OP-EDS BY TERRORISTS: VERY TRENDY. Barry Rubin reviews--and fisks--4 op-eds by the latest belles lettres.

A Tale of Four Op-Eds: The Media's Cooperation with Hamas' Public Relations' Campaign

By Barry Rubin

“The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims,” proclaimed the Communist Manifesto a century and a half ago. “They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.” But this was before the age of public relations. Here is how it’s done today.

Hamas leaders now write op-eds in the leading American newspapers either concealing completely or greatly distorting their group’s aims. The newspapers are complicit in this process by accepting articles which either have nothing to do with the real Hamas or at least are full of demonstrable lies. While it can be argued that many op-eds contain untruths or that it is not the editors’ job to make such judgments, the Hamas pieces go far beyond the other op-eds being published.

Equally disturbing is that the fact that on this matter the op-ed pages are not really balanced. While these newspapers publish op-eds which criticize Hamas as part of an analysis of U.S. policy--say, a piece by Dennis Ross urging U.S. support for Fatah’s West Bank government--they do not seem to run op-eds that challenge directly Hamas’s misstatements or which provide a comprehensive look at the true nature and activities of Hamas.

Recently, the three main city-based newspapers in America—the Washington Post, New York Times, and Los Angeles Times--ran op-eds by Hamas leaders. First, an identical article by Ahmed Yousef, an advisor to the man who had headed the Palestinian Authority, appeared the same day, June 27, in the Washington Post and New York Times.

This is an extremely unusual development and it turned out, according to Washington Post editors, that Hamas’s public relations’ agent had fooled them by not informing either newspaper that the other was publishing. It was not the last time that Hamas would fool them.[1]

The idea of the op-ed article is to let an individual or group express its opinion directly, without the mediation of the newspaper’s reporters or editors. In this sense, the Yousef pieces were not op-eds and should not have been published. The reason is that they had nothing whatsoever to do with the thoughts or actions of Hamas. They were, rather, merely free advertising copy.

Hamas is a radical Islamist group which seeks the extinction of the state of Israel through terrorist means. It is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, a point we will return to later. Hamas is very anti-Western and anti-American. The group uses antisemitic imagery, encourages children to become suicide bombers, seeks an Islamist state roughly along the lines of those in Iran or in Afghanistan under the Taliban, and says or does other things that do not fit with Western democracy.[2]

One would never guess any of these things, however, from the June 27 op-eds. They seemed to have been written by a public relations’ agency and one can doubt that anyone in the Hamas leadership even read them, much less agreed with them. Since these articles are completely disinformation, they do not reflect Hamas’s doctrines, policy, or strategy. As a result, they are worthless for anything other than mobilizing support for the group and disguising its nature. This is not the purpose of op-ed articles.

What Yousef wrote was a remarkable example of—well, one cannot find a better word than the strangely fitting “chutzpah” to describe it. He asked for U.S. support for Hamas, without any change in Hamas’s program or acknowledgement of past error, of course. Hamas was presented as an example of American-style democracy at work. The Hamas coup against its Fatah coalition partners is presented as necessary to save Gaza from the “horrific” civil war which Hamas itself helped set off. Hamas is portrayed as the victim of Fatah terrorism, not mentioning of course Hamas’s own acts of violence. Fatah is presented as an American and Israeli puppet group acting against the Palestinians’ “thirst for political freedom.” One can only wait with bated breath the future free elections Hamas will hold.

Yousef then raises a new theme which we will hear more of later: Hamas is the moderate, al-Qaida are the radicals.[3] This theme is already being parroted in the American media, as in the Los Angeles Times story from Gaza of July 13: “Hamas says it disavows Islamic radicalism but faces tension between its religious hard-liners and pragmatists who want to convince the West that it is not a political mask for jihad.”[4]

But Yousef’s clear intention is to appeal to Americans by suggestion that al-Qaida kills Westerners while Hamas only murders Israelis. He states,
“I defy [Hamas’s critics] to demonstrate one instance in which Hamas's military structure has struck against any force outside the theatre of the occupation. The struggle has always been against the Israeli agenda of ethnic cleansing and conquest. Hamas is a movement of Palestinian liberation and nationalism -- Islamist, yes, but in the sea of contending faiths that is the homeland, where is the sin in loving one's creed?”

This paragraph is worth serious analysis. First, of course, it signals subtly (though no innocent observer will notice) that Israelis can be killed anywhere since for Hamas all of Israel is the “theatre of the occupation.” Second, he certainly cannot mention Israel’s prior withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and plan to pull out of most of the West Bank—not to mention Israel’s peace offer at the 2000 Camp David summit—because they belie his claims. Third, he claims for Hamas the leadership of Palestinian nationalism, thus stealing Fatah’s clothes. And finally, he equates being an Islamist—demanding a state totally ruled by the rulers’ interpretation of Islam—as equivalent to loving one’s religion. Hamas is reinvented as Southern Baptists.

What is most interesting of all, though, is the idea that Hamas only attacks Israel and thus has nothing against the United States. This is deliberately misleading. As noted above, Hamas is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Hamas slogan in this regard has been that it is the job of Hamas to eliminate Israel and the job of its allied Muslim Brotherhoods elsewhere to overthrow the existing regimes and replace them with anti-American Islamist ones. In Lebanon, a special case, Hamas supports Hizballah. Thus, the disinterest in attacking other targets is not due to moderation or potential friendship but merely a division of labor. Hamas has a big enough job without taking on other assignments. And even given all this, Farfur—the Hamas version of Mickey Mouse—told the kiddies on Hamas television that the group’s ultimate goal was a world ruled by Islam.[5]

Then, even in the context of his argument so far, Yousef comes up with a whopper which I am willing to wager would only provoke mirth among Hamas leaders: “Palestinians want, on their terms, the same thing Western societies want: self-determination, modernity, access to markets and their own economic power, and freedom for civil society to evolve.”

Well, no, Hamas wants total victory, Israel’s destruction, and an Islamist state. Unless it gets that outcome it is willing to sacrifice self-determination (rejecting a two-state solution, or at least defining self-determination only in terms of getting everything), modernity (does Hamas want a `modern’ Western-style society or even a modern Jordanian or Egyptian-style one? No), economic progress (it is willing to see Gaza flattened in pursuit of its endless armed struggle), and freedom (any freedom outside of Islamic norms will be squashed). This is merely trying to appeal to Westerners at one of their most gullible weak points: Hey! We’re just like you. We want our children to be happy (then why teach them that being a suicide bomber is the highest of all callings?) and to be prosperous. As President George Bush said, “We all want the same things.”

Everything is blamed on the United States, of course, and its embargo against the Hamas regime. But of course Yousef cannot confront the real issue: even if Hamas had given the most hypocritical lip-service to recognizing Israel in principle as part of an eventual peace agreement, the embargo would have fallen within days. Hamas could easily have ended the pressure, even with the sort of wink-nod, English-only statements that Yasir Arafat did for the PLO. Hamas did not want to do this because its advantage was its intransigence. And its intransigence is what it is paying public relations’ people to conceal, with the help of the Washington Post and New York Times.

Compared to the twin sweetness and light offered by Yousef on the East Coast is the fire and brimstone delivered in a snarling op-ed by Mousa Abu Marzook on the West Coast through an op-ed in the July 10, 2007 Los Angeles Times. Perhaps Marzook’s approach should be welcomed since it gives a far better feel for Hamas’s real thinking than Yousef’s invocation of the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and good government club. Maybe this is designed to convince us of the fabled moderate/hardliner split in Hamas? Or perhaps this is simply unmediated by a public relations’ professional. He simply wrote it himself.

First, though, it is amusing to see the sanitization of Marzook’s own bio. Here is how the Los Angeles Times introduces him in July 2007: “Mousa Abu Marzook is the deputy director of the political bureau of Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement.” But when the Washington Post introduced him in January 2006 it included the following relevant information about his being “indicted in the United States in 2004 as a co-conspirator on racketeering and money-laundering charges in connection with activities on behalf of Hamas dating to the early 1990s, before the organization was placed on the list of terrorist groups. He was deported to Jordan in 1997.” It might be interesting for contemporary readers to know that he was indicted concerning crimes in the United States in connection for raising money for terrorist attacks, with the evidence overwhelmingly against him.

From his safe haven in Syria, the Los Angeles Times give him free rein to hold forth on such topics as:

--Hamas rescued pro-Palestinian BBC journalist Alan Johnston not as “some obsequious boon to Western powers” but to restore law and order in Gaza. But as a Saudi journalist pointed out Hamas is just using the issue to promote its image, as Saddam Hussein and Iranian leaders have done in the past with hostages who they previously were involved in taking. After all, “HAMAS formed the Palestinian government before the recent coup, and its militias were deployed everywhere wielding the same power they demonstrate now in the Gaza Strip, that is, when the British reporter was kidnapped. Why did HAMAS not seek to release the reporter at that time?”[6]

As for Hamas being the party of law and order, ending the factional violence in Gaza, I have just finished reading Khaled Hosseini’s remarkable new novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns about the blood-soaked, tragic recent history of Afghanistan. One character declares:

“Look around you. What do you see? Corrupt, greedy Mujahideen commanders, armed to the teeth…declaring jihad on one another and killing everyone in between—that’s what. At least the Taliban are pure and incorruptible….They will clean up this place. They’ll bring peace and order. People won’t get shot anymore going out for ilk. No more rockets! Think of it.”[7]

But that didn’t work out too well either.

--“Hamas has never supported attacks on Westerners, as even our harshest critics will concede….” Well, not exactly. Hamas has rejoiced at many attacks on Westerners and has incited violence against America and the West rhetorically. It just has specialized in murdering Israelis, and any Westerners who get in the way.

--“Yet our movement is continually linked by President Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to ideologies that they know full well we do not follow, such as the agenda of al-Qaeda and its adherents.” Actually, I’ve never seen anything like this, it is simply another Hamas fable. To argue Hamas is less extreme than al-Qaida doesn’t amount to much. Even more important, while al-Qaida may be more horrible than Hamas and its allies, al-Qaida isn’t going to take power anywhere. Hizballah, the Iraqi insurgency, and the Muslim Brotherhoods are far more threatening in that regard. On a strategic level, Hamas and its friends are more dangerous than Usama bin Ladin and his minions.

--“We deplore the current prognosticating over `Fatah-land’ versus `Hamastan.’ In the end, there can be only one Palestinian state.” Actually, given Hamas’s policies, there may not be any Palestinian state. But we know what he means: Hamas must conquer all.

--Why is the West discriminating against Hamas? Other armed struggles have been accepted and gained nations. “Nor can any deny the reasonableness of our fight against the occupation and the right of Palestinians to have dignity, justice and self-rule.” The problem is that unlike virtually all those earlier struggles, Hamas defines “occupation” as another nation’s existence which it wants to wipe out. If Hamas—or Fatah for that matter--was merely interested in building a Palestinian state consisting of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and east Jerusalem, the problem would have been solved years ago.

The problem, of course (though one would never guess it from these op-eds) is that Hamas is genocidal toward Israel; radical Islamist toward its own people; uses terrorism; is allied with Iran and Syria; and is part of a broad movement trying to seize power in the region (and in its more ambitious moments the whole world).

--“Why should anyone concede Israel's `right’ to exist, when it has never even acknowledged the foundational crimes of murder and ethnic cleansing by means of which Israel took our towns and villages, our farms and orchards, and made us a nation of refugees?” Well, Israel has apologized, been self-critical, and examined a lot—while Hamas and the Palestinian movement has never reconsidered anything or acknowledged any mistake other than insufficient militancy. But of course no matter what Israel says or does will not change Hamas’s world view or behavior the tiniest bit. What he is really saying here is that Israel has no right to exist and that there is no way to alter this fact.

--“The writings of Israel's `founders’ — from Herzl to Jabotinsky to Ben Gurion — make repeated calls for the destruction of Palestine's non-Jewish inhabitants: `We must expel the Arabs and take their places.’" This is of course a total lie but in today’s atmosphere can readers be expected to know anything about this matter? And of course Israel’s acceptance of a two-state solution and wish to withdraw, or indeed its withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, will never be acknowledged.

--“Israel does exist, as any Rafah boy in a hospital bed, with IDF shrapnel in his torso, can tell you.” Yes, he explains, I am aware that Israel exists. That is precisely what I am working so hard to change. And as for the casualties, they are generated by such little things as Hamas-sanctioned terror attacks on Israel and rocket firings. Without these things there would be no violence. And when he concludes that the Palestinians are “an occupied population” he fails to mention that his organization is in power precisely because the occupation of the Gaza Strip ended, even Israeli control over its border with Egypt across which Hamas brings in arms.

But why go on? I know Marzook and his friends are lying, you know it, but do hundreds of thousands of readers of the three leading city-based newspapers know it? Is this the kind of information they are given in the news columns, editorials, and op-eds? To some extent, yes, especially in the Washington Post. Yet they are told the data necessary to understand this far less than they should be, often interspersed with apologias if not for Hamas than for Fatah.

Yet there is one more detail worth mentioning. This is not Abu Marzook’s first op-ed. Take a look at what he wrote in the Washington Post on January 31, 2006. Back then he, too, wrote about good government, “addressing the needs of the people,” fighting poverty and all that stuff:

“Alleviating the debilitative conditions of occupation, and not an Islamic state, is at the heart of our mandate….Our society has always celebrated pluralism in keeping with the unique history and traditions of the Holy Land. In recognizing Judeo-Christian traditions, Muslims nobly vie for and have the greatest incentive and stake in preserving the Holy Land for all three Abrahamic faiths. In addition, fair governance demands that the Palestinian nation be represented in a pluralistic environment. A new breed of Islamic leadership is ready to put into practice faith-based principles in a setting of tolerance and unity.”

Not a single “sons of pigs and monkeys” phrase in sight here. It’s all about transparency and everyone living in peace. So has Abu Marzook changed since then, perhaps his feelings hurt by U.S. sanctions? Nope. His group is now in power. It has always made its aims clear in Arabic, now he sees no need to hide its true goals even in English.

Perhaps he is more extreme because he is hanging out in Damascus and not sitting in Gaza having to figure out how to feed and pay all those people. But that doesn’t mean that Hamas within the Gaza Strip is more moderate. At best some of its leaders don’t see how a little public relations’ campaign aimed at the West can do any harm as long as it does not affect Hamas’s policies, strategies, and goals. This gives us the bizarre picture of Israel transferring fuel and supplies to a regime which fires rockets at its territory daily and openly proclaims a desire to wipe it off the face of the earth.

And ironically, Western pressure to make sure that food, supplies, and even money continues to flow to the Gaza Strip will make it easier for Hamas to maintain its stances and stay in power. The same applies to Western media whitewashes of Hamas and its behavior as Gaza’s ruler.

But as it becomes clear there will be murdered repression and no more free elections in the Gaza Strip, as women are forced into Islamist-approved behavior, and children are taught to view Jews as sub-humans and Christians as sworn enemies in the public schools, what will the op-eds and the news coverage tell us then?[8]

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[1] I would speculate that if any other group had done such a thing, the newspapers would bar it for a period of time or take other actions. In this, as in so many other things, Hamas gets special treatment.

[2] An example of Hamas’s official antisemitism is the new children’s show character Nahoul the bee who tells the children: “We will take revenge upon the enemies of Allah, the killer of the prophets and of the innocent children, until we liberate Al-Aqsa from their impurity.” These are traditional Muslim anti-Jewish formulae. Translated by MEMRI, July 16,2007,No. 1657.

[3] Actually, in some ways Hamas is now more radical than Islamic Jihad. For the latter wants to conciliate Hamas and Fatah, while Hamas wants all power for itself. See the interview with Islamic Jihad’s leader Ramadan Shallah, al-Hayat, June 25, 2007.

[4] See my article, “The Flanagan Method,” .

See also Barry Rubin, “How to Rationalize an Islamist Dictatorship: As done by the Associated Press,” June 30, 2007 .

[5] For example, one character explains on a Hamas children’s show: “Islam will spread to all parts of the earth from one end to the other and justice and good and kindness will spread. Did history witness a time period better than that when Islam ruled?” Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook, "Terror Mouse" still on Hamas TV Kids’ show still promoting world Islamic rule,” Palestinian Media Watch, May 11, 2007.

[6] Tariq al Humayd, Al-Sharq al-Awsat, July 7, 2007.

[7] Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns (NY, 2007), p. 245.

[8] Even before I could distribute this article events proved these points to be true. Despite promises of amnesty, at least nine Fatah members have been reportedly murdered by Hamas in Gaza within two weeks of its takeover. AP dispatch in Haaretz

Barry Rubin is Director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center , Interdisciplinary Center university and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal . His latest books are: The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley) and The Truth about Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan).

Technorati Tag: Israel and Hamas and Barry Rubin and Ahmed Yousef and Mousa Abu Marzook and Media Bias.