A telegram channel named for Hamas’ Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades heralded Osama bin Laden, the founder of al-Qaeda, on the seventh anniversary of the terror leader’s death. Hamas, an antisemitic U.S.-designated terrorist group that rules the Gaza Strip, is sometimes inaccurately portrayed in the press as merely a Palestinian nationalistic “resistance movement” to Israel; often minimizing or obfuscating on the group’s Islamist agenda.

A May 8, 2018 report by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), a non-profit organization that translates Arab, Russian, and Iranian media, noted that the telegram channel “published several messages about the late Al-Qaeda leader” on May 2, 2018. That channel has approximately 3,000 members. Additional eulogies were also posted on a separate Hamas forum.

Messages on the channel called Bin Laden a “lion,” an “educator” and an “innovative imam,” among other accolades. One message stated: “”On that day [May 2, 2011], we lost one of the knights of our nation, which only Hamas lamented at the time.” Attached to that message were several death notices that the group published following Bin Laden’s May 2, 2011 death.

Images of Bin Laden, along with several poems, were also posted on the channel and in Hamas’s forum.

Al-Qaeda and Hamas both call for Israel’s destruction and the genocide of Jews. The two groups also share an Islamist agenda; opposing secular rulers and seeking to impose their brand of Islam upon every segment of society. Matthew Levitt, a former U.S. Treasury Department terror analyst, noted in his 2006 book Hamas: Politics, Charity and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad, that Bin Laden identified “Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin,” as one of his “prominent ideological influences.” Bin Laden’s brother-in-law, Muhammad Jamal Khalifa, even maintained “relations with Hamas members” while working for a a charity called the Muwafaq Foundation in the Phillipines.

Levitt also pointed out that although the two groups don’t formally share an affiliation, “there is enough significant overlap in Hamas and al-Qaeda financing networks that informal person-to-person cooperation” in the area of funding is “probably inevitable.”

Nonetheless, some policymakers and pundits often seek to downplay Hamas’ Islamist sympathies and agenda. Journalists such as Robert Fisk and Max Blumenthal often whitewash Hamas’s objectives and tactics. In truth, the two groups—while having some significant differences—still have many important similarities, including a hatred of the West and Israel and a virulent antisemitism.

A Palestinian journalist who died from wounds received during the Hamas-led “Great Return March” has been identified as a terrorist. Ahmed Abu Hussein, a journalist who worked with Bisann News and Voice of Palestine Radio, was a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a U.S.-designated terror group, according to an April 30, 2018 report by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (ITIC).

Hussein was wounded on April 13, 2018, during violent demonstrations at the Israel-Gaza border. His death was announced on April 25, 2018. Hamas and other terrorist organizations have encouraged thousands of Gazans to cross the border with Israel, interspersing armed operatives among unarmed civilians. As CAMERA noted in an April 26, 2018 JNS Op-Ed, Hamas hoped that by purposefully exposing Palestinians to injury and creating a no-win situation for Israel, the so-called “Great Return March” would delegitimize the Jewish state (“Palestinian Nazi Flags and Hamas Talking Points”).

The majority of the Palestinians killed by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have been linked to terrorist groups (“Think Tank: Majority of Gazans Killed During the ‘Great Return March’ Were Terrorists,” CAMERA, April 26, 2018). And Ahmed Abu Hussein can be added to that list.

ITIC noted that after Hussein’s death, the PFLP hung “death notices…saying that the organization mourned the death of its member” and red “PFLP flags were also carried” during his funeral. On April 28, 2018, the PFLP held a memorial service for Hussein the Jabalia refugee camp. Images of top PFLP leaders, such as Abu Ali Mustafa, “decorated” the service. The PFLP’s “armed wing” is named after Mustafa, a co-founder of the group who was killed by the IDF during the Second Intifada (2000-05).

ITIC’s report featured pictures of the memorial service, as well as posts from Hussein’s Facebook page, in which he celebrated PFLP terror attacks.

Several media outlets that reported Hussein’s injury and subsequent death merely described him as a reporter. The New York Times, The Associated Press, The Washington Post, and others referred to Hussein as a “journalist.” So did the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), which called Hussein a “Palestinian photographer for the Gaza-based Voice of the People Radio.” CPJ omitted that Voice of the People Radio is affiliated with the PFLP—a fact listed in ITIC’s report.

The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) portrays itself as a U.S. civil rights organization. However, as numerous terrorist analysts and the U.S. government itself has noted, CAIR is an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2009 Holy Land Foundation (HLF) retrial—the largest terrorism financing case in the nation’s history. NBC, however, has treated the organization as a credible source on the subject of Islamic extremism.

In an April 23, 2018 article, “John Bolton presided over anti-Muslim think tank,” NBC reporter Heidi Przybla used CAIR to attack Bolton, who is currently the National Security Adviser to President Donald Trump, and Gatestone Institute.

NBC quoted CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper, who claimed that Gatestone is “a key part of the whole Islamaphobic cottage industry on the Internet.” Hooper asserted that Bolton’s association with Gatestone was “very disturbing.”

However, NBC failed to inform readers about CAIR’s troubling history. As CAMERA noted in an Aug. 9, 2016 Washington Times Op-Ed, at least five former staff or lay leaders from CAIR have been indicted, arrested or deported on weapons or terrorism-related charges. In an out of court settlement with the website www.anti-cair-net.org, the council did not contest assertions that it was founded and funded by some members of Hamas—a U.S.-designated terrorist group that rules the Gaza Strip and calls for the destruction of Israel.

As CAMERA’s July 2009 Special Report “The Council on American Islamic Relations: Civil Rights or Extremism?” pointed out, CAIR’s executive director, Nihad Awad, stated in 1994: “I am in support of Hamas.” Richard Powers, an Assistant Director for the FBI, even sent a statement to members of the U.S. Congress, stating that the bureau was ceasing official cooperation with CAIR and its executives until the council could resolve, “Whether there continues to be a connection between CAIR or its executives and Hamas.”

Hooper himself was once quoted as saying that he “wouldn’t want to create the impression that I wouldn’t like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future (Minneapolis Star-Tribune, April 4, 1993).”

Prior to working for CAIR, Hooper worked for the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), which fundraised for Hamas in America. In 2004, IAP was held civilly liable in a federal district court for financing the terrorist group. That ruling was upheld in 2008. At the HLF trial it was revealed that “numerous donation checks … made payable to … IAP” were “deposited into HLF’s bank account,” in some cases with the memo line, “for Palestinian Mujahideen [holy warriors] only.”

As CAMERA has highlighted, CAIR has a history of skewing statistics and data—a charge that NBC levels at Gatestone. NBC’s treatment of CAIR as a credible source—while failing to disclose disturbing aspects of the organization’s history and ties—evidences careless reporting.

A majority of Palestinians living in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) fear the Palestinian Authority (PA), according to a poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey (PSR). The PA, dominated by the Fatah movement, rules the West Bank and is a major recipient of U.S. and international aid.

The PSR survey was published on March 27, 2018. It noted that 65 percent of Palestinians answered “no” when asked if “people in the West Bank today [can] criticize the authority without fear.” The answers to other poll questions led PSR to conclude that “a shadow of pessimism, frustration, and despair” has left the Palestinian public “with no trust in its leadership and very little optimism about the medium or even the long-term future.”

Nearly two-thirds of Palestinians polled believe that the PA security services eavesdrop on phone calls of citizens and “more than 60% believe that such eavesdropping is done illegally and without any just cause.” This finding comes after accusations by a former Palestinian intelligence head that PA President Mahmoud Abbas setup an electronic surveillance unit in mid-2014 to monitor political opponents and critics (“Abbas’ government sued over alleged CIA-backed wiretapping,” Feb. 6, 2018, Associated Press).

Indeed, dissatisfaction with Abbas is extremely high, according to the poll, which noted that 68 percent of the public demand that the octogenarian ruler—who is currently in the thirteenth year of a four-year term—resign. Abbas also controls the Fatah movement and the Palestine Liberation Organization. As CAMERA has detailed, he has become increasingly autocratic in recent years; suppressing dissent, imprisoning journalists and consolidating complete control over the entities that he leads (see, for example “The Growing Autocracy of the Palestinian Authority,” Oct. 7, 2017, The Times of Israel).

Abbas has refused to hold elections—and perhaps for good reason. According to the PSR survey, if an election were held, Ismail Haniyeh, a top leader of Fatah’s rival, Hamas, would defeat Abbas. Similarly, Fatah’s Marwan Barghouti, a younger Palestinian leader and rival, would also defeat Abbas. Barghouti is imprisoned in Israel for carrying out several terror attacks during the Second Intifada (2000-05).

Although Abbas is unpopular—a mere 33 percent said that they were satisfied with his performance—the Fatah movement is slightly (36 percent) more popular than Hamas (31 percent). A minority of Palestinians (23 percent) said, “Palestinian democracy is good or very good.” By contrast, a majority (57 percent) said, “democracy in Israeli is good or very good.”

The PA itself is extremely unpopular. PSR reported: “Perception of corruption in PA institutions stands at 78% and a majority of 52% views the PA as a burden on the Palestinian people while 41% view it as an asset for the Palestinian people.”

The survey also showed that 48 percent of Palestinians polled in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip support “an armed intifada” (violent uprising) against Israel. PSR elaborated:

“When given three options to choose from, the largest percentage (35%) chose armed resistance as the most effective means of establishing a Palestinian state next to the state of Israel while 31% chose negotiation and 25% chose non- violent resistance effective. Three months ago, 44% indicated that armed resistance is the answer and 27% sided with negotiation. When the public is asked if it supports each of the following the responses were different: 74% support joining more international organizations; 63% support popular non-violence; 48% support a return to an armed intifada; and 49% support dissolving the PA. Support for a return to an armed intifada is higher in the Gaza Strip (67%) compared to the West Bank (39%), in cities and refugee camps (51% and 49% respectively) compared to villages/towns (34%), among the religious (55%) compared to the somewhat religious and the non-religious (43% each), among those who are opposed to the peace process (74%) compared to supporters of the peace process (34%), among men (52%) compared to women (45%), among those whose age is between 18 and 22 (58%) compared to those whose age is 50 years or above (48%), among Hamas supporters (74%) compared to supports of Fatah and third parties (36% and 42% respectively), among students (70%) compared to housewives and laborers (43% and 45% respectively), and among holders of BA degree (54%) compared to holder of elementary education and the illiterates (35% and 48% respectively).”

The public opinion poll was conducted from March 14-17, 2018 and used a sample size of 1200 adults that were interviewed face to face in 120 randomly selected locations. The survey has a margin of error of three percent. PSR’s survey can be found here.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has proxies serving as “sleeper cells” in the U.S., according to sworn congressional testimony. Yet, U.S. news outlets have largely neglected the story.

Several “intelligence officials and former White House officials confirmed to Congress” on April 17, 2018, that “Iranian agents tied to the terror group Hezbollah have already been discovered in the United States,” according to a Washington Free Beacon article by reporter Adam Kredo (“Iranian-Backed ‘Sleeper Cell’ Militants Hibernating in U.S., Positioned for Attack,” April 17, 2018). The officials told members of Congress that it would be “relatively easy” for Iran to use its proxies to carry out attacks in the U.S.

Hezbollah is a Lebanese-based, Iranian-backed, U.S.-designated terrorist group. Hezbollah calls for Israel’s destruction and has murdered hundreds of Americans, as CAMERA detailed in its 2016 backgrounder on the organization.

Michael Pregent, an adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute, a Washington D.C.-based think tank, and a former intelligence adviser to U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus, told the U.S. Congress that Hezbollah was “as good or better at explosive devices than ISIS,” “better at assassinations and developing assassination cells” and “better at targeting.” Indeed, as CAMERA has noted, former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage referred to Hezbollah as the “A team” of terror groups.

Although the majority of analysts testified that Iranian proxies like Hezbollah pose a threat to the U.S. homeland, many news outlets failed to report their testimony. A Lexis-Nexis search showed that The Washington Post, The Baltimore Sun, USA Today, among others, did not report the analyst’s remarks. By contrast, The Washington Free Beacon provided a detailed report.

The failure of journalists to cover the story is striking considering the gravity of the testimony. Emanuele Ottolenghi, a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and author of The Pasdaran: Inside Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, testified:

“A survey of cases prosecuted against Hezbollah operatives in the past two decades shows that the terror group remains a threat to the security of the U.S. homeland and the integrity of its financial system. Iran and Hezbollah sought to carry out high casualty attacks against U.S. targets multiple times. Additionally, they built networks they used to procure weapons, sell drugs, and conduct illicit financial activities inside the United States.”

Ottolenghi noted that U.S. law enforcement arrested two Hezbollah operatives, Samer El Debek and Ali Mohammad Kourani, indicting them in May 2017 for “casing targets for possible future terror attacks.” Both were members of Hezbollah’s External Security Organization (ESO), also known as the Islamic Jihad Organization (IJO) or External Security Apparatus (ESA). ESO is tasked with carrying out terrorist attacks and other operations, such as money laundering and drug smuggling, throughout the world.

The two Hezbollah operatives—both naturalized U.S. citizens—underwent military training in Lebanon and procured explosives, as well as night-vision goggles and drone technology. Ottolenghi testified that El Debek scoped out potential targets, including New York’s John F. Kennedy and La Guardia International Airports and the U.S. Armed Forces Career Center in Queens, New York. In 2007, Iranian proxies planned to blow up the fuel tanks at JFK airport, but were thwarted by authorities.

Nader Uskowi, a former policy adviser to the U.S. Central Command, told Congress that Iran is believed to have an auxiliary fighting force of around 200,000 militants spread across the Middle East—many of them battle hardened from fighting in the Syrian Civil War. “It doesn’t take many of them to penetrate this country and be a major threat,” Uskowi said. “They can pose a major threat to our homeland.”

Such a threat warrants coverage from news providers; not silence.

Israeli officials have recently disclosed that an Iranian drone shot down by the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) on Feb. 10, 2018 was armed. However, many major U.S. news outlets have failed to provide readers with the update.

The Iranian-made unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), or drone, was shot down thirty seconds after it entered Israeli airspace. The IDF also responded by carrying out airstrikes on the T-4 base in Syria where the drone was launched. An Israeli aircraft was downed in the incident, which received extensive—if often flawed—media coverage.

As CAMERA detailed, several major U.S. press outlets carried headlines that confused the order of events and/or minimized Iran’s role in provoking the incident. The Washington Post, for example, initially filed a report with a misleading caption that falsely claimed that Israel used the Iranian drone attack as a “pretext” for its response. Following intervention by CAMERA, The Post corrected (“Updated: The Washington Post Corrects Claim That Israel Used Iranian Drone as ‘Pretext’ for Attack,” CAMERA, Feb. 11, 2018).

On April 13, 2018, the IDF revealed that the drone was armed with explosives. The IDF stated:

“An analysis of the flight path and operational and intelligence research performed on parts of the Iranian UAV that entered our territory on February 10 shows it carried explosive material and its mission was to carry out a destructive operation.”

Israeli officials said that they did not know the drone’s precise intended target in Israel. The Times of Israel noted that the IDF’s statement, “came after the airstrike in Syria this week — blamed on Israel by Syria, Iran and Russia — reportedly killed 14 people, including seven Iranian military advisers, one of whom was a colonel in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps air force.”

Israel’s admission, and its recent targeting of Iranian bases in Syria, is seen as evidence of increasing tensions between Tehran and its proxies and Jerusalem. Iran’s rulers routinely call for the destruction of the Jewish state.

Yet, many U.S. news outlets have failed to update readers with the IDF’s important disclosure. USA Today, The Baltimore Sun, and others who covered the February 10th incident, did not note that the drone was armed when it violated Israeli airspace. The Washington Post, which provided several reports at the time of the drone attack, merely reprinted an Associated Press dispatch (“Israel Says Iran Drone Downed In Feb Was on Attack Mission,” Feb. 13, 2018).

Those who count on the media for balanced coverage of the Middle East and Israel deserve the full story—and too many in the press aren’t providing it.

Two days before Holocaust Remembrance Day, an official Palestinian Authority (PA) TV channel broadcasted claims that Jews “colluded with Hitler.”

On April 10, 2018, PA TV aired an interview with Hani Abu Zeid, a Palestinian political analyst and commentator. The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), a non-profit that translates Arabic, Persian and Russian media, reported on the incident:

Hani Abu Zeid: “The [Israeli] soldier, the officers behind him, and even the Israeli war [sic] minister, and above him, Netanyahu should stand trial as war criminals. The accumulation of cases, one after the other… The Israelis will end up shedding tears of blood [out of regret] for their current conduct. They used to cry about the false Holocaust in the days of Hitler, the scope of which was not that large. I’d like to point out…”

Interviewer: “The [Holocaust] is a lie that they spread worldwide.”

Hani Abu Zeid: “Yes, it was a lie, and many Israelis, or many Jews, colluded with Hitler, so that he would facilitate the bringing of settlers to Palestine.”

As the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has noted: “Holocaust denial and minimization or distortion of the facts of the Holocaust is a form of antisemitism.”

Yet, Holocaust denial remains commonplace in much of the Arab world, including in Palestinian society and culture. PA President Mahmoud Abbas, for example, claimed in his doctoral dissertation—done under Soviet auspices—that the Holocaust was exaggerated.

PA TV itself often broadcasts Holocaust denial and revisionism. As Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), a non-profit organization that monitors Arab media in the West Bank, eastern Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, detailed in an April 11, 2018 report. PMW noted that recent PA TV broadcasts edited out pictures of American soldiers liberating concentration camps and “erased the images of corpses in striped concentration camp uniforms…and presented photos of the remaining dead bodies as Arab victims of Jews in 1948.” PA TV also “claimed that the Jewish fighters burned Arabs in ovens in” Israel’s 1948 War of Independence.

These lies and attempts to appropriate the Jewish people’s suffering in the Holocaust demean the historical record. They also obscure an important fact: Palestinian Arab leaders, such as Haj Amin al-Husseini, actively colluded with Hitler and sought the destruction of worldwide Jewry.

As CAMERA noted in a Dec. 27, 2017 Washington Jewish Week Op-Ed, Abbas has called al-Husseini “a pioneer.”

Fatah, the movement that dominates the West Bank-ruling Palestinian Authority (PA), has named a children’s summer camp after a terrorist. Major media outlets routinely describe both Fatah and the PA as “moderate.”

An April 7, 2018 report by Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), a non-profit organization that monitors Arab media in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria), the Gaza Strip and eastern Jerusalem, provided details.

PMW cited an article in Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, the official daily newspaper of the PA, which noted:

“The Fatah Movement’s Jenin branch, in cooperation with [Fatah’s] Jenin region leadership, held the third coexistence camp under the title Martyr Abu Jihad Camp (i.e., terrorist, responsible for murder of 125), and this was at the [PA] National Security [Forces] camp Horsh Al-Saada. The camp will last for an entire month, three days a week, and 600 students from the [Fatah] High School Shabiba will participate in it.”

Abu Jihad was the nom de guerre of Khalil al-Wazir, one of the founders of Fatah. Among other atrocities, al-Wazir planned the 1978 Coastal Road Massacre, in which Palestinian terrorists murdered 38 civilians—11 of them children. He also oversaw the assassination of U.S. diplomats in Khartoum, Sudan, in March 1973. In total, an estimated 124 Israelis were murdered in terrorist attacks that al-Wazir planned and/or participated in.

Israeli commandos killed al-Wazir on April 16, 1988. Yet, Palestinian officials frequently herald him as a hero, celebrating his crimes. Al-Quds University in Jerusalem has an Abu Jihad museum that honors the murderer. The university is supported by the PA and receives grants from European governments. It also has a partnership with Bard College, a university in New York (“Palestinian University Honors Terrorist With ‘Cultural Event,’” CAMERA, Feb. 16, 2016).

As CAMERA has noted, the current Vice President of Fatah, and the deputy to PA President Mahmoud Abbas, is a man named Mahmoud al-Aloul. Al-Aloul served as al-Wazir’s deputy and is also nicknamed Abu Jihad. His February 2017 ascension to Fatah’s number two post was widely ignored by major media outlets like The Washington Post and USA Today.

The press often describes Fatah as “moderate,” ignoring its persistent support, political, social, economic and otherwise, of anti-Jewish violence. As CAMERA has highlighted, Palestinian summer camps, sports tournaments, T.V. shows—even street names and clothing stores—frequently glorify those who murder Jews.

In a speech four days after the Op-Ed in an official PA daily, Fatah and authority head Mahmoud Abbas claimed “we are fighting terrorism more” than the U.S. (“Abbas decries ‘big conspiracy’ facing Palestinian cause,” The Times of Israel, April 11, 2018). Most Western press outlets ignored Abbas’ assertion—and not a single one has reported on Fatah’s summer camp plans.

(Note: The following is an excerpt of a full-length article in the Spring 2018 issue of Jewish Policy Center’s inFOCUS Magazine)

In his 1985 book Double Vision: How The Press Distorts America’s Views of the Middle East, the American-born Israeli writer Ze’ev Chafets catalogued the ills that plagued U.S. news media coverage of the Middle East in general, and Israel in particular. Chafets, who had served as the director of Israel’s Government Press Office, noted that “the choices that have shaped the American press’s approach to the Middle East in recent years have been influenced by a complex mixture of inexperience, parochialism, radical chic, economic self-interest, U.S. government manipulation, and the strong-arm news-management techniques of the Arab world.”

More than three decades since Chafets’ book first appeared, Western media coverage of Israel has increasingly come under fire from writers, analysts and organizations that charge the Fourth Estate with an ingrained bias against the Jewish state. And indeed, there is much that the press gets wrong about Israel. In key ways, the media fails to provide readers with a full and accurate depiction of the country.

The principle problem is narrative. Like all people, journalists are not immune from having their own preconceived notions warp their analysis. As Matti Friedman, a former Associated Press reporter, noted in a Nov. 30, 2014 Atlantic Monthly article about media bias and the Middle East, ”the news tells us less about Israel than about the people writing the news.” He’s right. It also tells us a lot about how the news gets reported.

As both Chafets and Friedman have observed, Israel is the victim of an obsessive media focus. The country of eight million receives a disproportionate level of coverage thanks, in no small part, to the safety and freedom that it provides the press in an increasingly unsafe region—and world – that is filled with governments and groups who menace – and sometimes murder – reporters. As Friedman noted in an Aug. 26, 2014 Tablet Magazine article, the AP alone had “significantly more” correspondents covering Israel than it had in “China, Russia, or India, or in all of the 50 countries of sub-Saharan Africa combined,” and higher than the total number of employees in all the countries in which the so-called “Arab Spring” erupted. This fixation has a distorting effect that is complicated by a narrative that is widely embraced by many in the press.

Israel, the thinking goes, is an obstinate nation that exaggerates—and even creates—many of the threats that menace it. Israel could have peace if only it wanted to. By contrast, the Palestinian Arabs are seen as a native people oppressed by a Jewish colonial entity. Accordingly, Palestinian acts of terrorism are excused—even celebrated by some—as “resistance.” This line of thinking—what Chafets called “radical chic” in the 1980s—is not new. But acceptance of it has grown.

Read the rest of the article here.

A high-ranking Palestinian Authority (PA) official, Mahmoud al-Habbash, has said that Hamas is sending civilians to die in violent demonstrations along the Israel-Gaza border in order to influence media coverage. Habbash serves as the Supreme Sharia (Islamic law) judge and an adviser on Islamic affairs to Mahmoud Abbas, the President of the PA.

Mahmoud al-Habbash’s remarks were made in an April 6, 2018 sermon at PA headquarters in Ramallah and were subsequently translated by Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), a non-profit organization that monitors Arab media in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and eastern Jerusalem.

Hamas has helped orchestrate the so-called “Return March,” in which thousands of Gazans violently demonstrated—some with molotov cocktails, burning tires and firearms—along the border with Israel. As CAMERA detailed in an April 4, 2018 Daily Caller Op-Ed, those committing violence are purposefully interspersed alongside civilians—in order to create casualties. Hamas hopes that by using human shields and causing the deaths of their own people, international public opinion—often influenced by uncritical media reports—will single out Israel for opprobrium.

Yet, many major U.S. news outlets have played into Hamas’ objectives by failing to note the Gazan-based terror group’s strategy. In his televised sermon, al-Habbash said:

“The Palestinian people… doesn’t care about those [Hamas] with ‘the emotional stories of heroism,’ those with the slogans of heroism – slogans that when you hear them, you think that the people saying them are inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque after they liberated it. And afterwards you discover that they’re only selling illusions, trading in suffering and blood, trading in victims, [saying]: ‘You Palestinians, our people, go and die so that we’ll go to the TV and media with strong declarations.’ These [Hamas] acts of ‘heroism’ don’t fool anyone anymore.”

The Fatah movement, a long-time rival of Hamas, dominates the PA. Al-Habbash’s comments illustrate the deep cynicism of both groups. Although his top religious affairs adviser admitted that Hamas is trying to create civilian casualties for propaganda purposes, on March 30, 2018, PA President Abbas claimed that Israel was “fully responsible” for the deaths of human shields used by Hamas (“Abbas says Israel fully to blame as Gaza death toll rises,” The Times of Israel, March 30, 2018). Nonetheless, Abbas was in the audience when Al-Habbash delivered his sermon and didn’t express a word of disagreement with his adviser.

PMW’s report on Al-Habbash’s comments can be found here.