Khaled Meshaal, the Hamas leader in exile, has rejected any concessions over a future Palestine state at a rally marking the 25th anniversary of the armed Palestinian group.Just to remind you, this is the person that Karl Vick of Time has said supports negotiations.
More than 100,000 Palestinians gathered in the Gaza Strip on Saturday to hear him speak for the first time in the Palestinian enclave.
"Palestine is our land and nation from the [Mediterranean] sea to the [Jordan] river, from north to south, and we cannot cede an inch or any part of it," he said.
"We fight Zionists, not Jews. We fight whoever occupied our land, regardless of religion ... Statehood will be the fruit of resistance, not negotiations," Meshaal said to cheering fans.
The same person that went on PBS to claim that Hamas doesn't support violence against civilians, while today he was speaking in front of a replica of a "M75" rocket that was fired towards civilians in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
The same person that the Globe and Mail called a "moderate" earlier this year.
The same person that the New York Times praised as having a peace plan virtually identical to the PLO's (actually, that might be correct, but not for the reasons the NYT gave.)
The BBC didn't bother noting the quotes above. Instead, they quoted this:
"As long as Palestine is ours and Palestine is the land of Arabism and Islam, we can never recognise the legitimacy of Israel's occupation of it," he told supporters.But without noting the other parts of his speech, a BBC reader may believe that Meshal is referring only to the the territories won in 1967. It would have been nice if the BBC noted explicitly that when Hamas says "occupation" he is referring to all of Israel, and when Hamas leaders say they want to "end the occupation" they mean they want to destroy Israel.
"There is no legitimacy for occupation. Hence, there is no legitimacy for Israel, however long time lasts."
But that is too much to ask from the BBC. And it is typical of Western media outlets who always try to soften the racist, genocidal rantings of terrorist leaders.
You will be hard pressed to find any mainstream Arab leader who is offended by Meshal's speech calling to utterly destroy Israel and ethnically cleanse Jews from their homeland.You will not find any op-eds in the Arab media saying that Meshal is a terrorist, or that peace is necessary, or that negotiations are desirable, or that a Palestinian Arab state cannot realistically encompass all of British Mandate Palestine.
The multiplicity of views common in Western media on any topic is not to be seen in the Arab media on this topic. There are no Arab "Peace Now" rallies in Ramallah or Amman.
To the Arab world, Meshal's Islamist supremacist rantings are completely mainstream.
That is the story that every major media outlet is missing. They are so invested in the false narrative of a moderate Arab majority interested in real peace that they will downplay genocidal Hamas rants and (mis)quote only the parts that can be interpreted as somewhat reasonable.
Here's a photo from the Gaza celebrations you won't see on any of those news outlets:
Hamas is grooming the next generation to be exactly as "moderate" as the current leadership is.