The Day the Media Decided Militant Jihadism Is OK

 Jonathan Cook on the sudden capacity of the Western press — in the case of Syria — to distinguish between jihadists and Islamic nationalists. 

Hamas graffiti in the Occupied West Bank city of Nablus in 2006. (Michael loadenthal, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

By Jonathan Cook

Jonathan-Cook.net

Here is a very strange thing. For years, Western media outlets and politicians have been recklessly indifferent to the fact that Hamas is not a jihadist movement, like al-Qaeda or Islamic State, but a specifically *Palestinian* national resistance movement — if one underpinned by an Islamist ideology that distinguishes it from secular Palestinian national movements like Fatah.

Shortly after Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stood alongside U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and claimed unchallenged: “Hamas is ISIS [Islamic State]… and Hamas should be treated exactly the way ISIS was treated.“

But Hamas, unlike al-Qaeda and Islamic State, is not seeking to recreate a caliphate embracing all Muslims wherever they live, indifferent to national borders. It wants to create a Palestinian state in Palestine. Israel is determined to stop any Palestinian state emerging, even it means committing genocide.

Hamas does not demand strict adherence to religious law, and it does not prioritise Islam over Palestinian national identity.

It is not, as Israel and its apologists in the West try to persuade us, part of some Islamic crusade, waging a global war against the values of a supposed Judeo-Christian “civilisation.”

Hamas does not oppress Christians (a Christian community existed quite peacefully in Gaza until Israel started bombing their churches), or force women to wear the veil.

The U.K.’s designation of Hamas as a terrorist organisation in both its military and political-welfare wings has been justified in large part on this misrepresentation of Hamas’ ideological character.

I raise this matter not to praise Hamas (see the legal disclaimer below) but to highlight the current, outrageous hypocrisy of the entire Western media corps.

We now have an al-Qaeda offshoot in Syria, rebranded as HTS (Hayat Tahrir al-Sham). And Western journalists, led as ever by the BBC, are falling over themselves to explain how the group has transformed itself overnight from head-chopping jihadism into a moderate, “diversity-friendly” Syrian national resistance movement.

The media is suddenly deeply concerned to clarify the difference between militant jihadism and Islamic national resistance, and insist that the latter is respectable.

Fighters of Tahrir al-Sham in the Syrian village of Mushairfa, northeast of Hama, during the northeastern Hama offensive in October 2017. (Qasioun News Agency, CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)

That, of course, is being presented as the rationale for the British and U.S. governments to quickly end the designation of HTS as a terrorist organisation, even as the same governments keep Hamas in its entirety proscribed. It is the reason given for embracing this al-Qaeda retread as a good Syrian nationalist movement, and one supposedly keen to unify the country.

The point is: the Western media is quite capable of understanding the difference between jihadists and Islamic nationalists when they want to. But they only want to when the British and U.S. national security states tell them to.

That is the behaviour of what we are told is a “free press”.

LEGAL DISCLAIMER: The above observations are made for purely analytical purposes and are not intended in any way to “encourage support” for Hamas, which would be in violation of Section 12 of the U.K.’s Terrorism Act. Hamas is designated a terrorist organisation by the U.K. government.

After all, who are we to question the government’s wisdom in using counter-terror legislation to jail journalists for up to 14 years for pointing out the inconsistent application of its policies?

Who are we to question the right of the British police to raid the homes of independent journalists, investigate and arrest them, as has happened to Richard Medhurst and Asa Winstanley, for allegedly not sticking closely enough to the U.K. government’s position on Hamas?

Who are we to question why the British media, upholders of a glorious tradition of press freedom, are not reporting on the arrest and investigation of independent journalists by police for supposedly violating Section 12 in relation to Hamas when the police appear utterly unwilling to enforce Section 12 in relation to HTS?

None of the foregoing should be seen in any way to suggest that Britain is not fully democratic, or that it is exhibiting any signs of becoming a police state.

Jonathan Cook is an award-winning British journalist. He was based in Nazareth, Israel, for 20 years. He returned to the U.K. in 2021. He is the author of three books on the Israel-Palestine conflict: Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish State (2006), Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (2008) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (2008). If you appreciate his articles, please consider offering your financial support.