palestinian state, and extremist Palestinian groups say it to mean the destruction of Israel.

Moderates on both sides largely want a two-state solution and would never use the line as a war cry, though some use it to mean freedom for all Palestinians in the region through their own country alongside Israel.

After Bash returned fire on Twitter, Liz made another video that was posted on Codepink’s channels to double down.

Liz said she listened to Bash’s talk and got upset because she ‘spent a lot of time conflating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism’.

‘I found that deeply offensive. During you talk I believe you said “we Jews like to argue, that’s what we do and we do it nicely” – and that’s exactly what I did with you.’

Liz said she bought a ticket to the public event and as a Jew had every right to stand on the Bhima – a raised platform where the Torah is read from – ‘to share that holy space with you’.

She told Bash that they were taught growing up that the Holocaust should never happen again, and argued that shouldn’t only apply to Jews but all of humanity.

‘By refusing to show your humanity and use your power as a journalist to cry out for the Palestinian people, you’re the one who is betraying Jewish values, you’re the one who is being anti-Semitic. That is shameful and indecent,’ she said.

Bash’s post was also flooded with Twitter users calling her a ‘genocidal Zionist propagandist’ a ‘propagandist for the murderous Zionist regime’ and claimed she compared protesters to Nazis.

‘If the Nuremberg principles were applied, both she and her Zionist CNN colleague Jake Tapper would be hanged for genocidal propaganda like Julius Streicher was,’ one wrote.

Bash is frequently targeted by pro-Palestine and anti-Israel protesters, including at a Politics and Prose event in September

The veteran broadcaster is frequently targeted by pro-Palestine and anti-Israel protesters, including at a Politics and Prose event in September.

‘After World War II, every single journalist that was complicit in their war crimes was charged. You belong behind bars,’ a protester shouted.

Bash, who is Jewish, appeared at the bookstore in Washington DC to promote her new book, America’s Deadliest Election. 

Tapper, whose house has also been picketed by protesters, defended her at the time, arguing she was targeted because she was Jewish.

‘There is nothing about her coverage of the Israel-Hamas war that is different from most other news coverage, covering both Jewish/Israeli and Palestinian pain,’ he wrote. 

‘This harassment is antisemitism.’

Bash has frequently said it was reasonable to protest against how Israel conducted its military action in Gaza, but making Jewish students feel unsafe on campus was unacceptable.