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August 2, 2024 - 4:00pm
The Guardian’s obituary of Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh, who was recently assassinated in Tehran, labelled him a “politician” rather than a terrorist, despite him leading a proscribed terrorist organisation.
In the tribute, Haniyeh was described as “burly and genial in demeanour” and a “keen footballer and devout Muslim”. Having lived in Doha, Qatar since 2017, he was the leader of the 15-member political bureau that runs Hamas.
Haniyeh led Hamas — of which The Guardian says “Europe and the US called [it] a prohibited terrorist group” — to political victory in the 2006 legislative elections in Gaza. In the same year, “renegade Palestinian commandos” killed two Israeli soldiers and kidnapped a third, sparking an Israeli invasion which The Guardian says “hardened” Haniyeh’s ideological stance. “We will never recognise the usurper Zionist government and will continue our jihad-like movement until Jerusalem’s liberation,” he said.
He was jailed by Israel three times after 1989. Haniyeh was then deported to Lebanon in 1992 with “415 fellow Hamas activists where they learned suicide bombing techniques from Hezbollah, which they used against Israeli civilians from 1994 onwards.” In 1993, Hamas rejected the Oslo accords and accused Yasser Arafat, head of the PLO, of conspiring with the “Zionist enemy”.
Yet, there is a wide consensus that he was more “moderate” than his fellow Hamas officials and members. In 2007, he was instrumental in the release of the BBC journalist Alan Johnston when he was taken hostage by an Islamist group. Haniyeh went on to gain a doctorate, become dean of the Islamic University and chair Gaza’s Islamic Society Club. In 2018, the US State Department designated him a “terrorist”.
Still, his moderate credentials are further outlined in the Guardian piece: “He hinted at extending a truce with Israel, eschewed ‘global terror’, equated Hamas with America’s 1776 revolutionaries, and even gave interviews to Israeli television.” This vision is, however, contradicted in the following paragraph: “Yet Haniyeh still refused demands from the US, Europe, Israel and the Arab League to recognise Israel, disarm Hamas’s military wing, or abide by agreements signed by the PLO.”
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SubscribeThey forgot to mention “Austere religious scholar”. As Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
Is this article not the sort of pearl-clutching from the ‘woke right’ that Konstantin Kisin has identified?
The left has become highly adept at looking for something ‘offensive’ people or media on the right might have stated and piling in on that instead of centring on the issue itself. Never has that been more obvious than in the last few days. Does the right need to do the same?
My thoughts exactly. Who gives a poop what they say in the Guardian? By platforming the thoughts expressed in that rag, you are indirectly legitimizing it. Stop doing it. The BBC is different IMO because it is an extension of the state.
Wrong. Lots of people are misled by such reporting. It encourages the anti-Israel narrative as well as anti-semitism. And it does so conscientiously. Tantamount to saying that Hitler was more moderate than Himmler. Disgusting, really.
Their role is to groom very young people into the anti-Semitism of today. They use the tool of distributing free copies at universities. This was key to launching the new gender revolution.
It’s funny peering into guardian-world.
Not sure the article is pearl-clutching or taking offence, just finding some amusement in the prejudices & ideological slants of middle class bien-pensants
I hope you don’t pay for it though!
I enjoy the Guardian, as much as I did the Beano as a child. It makes me wide-eyed and even better I’ve worked out a way of blocking the annoying begging pop-ups. You have to laugh.
Clicking through I see the current subheading at the Guardian is “Chief of the political bureau of Hamas, former prime minister of Gaza and ceasefire negotiator.”
“Ceasefire negotiator” is a particularly nice touch. Wouldn’t of hurt a soul. Kind to small children and animals. Lovely bloke.
The Guardian is gonna Guardian It’s Islington’s newspaper of record. To be expected.
To be fair to the Guardian, Haniyeh was a very moderate genocidal maniac; he only wanted to finish the Nazi efforts; but ever so moderately.
How a country murders forty thousand people and counting (mostly civilians it must be noted) and is not ‘terrorist’ shows the meaninglessness of these designations.
What would you do if you were in the Israelis’ situation?
These civilians were not murdered. They were war casualties. A war started by Hamas. The number you quoted was reported by Hamas. Presumably you’d also believe the number of casualties reported by the Islamic State. Or, perhaps you wouldn’t ‘couse they were killed by the wrong people.
What’s the surprise? We’ve spent the last 60 years observing the Left re-institutionalising anti-Semitism or at least reintegrating it into the body politics.
You now hear the mildest and most inoffensive Anglo/European left liberals referring to Zionism. Personally I still don’t understand this level of complacency- it must come from university culture.
‘- it must come from university culture’
It certainly does along with a lot of other nonsense like gender id.
We are all used to bias from the Guardian and BBC newsroom. It is so pervasive that we just accept it as one of the perennial irritations of C21st Britain – but the anti-Israel undertone of recent reporting has serious real-world consequences: Ask any London-based Jew how safe they feel in their own home-town right now.
I have many friends who are former BBC staff, and plenty more of a similar metro-Left, Guardian-reading disposition, and all would be absolutely horrified to be in any way accused of anti-Semitism. Some, if pushed, might admit to being anti-Zionist but all would vehemently deny being anti-Semitic in any form whatsoever.
So, if not antipathy towards Jews, how to explain such outrageous misrepresentations in Guardian and BBC reporting? Refusing to call any Hamas leader a terrorist, even after they’ve just committed acts of inexpressible horror against innocent civilians. In the hours and days after the news of Oct 7th became apparent, they were almost glossing-over the savagery of the attack to segue immediately into concern for Palestinians and how they might suffer in any IDF response.
To make a single slip-up in the tone of your reporting, or the framing of a story, might be forgivable. But it is not an isolated incident – AT ALL. It is persistent and the bias always falls on one side of the debate and never the other. At what point do even the most reflexively pro-BBC/Guardian commentators have to admit that it all starts to fit a pattern?
What sets the Palestinian cause apart from all others? What is the variable that makes this conflict so different? What about it draws a completely different reaction from the liberal-left than any other?”
Most of the protestors who’ve marched in support of Gaza and most who’ve put Palestinian flags on their social media bio, would suggest that they only want peace, but where were they with their placards and flags when Palestinians were being bombed by Bashar Al-Assad?
Where were the demonstrations in support of the tens of thousands of Arabs murdered by Islamic State? When ISIS terrorists occupied Mosul, the Iraqi Army, with US and European support counterattacked in force to dislodge them and ultimately to eliminate them. Many tens of thousands of civilians died – in numbers that DWARF the death toll in Gaza. Why were those innocent victims of terror not worthy of a march through the capital cities of the West, flying Syrian, Iraqi or Libyan flags in support?
When dictators across the Arab world killed thousands of their own citizens, why was that not enough to get students out of bedsits and onto the streets to protest? More than 300 000 Yemenis have been killed by Saudi Arabia in the last 10 years – Civilians deliberately targeted in airstrikes. How is it that we saw no mass protests calling for a ceasefire then, or calls to ban all arms sales?
Whether the marchers – or those in the newsrooms of the BBC and Guardian – would like to admit it to themselves or not, millions of Arabs have been killed by other Arabs without meriting so much as a message of condolence by the progressives of the West.
So, again, what’s different this time? What’s the variable? Is it anything other than, in this instance, the deaths of Arabs can be blamed on Israel? Can be blamed on Jews?
Intrigued Unherd that interested in the nuance in Guardian Obituaries. Reading the whole thing one is left with pretty clear view Haniyah had led a blood soaked, criminal organisation, pocketing significant wealth himself. Also someone brutalised from a young age and repeatedly involved/exposed to murderous actions but who seemed to represent as moderate as it got in Hamas leadership and a potential chance to do some sort of deal to free the hostages.
The Author of the Obituary had written one re: Ayman al-Zawahiri, ex Head of Al Qaeda, and in the first line refers to him as a terrorist. So not clear if the absence of that phrase his or Guardian editorial. Suspect the former. If so then it’s a journalistic freedom not an editorial decision so much and the Author no track record in whitewashing brutal leaders.
Nonetheless periodically Unherd puts out something critical of the Guardian as clickbait and to keep it’s Base feeling subscription worth it. You can almost set a calendar by it.
The author of the Guardian obituary is Lawrence Joffe, who has been studying and writing about the Middle East for many years. Not a supporter of Israel, though he has written sound obituaries of Israeli personalities.
In the midst of the Gaza Slaughter I’m not sure that this piece adds a great deal to our understanding of a ghastly situation.
“Guardian writes slanted obituary” – in other news: bears observed to defecate in arboreal areas; Pope catholic – fresh allegations surface; Grand Duchy rumoured to be “a bit bijou”…
Netanyahu is a terrorist, count the bodies