How Did American Media Cover Hamas' Declaration to Annihilate Israel?

AP Photo/Carlos Osorio

About as well as they covered Rashida Tlaib’s Hamas connections — presumably for the same reasons.  A week has passed since Canary Mission released its detailed allegations that Tlaib employed three Hamas supporters in her congressional campaign and had connections to Hamas fundraisers as well. Not one major American news outlet has yet to delve into that report, not even to debunk it.

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Not. One. Even while Tlaib has a seat in Congress and Hamas holds a dozen or more kidnapped Americans as hostages, American media has demonstrated zero interest in whether Hamas has potentially penetrated Congress. Contrast that with the media’s two-year obsession with “Russia collusion” on far less evidence.

So perhaps we should not be surprised when the same media, which routinely highlights demands for Israel to stop fighting Hamas, overlooks what Hamas has to say about fighting Israel. Hamas spokesman Ghazi Hamad appeared on Lebanon’s LBC TV nine days ago to declare that Hamas would never stop its massacres, promising to repeat the atrocities of 10/7 until Israel was annihilated. MEMRI TV published it with English subtitles so that the West could see the true nature of Hamas and the existential threat to Israel and everyone else.

Hamad made that clear enough:

Israel is a country that has no place on our land. We must remove that country because it constitutes a security, military, and political catastrophe to the Arab and Islamic nation, and it it must be finished. We are not ashamed to say this, with full force. … [cut]

… We must teach Israel a lesson, and we will do this again and again. The Al-Aqsa Flood is just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth, because we have the determination, the resolve, and the capabilities to fight. Will we have to pay a price? Yes, and we are ready to pay it. We are called a nation of martyrs, and we are proud to sacrifice martyrs. …

HAMAD: The occupation must come to an end.

Q: Occupation where? In the Gaza Strip?

HAMAD: No, I am talking about all the Palestinian lands.

Q: Does that mean the annihilation of Israel?

HAMAD: Yes, of course.

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Emphases mine, again.

How did the New York Times cover this? There are zero references to Ghazi Hamad over the past week at the Paper of Record. There are 68 references to “cease fire” in the same period. (Also: Zero references for Tlaib Canary in their entire archive.)

What about the Washington Post? There is only one hit on a search for Ghazi Hamad in the past week, but it’s an erroneous return about a German soccer player suspended for an Instagram post about the war. They have zero results for Tlaib Canary, too, again at any time rather than just the past week. “Cease fire” returns 128 stories over the past week, however.

CNN’s search functions are terrible, but still enlightening on this point. Put any search term into its field and it will give you links to click, even if they don’t have any specific relevance. A search for Ghazi Hamad returns several links about the war, but none about Hamad’s declaration, and none at all since an October 24 report about Gaza’s health system being in its “death throes.” Oddly, CNN has nearly nothing on “cease fire” either, which at least comes closest to parity in the American media. The top story returned on that search is, amusingly, about Jamaal Bowman’s explanation for yanking the fire alarm. A search for Tlaib Canary predictably turns up nothing on Tlaib’s alleged Hamas ties.

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How about NBC News? Well, mirabile dictu, we actually do see a brief mention of Ghazi Hamad’s declaration at NBC, but it’s only because the White House told the media to pay attention to it:

Ghazi Hamad told the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation yesterday that the militant group would repeat the Oct. 7 attack “time and again until Israel is annihilated.”

Kirby told reporters that everyone should pay attention and take such “chilling comments” seriously. “That’s what’s at stake for the people of Gaza — that Hamas is willing to continue this fight and will continue to try to slaughter innocent Israelis,” he said.

It’s not much, but at this point, I’m not picky. Still nothing for Tlaib Canary, though.

ABC News has only one mention of Ghazi Hamad since the war began, from a week ago when Hamad publicly demanded interventions from its allies against Israel. Not a word about Hamad’s public declaration that Hamas will repeat the 10/7 atrocities over and over again until Israel is annihilated. They have 252 stories in the past week about a “cease fire,” however, and Tlaib Canary turns up several links that have nothing to do with the Canary Mission report.

CBS News has nothing about Ghazi Hamad’s declaration, although they do have three older stories in which Hamad is mentioned. They have 28 stories about “cease fire” over the past week, however, and nothing at all on the Canary Mission report about Tlaib. (CBS News does not return specific URLs for its search requests.)

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Foreign news outlets certainly have covered it. Newspapers from the UK, Canada, India, and others (especially Israel, of course) have given Hamad’s declaration major coverage. So why have American media refrained from reporting on it? It’s not just that they’re pushing it to page A32, but that they aren’t reporting on it at all, even though it directly and unequivocally provides the necessary context to this war. It would be akin to major newspapers reporting that Britain and France declared war on Germany in September 1939 without reporting the invasion of Poland or Hitler’s demand for Lebensraum.

The only conclusion one can reach for this exclusion is that American media have taken the side of Hamas in this fight. They don’t want to inform Americans about the real stakes of this war, and that it’s not about Gaza, the West Bank, or East Jerusalem, or even the rogue settlements. They know that it’s about the annihilation of Israel and the Jews — but they don’t want you to know it.

They have chosen sides, and it’s the side of the terrorists.

Addendum: I won’t beat this to death, but it does point up why supporting truly independent media is so critical to our nation’s future. Become a HotAir VIP member today and use promo code SAVEAMERICA to receive a 50% discount on your membership.

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