| Rania Khalek | |
| Native Name: | رانيا عبد الخالق |
| Native Name Lang: | ar |
| Occupation: | journalist |
Rania Khalek is a Lebanese-American journalist, video host and presenter. She hosts the program Dispatches on BreakThrough News and has contributed to The Nation,[1] The Grayzone,[2] The Intercept,[3] Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting,[4] The Electronic Intifada,[5] RT,[6] Salon,[7] and others.
She was born and raised in the United States.[8] Her parents are both Lebanese and migrated to the US in the late 1970s.
She has appeared as a guest on Piers Morgan's talk show Piers Morgan Uncensored. On May 12, 2024, she appeared with Emily Schrader, Elica Le Bon and Thomas Hand[9] [10] [11] and on September 23, 2024, she appeared with Alan Dershowitz and Gideon Levy.[12] [13]
She called out Ta-Nehisi Coates at a speaking event following the publication of his 2014 article "The Case for Reparations" in The Atlantic, criticizing a segment that praised the payments of the German government to the State of Israel as a model for reparations.[14] [15] He later recalled of the incident, speaking after the publication of his 2024 book The Message in which he criticizes Zionism and Israel: "I remember there was a woman who got on the mic and yelled about the role of Palestinians in that article." He continued, saying, "I couldn’t quite understand what she was saying. I mean, I heard her, but I literally could not understand it. She got shouted down. And I’ve thought about that a lot, man. I’ve thought about that a lot.” In response, Khalek wrote: "Wow, it turns out I played a role in pushing Ta-Nehisi Coates to look more deeply into Palestine," and asked anyone reading who knew him to say "thank you for listening and for his willingness to learn and speak out."
She attended a conference in Damascus organized by the British Syrian Society, an organization founded by Bashar al-Assad's father-in-law.[16]
In September 2019, Khalek visited Syria to attend the 3rd International Trade Union Forum. Also attending were Max Blumenthal, Yasemin Zahra, a representative of US Labor Against War, Paul Larudee, head of the Syrian Solidarity Movement and Ajamu Baraka. In an opinion article for Al Jazeera, Muhammad Idrees Ahmad criticized Khalek for inviting her social media fans to admire the "Breathtaking View in Syria" in an image geotagged Saydnaya. According to Bellingcat journalist Nick Waters, from where she was standing, Khalek would have been able to see the Saydnaya prison, a site where 13,000 people were executed between 2011 and 2015 according to Amnesty International. Idrees Ahmad said Khalek's caption was "about as seemly as inviting viewers to admire a stunning sunset over Auschwitz".[17] According to Scottish-Egyptian activist and writer Sam Hamad, writing in The New Arab, Khalek and Blumenthal were "literally part of the same propaganda machine utilized by Assad and Russia to fully normalize their genocide".[18]