There is no such thing as a 'moderate' death cult.
A "moderate" Islamist is like a married bachelor, something that cannot exist in any possible world — except, it seems, in the world of mainstream news media.
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This is an essay written by Joshua Hoffman and Nachum Kaplan of Moral Clarity.
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
Media reporting of Israel’s assassination in Iran of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh has been utterly surreal, and no less pathetic.
Mastheads have lined up to describe him as a “moderate” from Hamas’ political wing, not its military one. You know, the way Joseph Goebbels was just a propagandist, and not a real Nazi.
“Voice Of America,” which is anything but, wrote that “despite the rhetoric, he was seen by many diplomats as a moderate compared to the more hardline members of the Iran-backed group inside Gaza.”
ABC reported that Haniyeh was “head of the group’s political bureau who was seen as a more moderate force in Hamas.”
The BBC described him as “moderate and pragmatic.”
Mind you, this is a man who became a billionaire by, in part, charging a 20-percent tax on all goods smuggled through Hamas’ vast tunnel network underneath Gaza.1 Oh, and he and his Hamasnik colleagues have literally stolen millions of dollars in humanitarian aid from so-called humanitarian organizations trying to get said aid to “the poor Palestinians.”
What impeccable pragmatism.
Other media outlets refer to Ismail Haniyeh as Hamas’ “political leader” — as if the terror group’s political and military wings have absolutely nothing to do with one another. What is the difference between “political” Hamas and “military” Hamas? Nothing, it is just manipulative linguistics that the organization consciously created for the purpose of deception. Because that is how Islamists roll.
All of this is yet further evidence that much of the West does not understand Islamism. To be clear: There is no such thing as a moderate death cult.
Hamas’ 1988 founding charter makes obvious that its raison d’etre (reason for being) is to destroy Israel, kill Jews, and never accept a Jewish state. Its charter’s preamble states: “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.”
On Jews, Article 7 states: “The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: ‘O Moslem, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.’”
So, what does a “moderate” in such an organization believe?
Celebrating Hamas’ unspeakably evil October 7th pogrom, Haniyeh said: “All the agreements of normalization that you (Arab states) signed with (Israel) will not end this conflict.”
A video from October 7th circulated of Haniyeh and other Hamas operatives in Qatar, watching the Hamas-led massacres in real-time with glee, amazement, and cheers — because only a “moderate” would enjoy the scenes of raping girls and women, maiming, beheading, mutilating, and of course, cold-blooded murdering.
Haniyeh’s other choice quotes include delightfully “moderate” things such as: “The Hamas movement will lead intifada after intifada until we liberate Palestine — all of Palestine, Allah willing. Allah Akbar and praise Allah.”
How about this one, which is befitting for a billionaire who lived in a six-star Doha penthouse while Palestinians suffered in misery in Gaza: “The time has come for jihad of the swords; this is the battle for Jerusalem and the al-Aqsa mosque, and not the battle of the Palestinian people, or Gaza, or the people in Gaza.”
We could fill pages with such quotes, but you get the idea, and Islamist propaganda is nothing if not repetitive and boring.
The mainstream media has form on the issue, like we saw in its coverage of the Iranian presidential “election.” Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, was described as a “moderate” and a “centrist.” We are trying not to laugh. There is the Iranian regime, and there are moderates, and there is absolutely zero overlap between the two in a Venn diagram.
Sworn-in to chants of “Death to America” and “Death to Israel,” Pezeshkian said he hoped Iran would have good relations “with all countries except for Israel.” Hmm, we wonder what makes Israel, the world’s only Jewish state, different?
The media, under the influence of Left-wing ideological nonsense, writes these absurdities in a desperate attempt to pretend that Islamism is just another political ideology with both moderate and extreme factions. Only a no-nothing could think such a thing.
Either that, or those writing this are so extreme themselves that even Jihadist terrorists look moderate. This is where it gets sinister. The Woke Left are extremists who, defying all sanity, think that Islamists belong in the oppressed column of their fictional ledger that divides groups into “oppressor” and “oppressed.” Such views are well-represented in much mainstream media.
The media’s anti-Israel bias and sometimes outright antisemitism is part of this worldview. The media presents Haniyeh — an archetype of evil whose demise is a net positive for humanity — as a “moderate” figure so that Israel can be portrayed as negatively as possible. You know, in an excessively aggressive, unethical, blood-thirsty, devilish light — because those damn Israelis just love a good old-fashioned murder, now don’t they?
Predictably, many news outlets ramped up their anti-Israel spin by claiming that his assassination was a “dangerous escalation.” This is patent nonsense. The “escalation” was on October 7th, when Haniyeh’s Hamas sent brigades of terrorists into Israel to slaughter civilians, including women, children, and the elderly. And the “escalation” on the Israeli-Lebanese border followed on October 8th when another Islamist death cult, Hezbollah, started firing missiles and rockets at Israel to support Haniyeh’s Hamas.
Claims that his assassination will make ceasefire and hostage negotiations more difficult are likewise specious. Haniyeh has been involved in hostage talks for the past nine months and they have gone nowhere. In fact, Hamas releasing the hostages and surrendering would bring an immediate ceasefire.
Beyond being the latest display of the news media’s entrenched anti-Israel bias, it also reveals an extraordinary ignorance about Islamism and the threat it poses. This is part of a larger problem in the West: Islamism is an evil force that cannot be reasoned with or accommodated in any way.
Perhaps the fear of acknowledging this is a fear of being labeled “Islamophobic.” They know that there can be no Islamism without Islam, and they are scared of going down that path. It is easier to live in denial.
Yet, guess who is not in denial about Islamism? The Arab Muslim world. Gulf monarchs see Islamists as a direct threat to their kingdoms and their overflowing prosperity. Even those with great sympathy for the Palestinians have no love for the Islamists who have infected and now control Palestinian politics.
They recognize the danger in the West, too.
In 2017, the United Arab Emirates’ foreign minister Abdullah Bin Zayed said: “There will come a day that we will see far more radical extremists and terrorists coming out of Europe because of lack of decision making, trying to be politically correct or assuming that they know the Middle East, and they know Islam, and they know the others far better than we do. And I’m sorry, but that’s pure ignorance.”
The Left-leaning mainstream media does not want to admit this because it clashes with their post-modernist belief that all ideas, cultures, and beliefs are equally valid and, thus, critiquing them (based on cold-hard evidence and a major sample size) can be seen as unfair, immoral, racist, sexist, agist, and — worst of all — Islamophobic. We invite those who believe this to travel from Yemen or Afghanistan to Dubai and see if they can spot the difference.
Alternatively, here is a fun game: See how many successful Islamist countries you can name. Take all the time you need. They are all poor, Medieval-minded failed states or grotesque basket-case theocracies.
The West must stop with the politically correct nonsense that ideology makes no difference. Is it an accident that Venezuela is not as rich as Kuwait despite both having vast oil reserves? Or does it have something to do with the failed socialist ideology it has pursued?
The denial about Islamism being a unique existential threat to the West and ideology that must be defeated — at home and abroad — is deeply concerning. The West’s decline does not have to be terminal. It must return to a belief in good and evil (and one does need to be religious to believe evil exists) and fight for the side that is good.
The unlamented Haniyeh was clearly on the evil side. I wish it were less fundamental than this. Sadly, it is not — so thank goodness Israel gave him a fast-track to his “72 virgins in paradise.”
“Who is Ismail Haniyeh? Senior Hamas leader who leads a lavish lifestyle in Qatar.” The Economic Times.
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Excellent truth. Israel should have never given back Sinai, Golan, one inch of Jerusalem—all acquired during military assault by enemies—for the ‘plight of the poor Palestinian…’ It is a media aggrandized death cult Israel has been forced to enable. No more.
At least the whole " religion of peace" lie has been exposed by their recent " peaceful activities". In time the whole" religion lie" will be exposed and the liberals world will see them for the death cult they are.