Petition Calls For Firing of MSNBC Reporter Over Jerusalem Attack Coverage

A petition on Change.org is demanding NBC News fire reporter Ayman Mohyeldin over his reporting of the shooting of a knife-wielding man in Jerusalem.

Mohyeldin was reporting from live for MSNBC outside the Old City's Damascus Gate last week when he witnessed the Palestinian man attack Israeli police before being shot dead.

"He did not look to be particularly armed. Again, that was confirmed by the fact that the police ultimately removed his clothes," Mohyeldin said.

"[The police] didn’t find any explosive devices on him. I was trying to keep an eye to see if they were taking anything off of his body perhaps," he said. "If they took a gun … there was no gun that was visible. At one point, we can clearly see from where we were standing, from where his body was lying, his hands were open and both of his hands did not have knife."

At that point, MSNBC anchor Jose Diaz-Balart corrected Mohyeldin on air, showing a still shot from MSNBC's own camera with the man clearly holding a knife.

Mohyeldin started backtracking, saying, "The point I was trying to make was that when they flipped the body over... it was at that point that his hands were empty."

The petition has links to other articles on Mediaite and other websites that accuse the Egyptian-American reporter of anti-Israel bias.

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