The JTA is a lefty outlet. And so in a struggle between pro-Hamas and pro-Israel, there was never any doubt which side its tendentiously anti-Israel columnist, Ron Kampeas, would choose.
The issue is Jamal Khashoggi, a Muslim Brotherhood figure, a former friend of Osama bin Laden, and a supporter of Hamas.
This is how Hamas leaders Khaled Meshaal and Ismail Haniyeh appeared, taking pride as they spoke confidentially, spelling-out new conditions and describing a new reality. They have revived the Palestinian issue.
Everything in this war is new, including the weapons that entered Gaza; how did they enter despite the siege? Thousands of rockets entered a small country that is besieged from the land, sea and air. This fact alone is a miracle. …
The distinguished combat performance of its men and the huge network of tunnels that extends for miles under Gaza and the borders with Israel and Egypt were used brilliantly to inflict unprecedented losses on the enemy; they will be used and reused whenever the enemy invades. All of this proves that the movement wasted no time while ruling in Gaza.
Then he blamed 9⁄11 on US foreign policy toward Israel. And then there’s his Twitter history, as documented by the Wiesenthal Center.
FROM JAMAL KHASHOGGI: The Tomb of the Prophet Joseph, attacked by demonstrators yesterday in Nablus is a Jewish lie is a shrine built in the Turkish era and surrounded by Jews to the school of extremism and claimed that Joseph peace be upon him.
FROM JAMAL KHASHOGGI:The Jews have no history in Palestine, so they invented the wall of the prophet, a Mamluk building. After 67 they noticed the tomb of Joseph in Nablus, and they decided that he was the prophet of Joseph.
So of course Ron Kampeas and the JTA have to rush to the defense of this pro-Hamas anti-Semitic Islamist.
Even as gruesome allegations emerge that he was tortured, murdered and dismembered after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, some Israel supporters have joined other figures on the right in describing Khashoggi as a terrorist sympathizer and fierce opponent of Israel.
As seen above, that’s a factual description.
None of the purveyors of the attacks on Khashoggi agreed to an on-the-record interview
Ron Kampeas tweeted at me. I responded several times. He never requested an interview or comment, on or off the record.
Other joined the fray. FrontPage mag, helmed by right-wing provocateur David Horowitz, ran an article the same day declaring, “Jamal Khashoggi blamed 9⁄11 on U.S. support for Israel.” The article cites a piece Khashoggi wrote in 2001 after the attacks, published in Arab News and the Guardian, in which Khashoggi sympathetically describes Saudi reactions to the attacks but does not outright endorse them.
When Khashoggi wrote the piece, he was speaking for the regime. And while he attributes some views to the “Saudis”, he does so while speaking for them, rather than about them.
The context in Khashoggi’s editorial makes that clear.
Americans want unconditional condemnation of the horrible attacks that happened in their skies and on their land. They also want total cooperation in their fight against terror according to their own definition of what terrorism is and exactly who the terrorists are. But Saudi Arabia will not give in to such demands.
Saudis tend to link the ugliness of what happened in New York and Washington with what has happened and continues to happen in Palestine. It is time that the United States comes to understand the effect of its foreign policy and the consequences of that policy. But unfortunately such rationalisation is still not part of the American reality.
Kampeas routinely misrepresents the contents of the pieces critical of Osama bin Laden’s old friend. This is typical of the media which keeps trying to manufacture a journalistic distance between Khashoggi, Jihadis, the Muslim Brotherhood, Saudi Arabia and Osama that aren’t there.
Khashoggi’s piece falls short of blaming U.S. support for Israel for the attacks, although he says that Saudis saw the Sept. 11 attacks as of a piece with Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians
As quoted above, Khashoggi indeed does so.
“Several Muslim Brothers said this week that they always felt he was with them,” The New York Times reported, referring to the multinational Islamist group, the Muslim Brotherhood. “Many of his secular friends would not have believed it.”
If Khashoggi was a member of the pre-eminent Islamist organization in the Middle East, his critics charge, whitewashing that affiliation is a disservice to history, and helps elevate a group that should be marginalized.
That’s a bizarre paragraph.
Kampeas appears to be referring to the violently anti-Semitic and Hitler-admiring Muslim Brotherhood, the parent group of Hamas, as “pre-eminent”
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