The chief political columnist for the British online publication Spiked, Brendan O’Neill has a bone to pick with those who describe the late and unlamented Ismail Haniyeh as a “moderate.” More on his furious rejoinder to those nitwits can be found here: “Ismail Haniyeh was a monster, not a ‘moderate,’” by Brendan O’Neill, Spiked, July 31, 2024:
Forget ‘centrist dads’, there’s a new political character in town: the centrist fascist. The moderate Jew-killer. The middle-of-the-road cheerleader of mass murder. It’s Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas, who was bumped off in Tehran yesterday, presumably by the Israel Defence Forces. Reading the strangely pained media coverage of his death, you could be forgiven for thinking he’d been a pragmatic, upstanding guy, someone who was considered ‘very moderate’, in the words of Sky News crank, Alex Crawford. In truth, of course, he was a militant anti-Semite and we should spend as much time mourning his passing as he did the Jews his comrades butchered on 7 October: ie, none.
The m-word I expected to see in the commentary on Haniyeh was ‘murderous’ – the m-word I got was ‘moderate’. For all his ‘tough rhetoric’, he was actually ‘moderate and pragmatic’, says BBC correspondent, Yolande Knell. That ‘tough rhetoric’ included calling the 7 October pogrom a ‘victory’, agitating for a further ‘jihad of the swords’ (that is, more Jew murder), and chanting about the ‘army of Muhammad’ returning to wreak vengeance on Jews. BBC types will damn you as a crazy extremist if you say women don’t have cocks, and then straight-up depict a man who wanted to draw swords against Jews as a moderate.
He was ‘pragmatic’ and ‘open to negotiation’, says the Guardian. CNBC at least had the decency to caveat its insane commentary, only calling Haniyeh a ‘relatively moderate figure’. He was seen ‘as a moderate’, says Reuters, certainly in comparison with ‘more hardline’ Hamas leaders. Seriously, what does ‘moderate’ even mean in the Hamas context? This is a terror outfit whose founding charter committed it to the murder of Jews. And which slaughtered more Jews in one day on 7 October 2023 than anyone else had since the Nazis. A fascistic act Haniyeh celebrated. Perhaps he only wanted to kill some Jews, not all of them? Is that ‘pragmatism’ in Hamasworld?…Western observers seem obsessed with ‘de-escalation’ in the Middle East. They want calm. But what is calm for them is potential catastrophe for the Jewish State. The ‘peace’ these people call for would be the peace of the grave for many Israelis. Hamas has promised to carry out more 7 Octobers. For Israel to leave such a movement intact would be risky in the extreme. The assassination of Ismail Haniyeh sends a clear message to the world, and it’s one that every true progressive ought to welcome: namely, that you cannot kill Jews with impunity anymore. Fascist violence has consequences now.
Well, Brendan O’Neill, just one word to add to your terrific burst of fury against those who insist on praising a terrorist murderer as a “moderate.” You mention that Haniyeh had been “living a life of luxury” in Doha. So he was, but there’s more to that story. This “defender of the Palestinians” in Gaza had managed, before being hoist by a well-planted Israeli petard, to accumulate a fortune of $4 billion, every cent of which was stolen by him from foreign aid meant for the people of Gaza. Kindly add that to your bill of particulars.
Mike says
Israel also needs to wipe out Khaled Mashal and Abu Marzuk and many other high- and mid-level HamAss leaders, and find a way to retrieve the billions of dollars that HamAss has stolen.
somehistory says
Just as I mentioned on another thread about this son-of-satan, “moderate” still “burns.” Most cooking is done with “moderate” heat.
If he had been in the mob (and who can say absolutely that he was not?) which attacked the Jews in Oct, he would have been slaughtering, raping, dismembering, roasting babies, along with the “immoderate” bunch.
The mob boss doesn’t go out and do his own dirty work….murdering, breaking legs, setting fires….but he is still just as guilty of the crimes as are his henchmen.
Kepha says
Alas, but American is again becoming the nation of sheep. Our media and government shills bleat about so-and-so being a “moderate”; when “moderate” means virtually nothing in the context in which it is used. I suppose Ismail Haniyeh only wished to push the Israelis into the Mediterranean, whereas the “immoderates” wished to push them all the way into the Atlantic?
This is the wishful thinking of America’s elites. The whole discussion of “moderate” versus “fundamentalist” Islam revealed an American elite of the late 20th century basking in the afterglow of a liberal pseudo-Protestantism that sincerely believed that somehow, Roman Catholicism would also come on board with a religion concerned only with “being fit to live with” (after Harry Emerson Fosdick’s vapid tract from the 1920’s) following Vatican II, and certain that because enlightenment values were somehow universal, there was a section of the Islamic Ulema that thought the same way. Hence we stumble into ditch after ditch.
Illustration:
A liberal American diplomat was captured by cannibals. When asked for a last request, she asked for a laptop to contact Wasington. Her last cable read, “The Ookabookas are making progress towards a moderate position. They have announced that they plan to cook me rather than eat me raw.”
.
Donna says
Moderate nazi? Nope. Moderate is not applicable for some categories.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
If you recall, the late Gen Colin Powell once used the term “moderate Taliban” in the aftermath of 9/11, and then contradicted by Condi Rice on that statement. It was funny to watch even then
tim gallagher says
That this extremely evil creature Haniyeh could be considered as “moderate” merely illustrates how satanically evil some of the other, less “moderate” Muslim terrorist leaders are. Compared to civilised, genuinely moderate, human beings, haniyeh was a murderous monster. But you look at the endless hatred in the Koran and you see that that is what huge numbers of Muslims seem to be. islam twists the human mind out of shape with the hate and violence it teaches people.
Rubiconcrest says
He was ‘moderately’ wealthy compared to other billionaires. Of course he did not make or sell anything to earn his money he stole it.
Rubiconcrest says
The only thing moderate about him is his rank on the list of billionaires. Are the Gazans too stupid to realize he’s stealing from them or do they admire him that much more for being a strong corrupt Islamic leader.
Daniel Bielak says
The Western mainstream media calls the genocidally anti-Jewish totalitarian head of a genocidally anti-Jewish terrorist organization “moderate,” and calls the liberal democratic Jewish Israeli Prime Minister “far-right wing.”
Daniel Bielak says
“On the Orwellian use of the terms ‘left’ and ‘right,’ and on the dangers therein to Israeli politics.” by Dr. Francisco Gil-White
https://www.hirhome.com/israel/left_right2.htm