If you want to see a dogged reporter who has good questions about Hamas butt heads with a slippery weasel who desperately wants to avoid answering those questions, this is your video (13 min.). Here are the YouTube notes:
Former Palestinian envoy [to the UK] Manuel Hassassian tells TalkTV’s Julia Hartley-Brewer that thinks a “proportionate response” from Israel would be: “Killing the entire 2.2 million people, because this is what Israel is doing.”
Hartley-Brewer asks the ex-envoy several questions he refuses to answer, including these below. Hassassian answers only #2 in part, and evades the rest of the questions. He is fulminating rather than listening.
1.) Hassassian says that the hostages will probably be returned once Israel stops bombing Gaza. Hartley-Brewer asks, “Why do you think [Hamas] will suddenly act as if they’re part of the United Nations—returning those people?”
2.) “Do the actions of Israel over the past 75 years justify the brutal attack of Hamas on civilians?” (He more or less says “yes”.)
3.) “How does the attack by Hamas that killed 1400 people help the Palestinian people or the people of Gaza?” (A good question that she asks repeatedly, but it’s not answered.)
4.) “What did Hamas think the response of Israel would be to the attack?”
5.) Hartley-Brewer asserts that “there’s a big difference, morally, ethically, in war, between killing civilians who are there. . . and deliberately targeting civilians as Hamas has done.” She adds that Hamas are putting their own civilians in harm’s way by using them as human shields for missile sites. “Have they not brought that on themselves?”, she asks Hassassian.
6.) Does Hamas want a regional war? If not, what does Hamas want? Did they want to scupper the incipient peace deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel?
7.) “What would be the acceptable, reasonable response from Israel to Hamas’s attack?” (He refuses to answer that question when asked repeatedly, and then she asks him why he won’t answer that question. No reply to that, either.)
At the end she says, “If you won’t answer my question, then we’ll give up. . . . I appreciate you joining us; I wish you had answered the questions I asked, but . . .”
Reader Jay, who sent me the link, characterized the general pro-Palestinian mantra as, “We deplore the actions or Hamas, but Israel / both sides ____ (fill in the blank).” I wish it were only the Palestinians saying this.
Israel needs to make the release of hostages a condition for any talk of a cease-fire.
Brava. She is wonderful. Can anyone here share the names of journalists in America who can match her polite but determined style and intelligent, germane questions? Truth seekers, not point of view pundit wannabes? I’d appreciate a chance to follow a few new voices.
Question #6 is something that is very much on my mind, since Hamas very much would have an interest in stopping the brewing detente between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
That was a tedious rant of diversion and little substance. Hassassian has nothing to offer that could make a difference. He did show what is largely the problem I think, there is no way forward while Hamas and it’s charter dominate Gaza. Hassassian concern is rightly with the people on the street of Gaza.