Israel Matzav: Vanity Fair's Sickening Puff Piece on Haniyeh

Sunday, November 05, 2006

Vanity Fair's Sickening Puff Piece on Haniyeh

At Kesher Talk, Cinnamon takes down what she terms a 'sickening puff piece' on 'moderate Palestinian Prime Minister' Ismail Haniyeh.

In recent years, I've read more romanticized profiles of terrorist leaders in the mainstream media than I'd care to admit. But Vanity Fair's sickening puff piece on Palestinian prime minister and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh takes the cake.

Authored by David Margolick and titled, "The Most Dangerous Job in Gaza," the article is nothing more than a transparent attempt to make us feel sorry for the poor, beleaguered terrorist leader Haniyeh and the people who elected him. To hear Margolick tell it, if only Haniyeh didn't have to spend all his time escaping from Israeli bombs, he might just turn out to be the next Gandhi.

You can't expect much better from a self-hating Jew who once called Hamas murderer Abdel Aziz Rantisi, "the nicest terrorist I ever met."

For all of Dr. Rantisi's incendiary rhetoric, there was a surprising serenity to him, the serenity of fatalism and faith. His security was lax. The helicopters could come any moment, he said, but he'd not changed his life; he still lectured every week at the local university, still had his grandchildren staying with him [as human shields? CiJ]. Shortly after our meeting, as the Israelis started going after members of Hamas' political wing, he, too, went underground and had already survived one assassination attempt when his time finally came. A small crater in a Gazan street undoubtedly marks the spot where he was hit. He managed to reach a hospital before dying.

Entering Dr. Rantisi's home that day, I wondered how I would feel shaking the hand of someone who blew up Jewish children. I wondered, too, how he would feel about giving yet another interview to yet another American Jew, whose objectivity he surely questioned. But even killers can be charming, and reporters are disconcertingly adaptable. There was a gentle affability to Dr. Rantisi. The interpreter quickly became superfluous. He spoke English softly, musically, imperfectly but painstakingly. Though our talk was of targeted killings, he sometimes even laughed.

In other words, Margolick has a history of sympathizing with terrorists. This is what the current issue of the Stanford alumni magazine has to say about Margolick:

For a Vanity Fair piece on targeted killings, Margolick interviewed Hamas leader Abdell Aziz Rantisi (who himself became a targeted killing by Israeli forces in 2004.) He was “someone who blew up Jewish children,” Margolick wrote. Yet, he recalls nearly four years later, “It was hard to recognize that in a way when you were sitting with him. He was a very dignified man—it was hard to know whether to shake his hand. I’m sure I did. What else do you do? I’m a journalist. You’re after a story. You do what’s called for—and hope it’s not too terrible a reflection on you afterwards. You do what you have to do at the time: you laugh at his jokes, you shake his hand, you smile, you act courteously with him.”

Cinnamon goes on to point out that Margolick's sympathy for terrorists goes beyond 'Palestinians':

Indeed, it just gets worse. Here's how Margolick describes Israel's military actions in Lebanon in response to the Hezbollah-orchestrated kidnappings of two more of its soldiers:

Two weeks later, the militant Lebanese group Hezbollah staged a similar cross-border attack...It, too, prompted a colossal Israeli counterattack, one that devastated Lebanon and threatened an even wider war involving the two principal backers of the radical Islamic groups: Iran and Syria.

And here I thought Iran and Syria's backing of Hezbollah's actions were what "threatened an even wider war" not Israel's response. Silly me.

Cinnamon ends off with something I didn't know: