Media Mourns ‘Moderate,’ ‘Pragmatic’ Hamas Leader Who Wanted to Kill All the Jews

“We always shout: ‘Death for the sake of Allah is our loftiest aspiration,’” Haniyeh had claimed.

The Hamas billionaire who lived in luxury in Qatar hadn’t actually wanted to die, but he should have been careful what he wished for before the missile granted him the death he cheered for.

After the Hamas atrocities of Oct 7, Haniyeh had declared that we need the “blood of the women, children, and elderly” to awaken the “revolutionary spirit”. But his his dreams of killing all the Jews and seizing Israel ended when he left the protection of U.S. terrorist “allies” like Qatar and Turkey, and visited Iran.

Haniyeh never left Iran.

Earlier, Israel had taken out Fuad Shukr, the number two figure in the Hezbollah Islamic terrorist group, still wanted by the United States for his role in the Marine Corps Barracks bombing in Beirut which killed 241 American military personnel. It followed that up by taking out Haniyeh even as he was staying under the terrorist regime’s military protection in the heart of Tehran.

Allies from Doha, Moscow, Beijing and D.C. to CAIR to BLM to the BBC mourned his death.

“Never say that those martyred in the cause of Allah are dead—in fact, they are alive!” CAIR San Francisco head Zahra Billoo tweeted. “Tonight, we mourn Ismail himself but know his martyrdom is not in vain.”

White BLM leader Shaun King, who recently converted to Islam, cried that, “the United States and Israel have just assassinated the dear brother Ismail Haniyeh,” he declaimed. “These genocidal monsters think that this weakens Hamas, or weakens the resistance, but it does neither. It will only strengthen both.”

Haniyeh had previously condemned America for killing Osama bin Laden, describing the Al Qaeda leader as a “Muslim Mujaheed” or Islamic Jihadist, and hailed Abdullah Azzam, the brains behind Al Qaeda’s theology, as “a knight of Jihad and resistance against the enemies of Allah.” But the media still rushed to redefine him as a “pragmatic” peace-seeking “moderate.”

The BBC described Haniyeh as “moderate and pragmatic”. Reuters confusingly claimed that, “tough-talking Haniyeh was seen as the more moderate face of Hamas”. “Ismail Haniyeh was the pragmatic face of Hamas,” Sky News told viewers. The Guardian hedged a little by describing Haniyeh as “relatively pragmatic” compared to, say perhaps, the Caliph of ISIS.

Relativism was also the order of the day at the New York Times which quoted someone from the European Council on Foreign Relations describing Haniyeh as “a relatively pragmatic counterpoint”. The Washington Post lauded Haniyeh as “a more moderate force in Hamas.”

The very moderate Hamas leader had previously bragged that his Arab Muslim colonists in Israel “sacrifice their children, their sons, for the sake of Palestine and for the sake of the land of Islam and the Muslims. The might of the nation of Jihad is revealed on the land of Palestine, as well as in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Sudan, and in all the fronts of confrontation with the enemies of Allah.” By “enemies of Allah”, the Hamas leader meant Christians, Jews and all non-Muslims.

But the media had its pragmatic and moderative narrative. The Wall Street Journal jumped in with “Strike in Iran Kills Hamas’s Leading Advocate for a Gaza Cease-Fire”.During the Oct 7, Haniyeh had prayed in gratitude to his god ‘Allah’ for the initial Hamas successes in killing Israelis. He had then urged Muslims to wage war to ethnically cleanse all the Jews from Israel.

Stories quickly followed about the “dangers of escalation” and a “regional war”, as they do every time Israel fights back against Islamic terrorism. Islamic terrorism is never an escalation, only defending against it is. Muslim terror victims are just statistics, but the death of Muslim terrorists is always the subject of worldwide concern in the international capitals of terrorist appeasement.

The Putin regime in Moscow, which has been responsible for ‘suiciding’ political opponents around the world, declared that “the elimination of Haniyeh is a political murder that is completely unacceptable to us.” As opposed to the ones that are acceptable to it.

China, which had recently hosted a Hamas delegation, condemned Haniyeh’s execution and claimed that the Communist regime, which keeps threatening to invade Taiwan, “has always advocated resolving regional disputes through negotiation and dialogue.”

The Biden administration worried that the death of a murderous terrorist who had urged a “Jihad of Swords” and proclaimed that “we should hold on to the victory that took place on October 7 and build upon it” would undermine its attempt at “peace negotiations” with Hamas.

Oct 7 was a horrifying lesson in the fact that peace doesn’t come from making deals with terrorists but by standing up to them and putting them down. The Big Lie of negotiating with terrorists is based on falsely describing them as “pragmatic” and “moderate”. Every Jihadist, no matter how horrifying, is characterized as a leader looking to make a deal for the right terms.

No one takes Islamic terrorists at their word. And they should.

Jerusalem, unlike D.C. and Brussels, has begun taking Islamic terrorists at their word. When they talk about destroying Israel and killing all the Jews, they no longer assume that’s a negotiating position, but a plan. And when the terrorists say that “Death for the sake of Allah is our loftiest aspiration”, they don’t assume that’s empty rhetoric, but a genuine aspiration.

And Israel is fulfilling their pragmatic and moderate dreams of being martyred for Allah.

“We love death like our enemies love life,” Ismail Haniyeh, pragmatic moderate, once claimed.

A man should do what he loves. And politicians and the media should stop lying about what he is. And about what Hamas is. And about what Islam is.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center’s Front Page Magazine.

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