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We now have clear proof of the adage that a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth can put its boots on.
It comes in the form of an Associated Press report that carried this headline: “Hamas official says group would lay down its arms if an independent Palestinian state is established.”
What a scoop!
It was so sensational that news outlets across America and the world ran with it, including CNN, ABC News and even the Times of Israel.
And why not, it was a breakthrough offer that could bring peace at last, right?
Wrong.
It was a public relations ploy disguised as an olive branch.
The way other organizations swallowed it hook, line and sinker illustrates how Hamas skillfully plays western news organizations and gullible journalists.
The incident also demonstrates how far the AP has fallen from its days as a boring but trustworthy news organization.
In a race to rack up clicks, it has featured the article on top of its online “world” section since Wednesday despite the fact that it’s a dead letter.
The story, based on an interview with a Hamas leader in Turkey by an AP freelancer, was misleading and woefully incomplete.
And it came loaded with the AP’s usual bias against Israel.
It called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government “hard line” for rejecting a Palestinian state.
Meanwhile, Hamas was called a “militant group” and its terrorists described as members of its “military wing.”
To its credit, the Times of Israel saw through the ploy.
In addition to adding other details that undercut the way the AP portrayed the offering as a concession, it reported that the same Hamas official who spoke to the AP, Khalil al-Hayy, delivered a different message to a London-based Arabic paper.
There he said that, regardless of any deal with Israel, the Palestinians would retain their “historic right to all Palestinian lands.”
In other words, Hamas claims all the land “from the river to the sea” and remains deadly serious about wiping Israel off the map.
Although the AP deserves the blame for the distortions, including how it underplayed the conditions the Hamas leader attached, any journalist who read the whole piece should have seen through it.
Even Israel-bashing CNN should have figured this one out.
Certainly the American and Israeli governments did, which is why neither took the interview seriously despite their eagerness to couple a cease-fire with the release of the hostages Hamas is holding.
In truth, the conditions attached to the promise of peace were so onerous that they amounted to poison pills and reveal — as if there was any doubt — Hamas is not serious about ending the war it started.
Border madness
One condition was a return to the pre-1967 borders of Israel, which would mean it would need to relinquish all of East Jerusalem and the West Bank, which, joined with Gaza, would make up the new Palestinian state.
The Golan Heights, which Israel took from Syria in the Yom Kippur War of 1973, also would have to be returned.
The second nonstarter was the demand that all “refugees” who left pre-’67 Israel would have the right of return.
Including all those who left voluntarily or were forced out, plus their descendants, the total would be nearly 6 million Arabs, meaning the end of Israel as a Jewish majority state.
Notably, the AP story did not mention that number or its impact on Israel.
A third condition was that Hamas terrorists would become part of a new Palestinian National Army.
That would mean amnesty for those who took part in the savage brutality of Oct. 7, 2023, and provide them with another chance to kill more Jews.
Seen through the conditions, the interview revealed that Hamas will only silence its guns temporarily and then only if Israel signs its own death warrant.
Although there is no connection between the AP interview and the spread of pro-Hamas demonstrations on American college campuses, both developments serve to underscore the ignorance of many Americans about the Mideast.
And that includes far too many members of the media.
The twin developments also reflect a “blame the Jews” mindset that is part and parcel of the shocking outbreak of antisemitism in the United States and around the world.
It is especially mind boggling to realize this lurch backwards to the ancient hatred came after Israel suffered a terrorist attack that claimed more Jewish lives than any day since the end of the Holocaust.
As for the Hamas double speak, Israelis are long accustomed to the habit of Palestinian leaders saying one thing to English-speaking audiences and something entirely different to Arabic audiences.
Hamas has become adept at the scam, and knowing that is likely what led the Times of Israel to discover the Arabic-language paper where al-Hayya contradicted what he said to the AP.
It was there he stressed that Hamas is still committed to destroying Israel and would remain so even if a cease-fire took place.
Ridiculously ignorant
Yet contrast that reality with the college students who, chorus-like, reflexively repeat the refrain that Israel is the one who is guilty of committing “genocide” in Gaza.
It’s a ridiculously ignorant charge, and the numbers prove it.
The beachfront strip has one of the world’s highest rates of population growth, according to the US Census, and had a prewar population of 2.3 million.
And while the AP cited “local health authorities” to say Israel’s invasion has “killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children,” it doesn’t report that Israel says it has killed more than 13,000 terrorists.
Indeed, that’s not a number you will hear in most American media and certainly not in college protester tents.
It’s as if not a single terrorist has been killed and all those who died in Gaza were innocent.
Even after Gaza health officials, who work for Hamas, lied that 500 civilians died in an Israeli strike on a hospital when no strike occurred, the media still cites whatever numbers they release.
Ditto for their claims of mass famine, which is always just days away, and has been for months.
The repetition by the media and protesters of any scare number Hamas puts out helps explain why its leaders expressed gratitude for the support they get at the demonstrations.
They appreciate having their lies repeated and magnified by American dupes.
To be clear, the loss of a single innocent civilian is tragic, but Israel goes to extraordinary lengths to minimize civilian casualties.
In fact, taking both the Hamas claims of total deaths and the Israeli claims of terrorists killed, it would mean about 40 percent were combatants.
That’s a proportion far better than even the American military achieved in wars that involved urban combat, as this one certainly does.
Oops, sorry.
I apologize for letting facts get in the way of the big lie