Monday, February 17, 2020
Elder of Ziyon
Meet
Muhammad Shehada – the Forward’s (not so) new columnist and Hamas apologist
When
the Forward announced at
the end of last year that they were “adding five contributing columnists” to
write for their op-ed pages, I felt that professor Deborah Lipstadt had gotten
a rather bad deal. As a highly regarded scholar, she was by far the most
prominent among the new columnists, and the Forward rightly noted that
she is also widely known outside academia ever since she “famously vanquished
Holocaust denier David Irving in court after he sued her for libel.” But now
this fierce fighter against antisemitism was listed just above professional
Hamas apologist Muhammad Shehada.
For
Shehada, this is of course a great line-up. Almost exactly five years before he
officially became a Forward columnist alongside Deborah Lipstadt, he had
proudly posted
what he called “a selfi with the ex-Prime Minister Of #Gaza and the leader of
#Hamas: #Ismail_Haniya.” The photo shows Shehada smiling and with his hand on
the shoulder of Ismail Haniyeh, one of the veteran leaders of the Islamist
terror group Hamas.
So
it’s quite pointless to get upset
about Shehada writing articles that whitewash Hamas. The Forward and other media outlets
– notably the Israeli paper Ha’aretz –
that publish him regularly do so precisely because Shehada skillfully poses as
a likeable and eminently reasonable progressive Palestinian who ardently
defends Hamas as a legitimate group that must not ever be
condemned for terrorism, while at the same time pretending to be all for some
kind of vague kumbaya-style coexistence.
As
far as Shehada is concerned, “Hamas incurred the ‘terror’ label for political reasons,” and it would only be fair if everyone
realized that the thousands of
rockets
that have been launched from Gaza since Israel withdrew from the territory
should be dismissed as
“Hamas’s occasional projectile attacks,”
while the violent Hamas-orchestrated border riots incited
with murderous antisemitic slogans should be appreciated as a “non-violent grassroots protest.” And in any case, if there ever is anything for
which Hamas might deserve a slightly raised eyebrow, it’s Israel’s fault. You
can see that idea nicely reflected in the hyperlink for Shehada’s recent Forward
article: https://forward.com/opinion/439846/israel-is-clearing-the-way-for-more-violence-by-demonizing-moderate/ -- it’s of course Israel that “is clearing the
way for more violence.”
But
while Shehada considers Hamas as a legitimate Palestinian group that deserves
to be defended, he has some really harsh words for the Palestinian Authority
and Mahmoud Abbas, which he has denounced as
“tyrannical, careless and unpopular.”
Shehada’s
eagerness to serve as a Hamas apologist while also pretending to be vaguely for
peaceful coexistence (presumably under the benevolent rule of Hamas from the
river to the sea) imbue his usually very well written articles with a marked
disingenuity. Camera highlighted
some of the omissions and distortions in several of his articles last year. But
the question who Muhammad Shehada really is, or what he really stands for,
seems also worthwhile asking given that, for a young man from Gaza who appears
to be on very friendly and familiar terms with a senior Hamas leader, he has
managed very quickly to establish himself as a regular contributor for a major
American Jewish site like the Forward – for which he has written
regularly since January 2018 –
and Israel’s Ha’aretz – for which he has written regularly since July 2017.
It
seems that Shehada first tried to
make a name for himself as a writer in English in May 2016. Nowadays Shehada
usually presents
himself as “a writer and civil society activist from the Gaza Strip and a
student of development studies at Lund University, Sweden,” as well as a former
“PR officer for the Gaza office of the Euro-Med Monitor for Human Rights.”
However, when Shehada started out in mid-2016, he chose a
very different biography: “Born in Egypt, raised in diaspora, Palestinian by
blood, Egyptian by birth. With progressive endeavours towards democratic
reforms and deradicalization, religious tolerance and coexistence, social
equity and feminism, I aspire to construct an intellectual debate that corrects
the misconceptions about the Middle East and offers a clear picture of
Palestinian daily life, which will be my main focus.”
So if
Shehada was “raised in diaspora,” where did he grow up? Perhaps he regards Gaza
as some kind of “diaspora,” because he seems to have spent at least part of his
childhood and his teen years in Gaza. This is at least what he claims in an article
marking the anniversary of the end of Operation Cast Lead, where Shehada offers a harrowing account of
living through this war in 2008/09 as a fourteen-year-old.
There
are several noteworthy points regarding this article from January 2018. First,
it was published by Ali Abunimah’s Electronic Intifada – and Abunimah,
who is an outspoken supporter of Hamas, can be counted on to publish only
articles by authors he considers as reliable allies. Secondly, the article
offers a glimpse of Shehada’s life in Gaza: while he refers to “a family house
in Cairo,” he writes that in Gaza, his family lived in the Tal al-Hawa area, which
– though he doesn’t mention it – is regarded as a fairly affluent neighborhood
not far from the Hamas-dominated Islamic University. Indeed, Shehada’s family
lived in a house that even had underground parking, and they owned a car.
It
seems that Shehada eventually went to study
computer engineering at the Islamic University. At the university, he became friends
with a murky figure who makes an appearance in the work of British antisemitism
researcher David Collier. In the course of a project that focused on supposedly independent
“activists” from Gaza with a sizeable social media following, David encountered
Walid Mahmoud/Walid Mahmoud Rouk,
whose “reporting” from Gaza always seemed to echo Hamas propaganda. More
bizarrely, Walid Mahmoud was involved in, and even administering, Facebook
pages followed by tens of thousands of supporters of British Labour leader
Jeremy Corbyn. These Facebook pages included countless posts demonizing Israel,
Zionism and Jews. But it turned out that Walid Mahmoud also used his social
media clout to fundraise for all sorts of ostensibly charitable projects that
he claimed to have started – and he actually managed to take in tens of
thousands of dollars in various campaigns (see e.g. here).
Needless
to say, Walid Mahmoud was not accountable to anyone and free to use the money
as he pleased, but as David Collier rightly points out, it is hard to imagine
that Hamas would be unaware of a social media activist in Gaza “with an audience of 100,000s, access to
sympathetic political players in the UK and the ability to generate hard
foreign currency.”
At
one point, Walid Mahmoud apparently also tried to use his fundraising skills for the benefit
of his friend Muhammad Shehada; nowadays the two continue to collaborate on
journalistic projects (see e.g. Walid Mahmoud’s author page at
Al Jazeera, where all articles are co-authored with Shehada).
But
back to Shehada’s time as a student at Gaza’s Islamic University. In 2015, he
was interviewed by a fringe website, where he was introduced as
a “21 year-old engineering student”
and a “a community translator and researcher for outspoken author and critic of
Israel, Professor Norman Finkelstein.”
Given that Finkelstein’s work has made him “a superstar for antisemitic
websites,” it seems safe to assume that having a soft
spot for Islamist terrorists and obsessively hating Israel is a requirement for
working for him.
Shehada
called Finkelstein “my dear friend” in a Facebook post in March 2017, when Finkelstein apparently gave
a talk at Harvard that Shehada joined via Internet. And in fall 2016, when
Shehada was leaving Gaza for Malaysia – much to the regret of his friend Walid Mahmoud – Finkelstein shared on his website an appeal for donations ‘to help
a Gaza student resettle in Malaysia.’
In
this fundraising appeal, Shehada described himself as “a junior 21-year-old writer and civil society activist from the Gaza
Strip” who was planning to “start a program of Business Administration at the University of Malaya,
for the next three years.”
But
luckily for Shehada, his worries about how things would work out for him in
Malaysia proved unwarranted.
When
the veteran Malaysian politician Mahathir Mohamad – who also happens to be a notorious Jew-hater – won elections in
May 2018, Shehada offered his heartfelt congratulations in a Facebook post, accompanied by a photo that showed him shaking
hands with Mahathir Mohamad. As Shehada explained: “Malaysia was one of the most crucial milestones in my life! There, I was
reunited with my heart and soul. It is where I met some of the most
extraordinary friends who overwhelmed me with unique kindness and selflessness. In my first few days in Kuala Lumpur, I was
introduced to the founder of modern Malaysia, Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad, a
sweet dedicated father and lovable grandfather who nonetheless commands
enormous respect. His support of the Palestinian cause is greatly remarkable.”
Well,
it is certainly a fabulous stroke of good luck if you come to a foreign country
as a penniless 21-year-old student and happen to be introduced to one of the
country’s most prominent and powerful politicians right away.
Those
of us who don’t believe all that much in such extremely happy coincidences can
of course only speculate about the connections that got Shehada his lucky
break. The most obvious possibility is that Shehada had contact with the
network of Hamas operatives based in
Malaysia. The country has been described as
“Hamas’ gateway to Asia,” and only a few weeks ago, Mahathir Mohamad was happy to
receive Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh
and to tweet about their get-together extensively (see this thread
and the retweets here
and here).
But
whatever happened to make Malaysia “one of the most crucial
milestones” in Shehada’s life, he apparently didn’t stay
there too long. Instead of studying business administration at the University of Malaya, he seems to have moved on to Sweden some time
in 2017 to pursue development studies at Lund University.
Perhaps
his association with the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor (Euro-Med Monitor) had something to do with this move. As
mentioned previously, Shehada claims in some of the biographies for his op-eds
that he was a “PR officer for the Gaza office of the Euro-Med Monitor for Human
Rights.” In his current Twitter biography, he claims to be “Manager at @EuroMedHR”
and links to the organization’s website,
where he is indeed featured as
the first of the “leadership team,” though it seems somewhat odd that his area
of responsibility is given as “Europe Affairs.”
According
to its website,
the Euro-Med Monitor was founded in 2011 “by a group of European youth from diverse origins, MENA [Middle East &North Africa] immigrants and students living in Europe, who were inspired by the
people’s will to rebel against tyranny and oppression that swept through the
Arab region in 2011.” The organization
emphasizes in bold print that it is “youth-led,” though they make up for it with their Board of Trustees: the current chairman is
none other than veteran Israel-hater
Richard Falk, an ardent supporter of Hamas who also managed to gain notoriety
as a “9/11 truther and promoter of anti-Semitism.”
So in a way, Muhammad Shehada had a point when he described Falk as “legendary.”
Another
not-so-youthful board member is John Whitbeck, who clearly shares
Falk’s hatred for Israel and is apparently also fond of 9/11 conspiracy theories.
* * *
While
it is not clear if Shehada’s eagerness to serve as an apologist for Hamas is
due to any actual ties to the Islamist terror group, it is quite obvious that
even though he managed to leave Gaza, he always stayed in a world where hatred
of the world’s only Jewish state is not just normal, but actually useful for
your career.
Shehada knows and admires an awful lot of people
who hate Israel (and Jews) just as much as Hamas does. For a young man of 26,
he has already a rather promising career, and he may well have bright
prospects. Hopefully he will come to realize at one point that a better Middle
East, which is something he supposedly wants, can emerge only once Islamist
terror groups like Hamas are firmly rejected instead of whitewashed. And
perhaps now that he is officially a Forward columnist – which he
currently notes proudly in his Twitter profile – he will try to widen his
horizon by checking out the work of his fellow Forward columnist Deborah
Lipstadt. He could start by reading this Forward column,
and of course he could read her book on “Antisemitism: Here and Now.”
