PrintMay 8, 2011
WaPo grants Hamas immunity from terrorism
Last week, Israel's National Insurance Institute reported that 981 civilians have been murdered by Palestinian terrorist groups since 2000. The vast majority were killed by Hamas and Fatah's terrorist wing, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. Another 17,200 Israelis were wounded in premeditated terrorist attacks on civilian targets.
On a population basis, Israel's civilian death toll from Palestinian terrorism is the equivalent of 40,000 civilian deaths in the U.S -- more than 10 times the 3,000 U.S. fatalities on 9/11 when Al-Qaeda struck the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.
Even as of today, when it's joining with Fatah in a Palestinian "unity" government, Hamas has not renounced its dedication and reliance on violence to meet its declared objective of wiping Israel off the map. A couple of weeks ago, it fired an anti-tank missile from Gaza at a yellow Israeli school bus, killing a child and wounding the driver.
Yet, the Washington Post, in its May 8 edition, tells readers in the lead paragraph of its main article on the front page that Osama Bin Laden, Al-Qaeda's leader, "remained highly active in directing the terrorist group" after 9/11, while on Page A10, the paper refers to Hamas merely as "Gaza's ruling Islamist movement."
Why the accurate designation of Al-Qaeda as a "terrorist group," but use of a much softer, euphemistic labeli for Hamas as merely an "Islamist movement" -- a description that completely overllooks its violent, bloody, terrorist agenda -- past, present and future ?
Hamas has not hesited to liken itself to Al-Qaeda. I In recent days, its Gaza chief, Ismail Haniyeh, called Bin Laden an "Arab holy warrior" and Hamas's supreme leader, Khaled Meshaal, denounced the U.S. killing of Bin Laden as an "atrocity."
Yet, the Post keeps on properly designating Al-Qaeda as a "terrorist" group while using all sorts of Orwellian euphemisms -- "militants," "Islamist movement," "fighters," "activists" -- to sanitize and thus make more acceptable Hamas's real record and real agenda.
What's the difference between these two terrorist organizations?
Go figure.
