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Even many of Israel's staunchest critics could not ignore the significance of Yasir Arafat's public embrace of Hamas leader Abdel al-Rantisi in Gaza on August 20. The New York Times published a photo of the Arafat-Rantisi kiss on its front page, six inches high and three columns across. The Washington Post ran a lead editorial strongly criticizing Arafat's action.
But not the Philadelphia Inquirer . On the day that the Arafat-Rantisi photo appeared on page one in the New York Times, it did not appear at all in the Inquirer. Not one page one; not on page ten; not on page fifty. The Inquirer did publish a news story reporting the kiss--but it was put all the way back on page 16. The story, authored by Samar Assad of the Associated Press, implied that what it called "Israel's tough policies" were responsible for provoking Arafat's behavior. Assad also seemed to justify Arafat's refusal to crack down on terrorists, asserting that if Arafat took action against Hamas, "doing this now would spark an angry backlash and further erode his authority." Why did the Inquirer use an AP story? Where was the Inquirer's own correspondent in Israel, Barbara Demick? Why didn't she regard the Arafat-Hamas alliance as hot news? A photo did accompany the story--but instead of using the photo of Arafat kissing the terrorist Rantisi, the Inquirer chose a photo of Arab demonstrators holding up a huge, smiling photograph of Arafat.
The Arafat-Rantisi photo did finally appear in the Inquirer on August 22, a full day after the rest of the world had seen it. But even then, the Inquirer's editors used only a tiny version of the photo, barely two inches by two inches, and they put it at the very bottom, inside column, of page 19. Inquirer correspondent Barbara Demick likewise showed up a full day late. Demick's theme: Arafat's embrace of Hamas is understandable since he is under "pressure" from his constituents to be more extreme. In constructing her rationalization of Arafat's behavior, Demick ignored three crucial questions.
First, since when does Arafat care about the views of his constituents? Arafat runs an oppressive, totalitarian regime, in which he does as he pleases --including shutting down rival newspapers, jailing dissidents, and torturing prisoners-- regardless of what the people want. Second, if so many of Arafat's constituents are really so extreme and pro-Hamas, what is the value of the Oslo accords at all? How can Israel be expected to make more concessions to the PLO --as the Inquirer constantly urges-- if so many of the Palestinian Arabs still share the Hamas goal of annihilating Israel?
Third, why hasn't Arafat made any effort to change the hearts and minds of his constituents? Why isn't he doing what the Oslo accords require--making speeches in Arabic, urging peace and reconciliation with Israel?
Unfortunately, those were not the kind of questions that Barbara Demick considered. Instead, she preferred to try to perpetuate the myth that Hamas is divided between bad and not-so-bad factions. Hamas is "by no means monolithic," Demick asserted. "It includes an extreme military wing" as well as "more moderate factions that run health clinics and mosques." Demick did not bother to quote any experts to support her good Hamas/bad Hamas theory.
For example, she could have interviewed PLO cabinet minister Imad Falouji, since he is a former Hamas official. As a matter of fact, the day before Demick's article appeared in the Inquirer, Falouji said in an interview with the Israeli news agency IMRA (August 21, 1997): "It's one Hamas. There is no split in Hamas." Asked by the IMRA interviewer if the various departments of Hamas have "one ideology, one goal," Falouji replied: "Yes." For some reason, Demick chose not to quote Falouji's statement. Nor did she quote Professor Raphael Israeli of Hebrew University, one of Israel's leading experts on Hamas. In an interview with IMRA last year, Prof. Israeli said: "There are no 'wings' to Hamas. They are all the same organization. The talk of wings is just a game. The so-called military wing cannot exist without the financial backing of the so-called social welfare wing."
Demick's mishandling of the Hamas story extended even to her choice of terminology. Even after four years of Hamas suicide bombings that have left nearly 300 Israelis dead, Demick still cannot bring herself to call Hamas "terrorists." She characterized them as "militants" and "activists." The most she would concede is that Hamas is "considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. government" --by the U.S. government, not by Barbara Demick or her editors at the Philadelphia.