American news channel MSNBC has ‘quietly’ removed three Muslim anchors as Israel continues its siege of Gaza after attacks by Hamas last Saturday, a new report has claimed.

The report, published by American website Semafor, has claimed that scheduled appearances by three journalists Ayman Mohieddine, Mehdi Hasan and Ali Velshi were shelved the past week.

Semafor said that The Mehdi Hasan Show was not aired on Thursday despite being scheduled. Hasan has worked for BBC and Aljazeera in the past and is very vocal on X, known as Twitter.

It also said that Mohieddine was set to fill in for broadcaster Joy Reid’s program on Thursday and Friday but the plan was reversed. The Egyptian-American has covered the conflcit for two years.

The report quoted sources to say that Ali Velshi’s slot will instead show another boradcaster, Alicia Menendez. Velshi had recently interviewed a Palestinian authority spokesman .

Apart from being Muslim, the three journalists are considered to be experts on the Palestine-Israel issue.

However, the report also said that an MSNBC official denied that the Muslim anchors had been taken off air. The official said that the network had chosen to stick with more ‘recognisable faces’.

The official added that Hasan’s show has already been taped but was not aired as MSNBC tried to keep its feed ‘up to date’. The official also said that Mohyeldin has been appearing as a guest on other shows on the network.

In line with this, the Guardian, a British newspaper also sacked their own cartoonist Steve Bell who had worked at the paper for over 40 years over the ‘anti-Semitic’ Benjamin Netanyahu cartoon.