Sky News anchor was over live spat with Israeli official: report

A Sky News presenter reportedly had her contract terminated after getting into a heated row with an Israeli ambassador in January.

In an interview with Israeli ambassador Danny Danon, presenter Belle Donati compared Israeli’s war on Gaza to the Holocaust during the live show, causing the network to issue an on-air apology straight after.

Online publication Deadline reports that Sky News chose not to renew Donati’s contract following the interview, and she will not be returning on air.

During the interview, Donati criticised the ambassador’s op-ed he wrote in November, where he spoke about the “voluntary relocation” of Gazans, which Donati described as  “ethnic cleansing”.

“I will not allow it. Ethnic cleansing, that’s a word you used. If you read my article, I spoke about voluntary immigration,” Danon said.

After Danon asserted that he did not mean ethnic cleansing, Donati likened the matter to the Holocaust.

“The sort of voluntary relocation of many Jewish people during the Holocaust, I imagine,” Donati asked Danon, to which the ambassador called for her to apologise. Donati did not.

“In an interview earlier today with Israeli politician Danny Danon, a Sky News presenter made a comparison between Mr Danon’s comments on Israel’s war with Hamas and the treatment of Jewish people in the Holocaust,” Sky News presenter Jonathan Samuels said in the on-air statement.

“Sky News recognised the complete inappropriateness of this comparison and the offensive nature of those comments. Sky News would like to apologise unreservedly for the comparison and to Mr Danon personally for making the comparison.”

Since the broadcast, Donati has not presented Sky News since, and her X account has not been active since January, leaving viewers questioning where she was.

After the interview, Danon revealed he had submitted a formal letter to the Sky News Group requesting for Donati to be terminated as a presenter, equating her comments to antisemitism, saying her comparison drew “inappropriate parallels” between Israel and the Nazis.

The New Arab contacted Sky News and Belle Donati for comment.