Giving A Terrorist The Microphone

I haven't blogged much about the Mideast partly out of a simple lack of time, and because other bloggers and sources are saying more than I usually can. But let me put up a late comment on a piece by Post ombudsman Deborah Howell, A Mideast Maelstrom of Complaints, which took up, among other things, the paper's decision to print an Op-Ed by Ismail Haniyeh. The Post politely calls him the Palestinian Prime Minister but he's also a leader of Hamas, the terrorist organization whose goal is to exterminate Israelis.

Strange fellows get elected sometimes; Haniyeh, Hitler, and the comparison is apt.

To excerpt from comments I sent to the polite and professional Howell when we were talking about some other matters: I had mixed feelings about her column.

Howell certainly gave ample space to people who, like me, thought it was ridiculous to give an editorial platform to a terrorist leader. But I don't think she really grappled with that very fact.  I don't think the Post would run an Op-Ed by a white-race supremacist who heads an organization that bombs black neighborhoods, and if some Postie B-Team somehow let that happen, I don't think the Post would allow such a writer to escape basic fact checking. Haniyeh's piece is filled with nonsense,  including the proposition that Israel's military faces no conventionally armed adversaries and that there's no conflict among Palestinians over who's to rule there. Guess all those Hamas-Fatah shootouts are really celebrations.

I think running the piece showed the lack of a moral compass at the Post. As I said when it ran, American newspapers must have printed some guest columns by Nazis in the late 30's, but eventually most people wised up. Yet here we go again.

Howell cites other, pro-Israeli columns, but Charles Krauthammer writing in favor of Israel doesn't balance a terrorist writing against it. There is no balance to be achieved there. If Rudy Giuliani wrote an Op-Ed on crime, I wouldn't look for a rebuttal from Charles Manson.

Comments

[Terrence]

Great insight on the similarities between Haniyeh and Hitler. Wasn't it "cool" to give Hitler air time in the 1930's, too?

[Christopher Fotos]

Well, there's that whole "America-first" history with Charles Lindbergh etc. leading up to the war. Not pretty. Whether duped or frankly anti-Semitic, there were many Americans who unashamedly admired Hitler and his party in those days. And while I don't want to gratuitously slur anyone's heritage, part of this stemmed from a vibrant German-American culture. People who think American-based Spanish-language media is somehow novel should go back to that period and try counting all the German-language newspapers of the day, for just one example.

[Christopher Fotos]

Well, there's that whole "America-first" history with Charles Lindbergh etc. leading up to the war. Not pretty. Whether duped or frankly anti-Semitic, there were many Americans who unashamedly admired Hitler and his party in those days. And while I don't want to gratuitously slur anyone's heritage, part of this stemmed from a vibrant German-American culture. People who think American-based Spanish-language media is somehow novel should go back to that period and try counting all the German-language newspapers of the day, for just one example.