The BBC’s profile of Hamas includes the following:
“It [Hamas] originally had a dual purpose of carrying out an armed struggle against Israel – led by its military wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades – and delivering social welfare programmes.”
The naive notion that Hamas’ political and social departments can be viewed as being ideologically or organisationally separate or different from its “armed wing” or “military wing” is of course not confined to the BBC; the UK, among others, includes only the latter Hamas department on its list of proscribed terror groups.
Moreover, the BBC never refers to Hamas in general or specifically its “military wing” as a terror organisation and instead uses euphemistic terminology such as “Palestinian Islamist group“, “Islamist movement” or “militant Palestinian Islamist movement” and not infrequently amplifies its narrative of “resistance“.
The Tower recently noted that:
“Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh revealed that the terrorist organization makes no distinction between its civilian and military “wings,” vowing in a statement on Hamas’ website to take payments intended for government employees and funnel them to “military personnel.””
The Times of Israel, which originally reported the story, adds:
“In the statement, the senior Hamas leader lashed out against “parties” in Gaza who attempt to distinguish between the military and civilian branches of the organization. Haniyeh demanded that both military and civilians are considered “legitimate” employees who are “appointed by the decision of a legitimate government.”
Haniyeh did not indicate which “parties” had called for there to be a difference between the two branches of Hamas, or indeed whether those parties were strictly Palestinian or international officials present in the Strip.
Israel and most Western governments consider Hamas a terror organization. The UN, however, has attempted to differentiate between the Islamist group’s political and military wing, known as the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades.”
Obviously the advent of some clear, objective and accurate reporting on this issue from the world’s most influential broadcaster would be of considerable benefit to those who to date have not yet understood that Hamas’ ‘military’, ‘political’ and ‘social’ wings are all part of one and the same terror organisation.
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