The terrorist smear

Here, Sean Hannity proves why he and Fox News represent the lowest lows in American 'investigative' journalism. This one is just hilarious: "...the growing list of the presidential candidate's anti-Israeli supporters like Hamas and their influence on Obama's Middle East policy." Hamas influences Obama's ME talking points?! WTF?!



If you're going to use the "once a terrorist / associated with terrorists / knew families whose sons might have been terrorists depending on who you talk to, always a terrorist" line of reasoning, then at least be consistent. If you're going to rake Khalidi over the coals for having been close to some PLO-ers during the 1970s, then in the name of balance and objectivity, we probably need to look at the other side of the story.

Menachem Begin, Prime Minister of Israel who signed the Camp David Accords and invaded Lebanon, was a leader in the Irgun, a Zionist militia in Palestine during the '30s and '40s and predecessor to the right wing Likud party of modern Israeli politics. The New York Times described Irgun as a "Jewish terrorist organization" in a 1947 article. Begin, who came to Palestine from Eastern Europe in 1942, assumed leadership of the organization, and took it in an increasingly anti-British direction.

Yitzhak Shamir, Prime Minister of Israel from 1983 to '84 and again from '86 to '92, was a card-carrying member of the LEHI, or the Stern Gang as the British called the group who assassinated the UN mediator to mandatory Palestine, Count Folke Bernadotte, and the British deputy minister of state for Middle East Affairs. The Stern broke from the Irgun after the latter advocated cooperation with the British against the Nazis; Stern leadership pledged their support to Germany during World War II in a bid to allow for increased Jewish immigration into Palestine.

Ariel Sharon, Israeli Prime Minister from 2001 to '06, was also Defense Minister during Israel's excursion into Lebanon in the eighties. During his watch, Lebanese Maronite Christian militias overran two Palestinian refugee camps, Sabra and Shatila. Sharon was found "personally responsible" by the official Israeli commission. In 2000, Sharon senselessly marched with a troop of 1,000 Israeli soldiers to the Temple Mount, declaring that it would never leave Israeli control; as a lifelong proponent of "Greater Israel," Sharon's provokation could be seen as an attempt to derail the Oslo process, which was more or less dead by that time anyways.

The foundational assumption behind the Obama-Khalidi-PLO-terrorist smear is that the PLO (and Hamas for that matter) are synonymous with Al-Qaeda and the Iraqi insurgency -- it's all the same jihadi terrorist violence with the same goal of a global Islamic caliphate and the same hatred for Jews and Americans. The flip side of that is that our allies are the bastions of freedom in the Middle East. McCain loved him some Musharraf, and look how that turned out. The Saudis have never made particularly good bedfellows either. And of course Israel can do nothing wrong -- you didn't need Hannity to remind you of that -- despite the fact that their country has been led by terrorists.