#896 3/25/18 – Jewish Press This Week: “Hamas Announces ‘Sheikh Yassin Freedoms and Human Rights’ Award”

Jewish Press This Week:  “Hamas Announces ‘Sheikh Yassin Freedoms and Human Rights’ Award”

Article lede:  “… According to the Hamas website, a large number of Arab officials and society leaders attended the award ceremony.”

Does it matter?  I would say, not as much as how the non-terrorist-supporting world, not least the Western media, reacts specifically to the Jewish state of Israel defending itself against terror.  E.g., Times of Israel headline this week:  “UN Rights Council Scorecard:  5 Israel Resolutions, Syria 2.”  Sub-head: “US Ambassador Nicky Haley: ‘When Human Rights Council treats Israel worse than North Korea, Iran and Syria, it is the Council itself that is foolish and unworthy of its name.’”

Fourteen years ago this week, Israel killed Ahmed Yassin, a co-founder of Hamas, and those around him, with a helicopter-fired missile.  This week’s Jewish Press article said he had been “dubbed by Israel the ‘mastermind of Palestinian terror’ and a ‘mass murderer.’”

Two months before that, BSMW #160, 1/25/04, had told readers what AP-carrying American newspapers (e.g., Philly Inquirer, 1/20/04, A8) told their readers midway down an AP article that week:

Also yesterday, the founder of Hamas said the Islamic group would increasingly recruit female suicide bombers.  Last week, Hamas sent its first female assailant, a 22-year-old woman who blew herself up at the Gaza-Israel crossing and killed four Israeli border guards.  Sheikh Ahmed Yassin said in Gaza that there had not before been a need for women to carry out bombings.  Now, he said, women must step up to fulfill their obligations.  He suggested that male bombers were increasingly being held back by Israeli security measures.”   [emphasis not AP’s]

How the Philadelphia Inquirer (Inq), for one American paper, reacted two months later to Israel’s targeting of female “suicide” [i.e., civilian mass-murderer] bomber-recruiter Yassin is illustrative of liberal Western ridicule of specifically the Jewish state of Israel defending itself against terror.

The Inq ran an editorial cartoon of Israel strangling “the peace dove” by its celebrated political cartoonist, Tony Auth, and an op-ed which it headlined “Did Peace Die Along With Sheikh Yassin?”, to both of which I took exception in an [unanswered] open letter to Mr. Auth, BSMW #169, 3/28/04, which began as follows:

“Dear Mr. Auth:

“Call it what you like, but the most mocking contempt one can hurl at us Jews is deriding our right, like everyone else, to defend ourselves against terror.  Make no mistake.  Deliberately blasting men, women and youth, even infants, to bits in shopping malls, buses and restaurants, using shrapnel laced bombs for emphasis, is mass murder terror, not “militancy,” even in shopping malls, buses and restaurants situated in Israel.

“I’d supposed the Inquirer had sunk to absolute zero in respect for the Jews when it chided Israelis on its front page for “fueling a bitterness” by not being quicker at returning “suicide” bombers’ remains for sanctification as “martyrs.”  After all, their 72 virgins are waiting.  But the Inq descended even lower this week, twice in two days.  Since you at least “claimed responsibility,” as the Inq’s saying goes, I direct this at you.

“Wednesday’s cartoon, “Continuing Progress Reported In the Middle East,” depicting Israel as the death angel strangling the Peace Dove, defended sanctuary for the free-roaming [sic], credit-crowing, more-promising leader of a group sworn to Israel’s destruction through mass murder attack on its citizens.  Your drawing was the graphic depiction of the Inq’s op-ed page banner headline on Tuesday: “Did Peace Die Along With Sheikh Yassin?”  By us, this is like suggesting that medical ethics died with Mengele and human kindness with Hitler.  “Peace,” meaning ending mass murder rejection of rightful sovereign Jewish presence in the Land of Israel didn’t die this week with Yassin.  It had never been born, and you know it.

“What did die this week was justice and journalism….  “

In fairness to the Inq, I think it has mellowed a bit since those days, but Israel remains singled-out in the world (see, e.g., UN “Human Rights Council” this week, “BDS” campaigns in full swing) for criticism in standing up against terror.  We have to stand up against this.