Siegel Allows Hamas Advisor to Hang Himself

You almost have to feel sorry for Robert Siegel, host for NPR’s All Things Considered. On Dec. 29, 2008 he was confronted with an assertion from Hamas spokesman Ahmed Yusuf that was so preposterous, bizarre and insane that he had every reason to wonder if he was hearing Yusuf correctly.

It started innocently enough when Siegel asked Yusuf, who serves as an advisor to Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, if the rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip weren’t “guaranteed to bring on this retaliation by the Israelis.”

Yusuf took a quick turn into Alice in Wonderland with his response.

No. No. This has nothing to do with firing rockets because there is no rockets fired. There are collaborators, sometimes they fire based on the Israeli asking them maybe to fire some of these home-made projectiles. They know that Hamas did their best to protect the border and not to let anybody firing rockets.

You read that right.

Yusuf initially tried to assert that no rockets were fired before acknowledging that sometimes collabators launch rockets into Israel — at Israel’s behest. Listeners can hear the disbelief in Siegel’s voice when interrupts Yusuf to ask “But you’re saying that when rockets have been fired out of Gaza, you’re saying that those are being fired by Israeli collaborators whom the Israelis are arranging for them to do that, so that…”

Yusuf tracks into Baghdad Bob territory when he interupts Siegel’s question with a long rambling statement in which he asserts that Hamas

check[s] with those political and militant group[s] who are really showing their commitment. And when we check, well, they – all them denied any of them been firing rockets. So, who been firing these rockets? We don’t have an explanation except from those Israeli collaborators.

Could Siegel have been more forceful in challenging Yusuf’s assertion that collaborators are responsible for the thousands of rockets that have flown into Israel over the past few years?

Maybe, but what would have been the point?

Siegel expressed appropriate disbelief on behalf of his listeners in the face of a preposterous lie, and Ahmed proceeded to fabricate a fantasy of Hamas “investigating” the actual source of these rockets that are “sometimes” fired into Israel and concluding that they are fired by “collaborators.”

Okaaaay.

By letting Yusuf ramble as he did, Siegel allowed his listeners to hear for themselves exactly what type of lies Hamas tells to the world to justify its attacks on Israel.