Haaretz' wishful thinking

On November 8, Ha'aretz had a sensational headline:

Haniyeh: We will accept Israel within '67 borders

The article text, however, didn't really say that Haniyeh would accept Israel. His exact quote was "A Palestinian state will not be created at this time except in the territories of 1967."

Ha'aretz realized that its wishful thinking was once again affecting its news policies and silently changed the headline to

Haniyeh: Hamas willing to accept Palestinian state with 1967 borders

The original headline was cached in Google News for a while, and can still be found in some blogs.

It is obvious to anyone who isn't blinded by ideology that Hamas has no interest in recognizing Israel. Yet there will always be that set of influential people who will ignore the thousands of Hamas statements that explicitly call for the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews and instead desperately parse statements that could be twisted into sort of looking like something less than completely genocidal intent.

Yet even after Haaretz noticed its gaffe, it has repeated it today, with another non-story that it is breathlessly peddling:

Haniyeh recognized Israel in 2006 letter to President Bush

And what did letter say?

Haniyeh wrote in the missive, "We are an elected government which came through a democratic process."

In the second paragraph, Haniyeh laid out the political platform he maintains to this day. "We are so concerned about stability and security in the area that we don't mind having a Palestinian state in the 1967 borders and offering a truce for many years," he wrote.

Haniyeh called on Bush to launch a dialogue with the Hamas government.

"We are not warmongers, we are peace makers and we call on the American government to have direct negotiations with the elected government," he wrote. Haniyeh also urged the American government to act to end the international boycott "because the continuation of this situation will encourage violence and chaos in the whole region."

The exact same thing - Hamas "moderate" plan for the destruction of Israel in stages - is again being hailed by Haaretz as a huge breakthrough.

One would think that they would be somewhat embarrassed by now for continuously being proven wrong about how peaceful Hamas is, but it is difficult to underestimate the hopeful stupidity of the Israeli "peace camp."