Shilling for the Jihadis: NYT and WaPo Stand with the Muslim Brotherhood

Just this week, on the same day, the New York Times and the Washington Post simultaneously decided to take sides in the current war in the Middle East. Unfortunately, they chose the Islamists.

On Thursday, as rockets were landing on Israeli suburbs, two pieces were published by the so-called “papers of record,” that sided with the Muslim Brotherhood. Writing in the New York Times, Kareem Fahim focused ostensibly on the Egyptian response to the war between Israel and the terrorist group Hamas. The author focused on what he saw as the lack of Cairo’s response, especially to helping those in Gaza.

Fahim, who has been in trouble in the past for his less than objective writing on the “rebels” in Syria, pushes a narrative in which the guilty party is the new democratically elected President of Egypt. Retired General Abdel Fattah el Sisi is painted as obsessed with the security threat in the Sinai when in fact he should be reprising the 2012 role of his predecessor, Mohammad Morsi, as mediator between Israel and the terrorists of Hamas.

The fact that Morsi was the head of a theocratic Muslim Brotherhood government committed to destroying democracy in the Middle East, and that Hamas is formally a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood that the US government lists officially as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, does not come into Fahim’s reasoning. The fact that Hamas’ own charter makes clear both that it is part of the Brotherhood and committed to destroying Israel seems to have escaped the author too.

At this point, just one quote from the introduction to the Hamas Charter indicates how any mediator would fail to make a honest negotiator out of Hamas, even President Sisi:

“Our battle with the Jews is long and dangerous, requiring all dedicated efforts. It is a phase which must be followed by succeeding phases, a battalion which must be supported by battalion after battalion of the divided Arab and Islamic world until the enemy is overcome, and the victory of Allah descends.”

Any mediator – unless they were, like Morsi, a member of the MB – would fail to bring a lasting peace since Article Two of the charter states quite clearly that Hamas is “a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood chapter in Palestine.”

Adam Taylor of the Washington Post takes us even deeper down the rabbit hole of MB propaganda with his piece entitled “The Man the Israeli Palestinian Crisis Needs Most: Egypt’s Mohamed Morsi.” For Taylor, it is not President Sisi who needs to step in, but Morsi himself, presumably released from prison and exonerated for trying to turn Egypt into a one-party theocratic state.

Mr Taylor, who started his journalistic career interning for the Huffington Post and Time magazine, also seems to have failed to have read the Brotherhood’s founding document. If he had, he and his NYT colleague may have had trouble imagining a scenario in which Hamas would negotiate in good faith with the Jewish state of Israel based upon the organization’s own avowed goals. For as Hamas’ Charter declares:

“In the shadow of Islam it is possible for the followers of the three religions-Islam, Christianity, and Judaism-to live in peace and harmony, and this peace and harmony is possible only under Islam.”

This vision of a world in which Jews and Christians live under the dominion of Islam should surprise no one who is familiar with the origins of the Brotherhood, since its founder, Hassan al Banna made it clear in his original manifesto that for perfection on Earth, all that is required “is a strong Eastern power to exert itself under the shadow of Allah’s banner, with the standard of the Qur’an fluttering at its head, and backed up by the strong soldiers of unyielding faith; then you will see the World living under the tranquillity of Islam.” Peace is indeed possible: as long as Islam reigns supreme over the Earth.

But you don’t have to go back to the origins of the Brotherhood to understand why there will never be a negotiated settlement with the terrorists of Gaza. One last quote from the Hamas Charter makes that clear. Article 8 gives us Hamas’s official motto:

Allah is our Goal.

The Messenger is our Leader.

The Quran is our Constitution.

Jihad is our methodology, and

Death for the sake of Allah is our most coveted desire.

Only one obvious question remains. If Taylor and Fahim have read Hamas’ creed of Holy War, why do they, and their papers, support it?

Sebastian Gorka Ph.D is the Major General Matthew C. Horner Distinguished Chair of Military Theory at the Marine Corps University and the National Security and Foreign Affairs editor for the Breitbart News Network.

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