CNN political commentator Van Jones has sparked outrage with comments he made about children who have been murdered in the ongoing Israeli military assault and genocide in Gaza.
Jones made the comments during a recent appearance on Real Time With Bill Maher while discussing online influence campaigns centering on the conflict.
Jones claimed that countries like Iran and Qatar have been engaging in social media campaigns designed to direct young people's opinions against Israel by pushing "dead Gaza baby" imagery online.
Jones told Maher that these influence campaigns result in a situation in which:
“If you are a young person, you open up your phone and all you see is dead Gaza baby, dead Gaza baby, dead Gaza baby, Diddy, dead Gaza baby, dead Gaza baby, dead Gaza baby."
"That’s basically all you are seeing.”
Jones paused for effect when saying "Diddy" to posit that the ongoing criminal case against Diddy is the one and only story able to penetrate this constant "dead Gaza baby" social media feed.
The "joke" received uproarious laughter from the audience, and immediately sparked outrage.
Among those who excoriated Jones were journalist Mehdi Hasan, who tweeted:
"I'm trying to think what would have happened to a public figure in America if they had joked about the horrific images of dead Israeli victims of the Oct 7th attack on a TV show in the days after Oct 7th."
"And whether a studio audience would have laughed."
Amid the uproar, Jones took to X to issue a mea culpa.
Jones wrote:
"I was trying to raise awareness about foreign adversaries creating chaos online - which is undermining democracy everywhere."
“But what I said was easily misunderstood, and the way I said it was flat-out insensitive. Babies are dying every day in Gaza..."
"To the people living in fear and burying family members every day, of all ages — I apologize."
Jones is correct that several countries have been using bot and AI campaigns to spread disinformation about events in Gaza in an effort to sow discord online and influence elections worldwide.
Iran is among them, as is Russia. But crucially, so is Israel.
And it is also true that Jones has been paid to make public appearances at events in support of Israel's military assault on Gaza, where relief workers in the regions say one Palestinian child is killed every hour on average.
Taken together, it's unsurprising that Jones' apology has done basically nothing to quell the outrage his comments sparked.
Jones should reconsider what he "jokes" about in the future, because literally nothing about this is funny.
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