Recognize crude propaganda

Submitted by Salomon Benzimra (Canada), Jan 25, 2006 at 16:55

Anyone knowing the Middle East context and reading Nashat Aqtash's rebranding of Hamas from its well documented history of bloody terror to a lamb suddenly discovering the virtues of peace and dialogue could not possibly be misled by this sham.

And yet, this is precisely what Hamas intends to do: to mislead the gullible Western media by pretending to shed its terrorist core tactics and its ultimate goal of destroying Israel. This is not the first occurrence of such a subterfuge. For years, the Palestinian Authority misled all those blind enough to their real intentions as they were stated daily in their declarations in Arabic.

If the media falls for this crude denial of the true nature of Hamas the region will be, once again, plunged in renewed bloodshed. But this time, more than ever, the media will bear an indirect responsibility for it.

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