Soccer Dad

Portraying hamas

Barry Rubin writes about a recent Washington Post article about Hamas:

Here's a good article on Hamas and how it's a barrier to peace, with no illusions about the group moderating or being misunderstand. The article also points out how Hamas is responsible for continuing sanctions on Gaza and is uninterested in trying to improve the living standards of is own people.

Perhaps I'm nitpicking but I wasn't so impressed with the article. There were two paragraphs that bugged me.

First, in the middle, there was this:

Hamas, which was founded as an Islamist alternative to the Palestine Liberation Organization and whose charter calls for Israel's destruction, is considered a terrorist group by the United States for its sponsorship of suicide attacks and the launching of thousands of missiles and mortar shells from Gaza into Israel. The group draws financial and material support from Iran and Syria. Hamas says its attacks on Israel are defensive and a legitimate tactic in Palestinian efforts to establish a homeland.

"[I]s considered a terrorist group?" It is, by definition, a terrorist group for precisely the reasons stated. Second, when the reporter uses the term "legitimate tactic," he allows that claim to stand unchallenged.

At the end of the article we read:

According to officials from Hamas and analysts of the group, those conditions are unlikely to be accepted, cutting as they do to the core of the group's ideology and strategy. Just as there is no sense that the language of Hamas leaders has come close to meeting those requirements, despite talk of a possible compromise, there has been no obvious effort by Mitchell's team to try to reshape the conditions.

What does "reshape the conditions" mean? And why does the article seem critical that Mitchell won't? I'd understand the term to mean "water down the demands" and I see no reason for Mitchell to do so. And why should Mitchell "reshape the conditions?" So Israel will be forced to deal with an unrepentant terrorist organization?

Finally, the reporter, Howard Schneider compares Mitchell's work here with his work with the IRA. There's one important difference. The IRA wanted England gone from Northern Ireland; Hamas (and Fatah, for that matter) want Israel gone. Period.

I can't disagree that Schneider hit on the points that Barry Rubin emphasized. I still find his packaging problematic.

UPDATE: Barry Rubin e-mails:

It's rather strange that you wrote a piece criticizing a Washington Post piece mainly by pointing out I had praised it. It sort of looks as if you were going out of your way to criticize me whereas you could just have criticized the article in the Post. What I said was that it was a good article. Of the last 100 pieces I have read on Hamas it is the only one that comes close to being both accurate and critical of them. The cases you mention are the author making very careful "balanced" remarks. The author is not supposed to give his opinion so he says that the US considers Hamas a terrorist group. That is quiite proper for him to write. He also provides one sentence giving the Hamas expressed opinion. This, too, is proper journalistic procedure. What we often see is the reporter associating himself with the viewpoint of a terrorist group, giving it far greater space, or misstating such groups' positions to make them seem more moderate than they are. Again, he provided proper balance, not the usual phony balance which is the minimum needed to point to as "fair" when everything else in the article is an anti-Israel or anti-American, etc., polemic. The same applies to the Mitchell point. The author states a fact. There has been no talk of changing the terms by which Hamas could enter negotiations. This is an important point to make because it shows that the standards demanded of Hamas are not being eroded and that U.S. policy is standing firm on this issue. There is no hint tha the author is advocating that these principles should be changed. Have we gotten so used to blatant editorializing in an article that we demand it when a reporter does his job properly?. In short, the criticisms made of the article simply don't stand up. Moreover to pick these minor points out of an otherwise good article--without mentioning at all the positive points--seems to me to be unfair to the journalist. Again having seen incredibly slanted articles on a daily basis it was refreshing to see one that was analytically good and even went far in pointing out the truth about Hamas. I'm not angry but if we are going to be credible we must evaluate what is written fairly and also respect the standards of proper journalism, whose frequent violation is the bane of the contemporary media. When a reporter writes a good piece that should be appreciated rather than attacked because not every word is as one would like it, especially if one is suggesting professional journalists write a polemic in the opposite direction. Fairness and balance is good enough for me.

I had identified the two elements of the article I intended to criticize before I saw Prof. Rubin's post. When I read his post, I had two choices. I could ignore it or I could include it in my post to let my readers know that my assessment was at odds with that of an expert. I had no intention of criticizing Prof Rubin indirectly.

I should have done a better job of integrating what I intended to write with what Prof. Rubin wrote. Or once I read his post, perhaps I should have considered a third choice: not posting on Howard Schneider's article at all.

Crossposted on Yourish.

Posted by SoccerDad at October 9, 2009 12:38 AM