Moderate Hamas

 Moderate Hamas

Hamas has been called moderate in the - you guessed it-- New York Times.




Ronn Torossian


Could anyone imagine a mainstream newspaper running an op-ed which called for a violent uprising against the government of Australia? Or against Mexico? Well, there always has to be a first time, right? An op-ed endorsing a violent uprising against the State of Israel ran recently in The New York Times.


The op-ed, by Nathan Thrall of the International Crisis Group, promised and endorsed violence against Israel with its headline “The Third Intifadah is Inevitable.”


It speaks of how bleak the situation is – poor Israel has lost its chance with Abbas, Palestinians have lost hope of ever getting a state, and armed confrontation, a third intifada, is inevitable – and not once does the op-ed blame the Palestinians for the violence it is sure will occur.


Thrall neglects mentioning that the Second Intifada saw over 1000 Israelis killed, as he says Israel is to blame for the coming violence as Israelis “have come to believe they can eat their cake and have it, too.”


Last month Thrall warned that if Israel continues to oppose Palestinian Authority unity between terrorist Hamas and Fatah, it might face Al Qaeda instead of Hamas.


The article quotes the “political head” of an illegal terrorist organization,  with a previous article he wrote where he referred toHamas as "moderate"- fitting for a man who holds an M.A. in political science from Columbia University. Thrall is undoubtedly strengthening terrorist organizations He previously wrote that if Israel doesn't negotiate with Hamas, something worse could come along:


"There [in the Gaza Strip], several years of isolation have led not to the weakening of Hamas but to the strengthening of even more uncompromising enemies of the Jewish state.“ “On Monday, Hamas self-defeatingly sought to bolster its flagging Islamist credentials by mourning the death of Osama bin Laden and praising him as an Arab holy warrior — just days after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ominously warned that 'Israel would not recognize any government in the world that included members from Al Qaeda.' 


"In reality, the likelihood of such a government is slight, but if Israel continues to oppose Palestinian reconciliation, Mr. Netanyahu’s nightmare may become less of a fantasy. Repeating the mistakes of the past will only strengthen Hamas’s Salafi jihadi challengers, who proliferated the last time Palestinians were penalized for their votes and could one day pose an even greater threat to Israel."


Thrall obligingly lets us know that among PA Arabs, “A substantial number would welcome the prospect of an escalation….“They believe that rocks, Molotov cocktails and mass protests pushed Israel to sign the Oslo Accords in 1993; that deadly strikes against Israeli troops in Lebanon led Israel to withdraw in 2000; that the bloodshed of the second intifada pressured George W. Bush to declare his support for Palestinian statehood and prodded the international community to produce the Arab Peace Initiative, the Geneva Initiative, and the Road Map for Middle East Peace.”


In the past, media has reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said The New York Times is one of the greatest enemies of Israel and in a recording spoke of the importance of Public Relations and that he “"absolutely" believed that media could have a very strong effect on world opinion regarding Israel.


Nathan Thrall's op-ed is fomenting, encouraging and supporting violence against the State of Israel –and the New York Times has provided him with a venue to do so.


http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/11858