Danielle Kubes: Gullible western journalists love Hamas’s anti-Netanyahu propaganda

Published Sep 06, 2024  •  5 minute read

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a press conference at the Government Press office in Jerusalem, Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2024. (Abir Sultan/Pool via AP)

Hamas executed six hostages this week deep in the tunnels they dug underneath Gaza, likely because Israeli soldiers were getting too close. The most prominent amongst the bodies that the IDF brought home for burial was Hersh Goldberg Polin, an American citizen. Rachel, his mother, tried to run into Gaza last week, screaming his name with a primal, guttural cry that reverberated around the world, a mama bear searching for her stolen cub. At that point he was almost certainly alive.

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Also in those same tunnels, built and fortified with cash from Qatar and billions a year in Western humanitarian aid, Israeli soldiers brought back a document written by senior Hamas leaders that described their PR strategy. It looks like any communications messaging sheet for political bodies all over the world.

Translated from Arabic, the third bullet point reads: “Continue with the line that Netanyahu is responsible for what happened.”

Sadly, Hamas’ PR strategy is unbelievably successful with a naive western media and political establishment. This document serves as proof for what has become increasingly obvious since this war began 11 months ago — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been singled out as the Big Bad Villain and has been thrust into a cartoonish role of a bloodthirsty, power-hungry leader.

“I can understand that there is a lot of criticism of him generally speaking. But to connect that to the situation right now, I mean he is operating under the most incredible stress and pressure and he is managing Israel’s security according to his best judgment,” Israeli Ambassador to Canada Iddo Moed said when I spoke to him Wednesday afternoon at a National Post editorial board meeting. “And you can criticize that. It’s a democracy so you can always say that’s a wrong decision … all that is fine. But I feel sometimes what people are trying to say is that if you just had another leader everything else would have been different. But that’s just not the case.”

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Don’t get me wrong — I believe Netanyahu must step down as soon as possible. October 7 happened under his watch. He agreed to the Gilad Shalit deal back in 2011 that sent Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar back into Gaza from Israeli prison. Netanyahu underestimated Hamas and appears to have believed the lies that they had moderated. It’s also possible he’s guilty of the fraud charges levied against him. But we also shouldn’t forget he brokered the most significant peace deal of this millennia so far — the Abraham Accords. It’s absurd to single him out as a megalomaniacal Übermensch.

The war in Gaza is not his alone to prosecute. He’s a democratically elected leader with a War Cabinet that until recently held members of the opposition. The majority of Israelis support the direction of the war and are loathe to make security concessions that would result in Hamas remaining in power with the ability to wage another October 7.

Israeli Ambassador to Canada Iddo Moed speaks to the National Post’s editorial board, Wednesday September 4, 2024. Photo by Peter J. Thompson /National Post

Netanyahu is not the problem here. Hamas leader Yahyu Sinwar, one of the key masterminds of the attack, is the problem.

Yes, Sinwar — one would think that Netanyahu is fighting a war with a ghost, so few are the global expectations and demands placed on Sinwar.

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As soon as the murdered hostages were discovered the media and prominent politicians fell right into Hamas’s trap — they immediately blamed Bibi. If you were following the coverage, it appeared that he personally killed the hostages by refusing to compromise. As if Hamas was ready and eagerly waiting to drive home the women and children they kidnapped and he himself blocked it. A sizable minority of the Israeli population, most of whom hated Bibi before the war, also appear to believe this, with hundreds of thousands of people protesting and Israel’s largest labour union briefly striking to pressure the government for a deal.

The top editor pick in The Atlantic this week was “How Netanyahu failed the dead hostages,” by Franklin Foer. Sorcha Bradley wrote a piece on Monday for The Week with the headline “Is Benjamin Netanyahu doing enough to secure release of hostages?” Marsha Lederman wrote an opinion piece for the Globe and Mail on Tuesday titled “Benjamin Netanyahu, you have the power to stop this horrific war.” Ishaan Tharoor on Thursday wrote for the Washington Post “Netanyahu still wants more war.”

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American president Joe Biden even weighed in, saying Netanyahu was not doing enough to secure a deal for a ceasefire and to bring the remaining hostages home.

I see very few headlines, if any, calling out Netanyahu’s counterpoint — a convicted murderer many times over. Just to give an idea of Sinwar’s character, in case planning October 7 wasn’t enough, he once used a keffiyeh to suffocate a Gazan man by the name of Adnan Safur. Another time he killed a Palestinian man, Rasmi Salim, with a rag. He had a gun, he just enjoyed using his hands.

Where are the headlines demanding he immediately drop conditions for a ceasefire and return the hostages as a gesture of goodwill? Where is the global pressure demanding he climb out of his tunnel he so cowardly hides in, surrenders and transfers power to another Palestinian political body to protect his people? Where are the activists marching in the streets for him to resign?

Obviously, the expectations of a democratically elected leader and ally of Canada and America should be higher than a murderer and leader of a registered terrorist group. But it’s as if Netanyahu is making a deal with himself, so alone is he held responsible. I was delighted to see, finally, on Tuesday that the U.S. Justice Department announced criminal charges against Sinwar. It’s a start, at least.

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The truth is, there is nothing Netanyahu can concede, nothing Netanyahu can give up and no demand that Netanyahu can meet that will create a permanent ceasefire or return all the hostages.

“Iran wants to destroy Israel whoever is the prime minister, if it’s (former Prime Ministers Naftali) Bennett or Ehud Barak or (Ehud) Olmert or whoever,” Ambassador Moed said. “So it’s kind of giving the other side, the terrorist, the slack and saying ‘It’s Bibi, it’s because of him.’ And that’s wrong. That’s very very wrong and that’s aggravating.”

Back in November Taher El-Nounou, a Hamas media adviser, told the New York Times that the goal of October 7 was to create a “permanent war” with Israel to keep the Palestinian agenda on top of mind. Hamas will never make a deal for a permanent ceasefire because it doesn’t want a ceasefire — it wants war. It only wants a ceasefire to regroup and rearm. Hamas will never return all the hostages without enormous pressure because they’re the only protection they have. It is Sinwar, not Netanyahu that wants a forever war — and it’s time our media and politicians start realizing it.

National Post

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