Cliff May noted here yesterday a report from the Sunday Times of London that the Israelis had thwarted a Hamas conspiracy to murder PA President Mahmoud Abbas.
Here we are on Tuesday. How is it possible that this is such a non-story? The New York Times has a big story today about internecine Palestinian strife between Hamas and Fatah. The Washington Post, meanwhile, reports on the difficulties Hamas is having both getting and accessing funds because it refuses to concede Israel’s right to exist. Yet, not one word about the Sunday Times report.
Am I missing something here? Even assuming, for argument’s sake, that the mainstream media in America has some good faith reservations about the (Fatah) sources for the Sunday Times story, how can they conceivably not even mention the story? To any objective person, this is a very credible account: the Sunday report also included an Israeli intelligence source who confirmed that the Israelis had give a heads-up to Abbas, and added that a spokesman for Hamas — an entity well known for using murder as its favorite dispute resolution method – – had told al-Jezeera that Abbas has been “besieging and isolating the Hamas-led government.”
Obviously, this report is very uncomfortable for those “cycle of violence” types who insist on finding moral equivalence in the Palestinian/Israeli violence. It’s also another unpleasant slice of reality for supporters of democratizing the Middle East to observe, yet again, that the Palestinians have freely chosen a government of incorrigible murderers (to replace the last bunch of incorrigible murderers). But it is what it is — Hamas plotting to kill Abbas is a big deal.
Imagine what the coverage would be like if the PA security forces (such as they are) had stopped a terrorist attempt to kill a high Israeli official. (I know, I know — but remember, I said “imagine”.) Would there be enough space in all of media for the resulting laudatory stories?