Foreign secretary’s call comes after group releases video of British-Israeli hostage it says died after being wounded in Israeli airstrike
David Cameron has urged the BBC to describe Hamas as a terrorist organisation, reviving an accusation that the corporation shies away from a valid description of the Islamist group that is holding Israeli hostages.
The UK foreign secretary told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg that the organisation should reconsider its guidelines in light of a video released by Hamas showing the British-Israeli hostage Nadav Popplewell, who the group said had died in Gaza.
Hamas released a statement on Saturday saying the 51-year-old had died after being wounded in an Israeli airstrike a month ago. The video showed him with a black eye.
I’ll put this back to you this way: is Likud also a terrorist organization? Is the IDF? Because they do a lot of the same stuff.
There are definitely terrorists associated with Hamas, and Hamas definitely carries water for them, but they’re also the duly elected government in Gaza and if I were Israel I’d be asking why Gazans feel like they were so wronged that the only option seems to be a political movement that’s sympathetic to terrorist tactics.
Saying “they’re terrorists” without acknowledging how we got here is a lot like calling the ANC in South Africa “terrorist” in the 1980s. It’s stupidly reductionist and ignores complexity for the sake of jingoism.
It’s also why Cameron is a disingenuous jackass.
I agree with everything you’ve said. Hamas can be a terrorist organization, and still be the elected government. Both can be true, and acknowledging the how and why of that being the case is necessary reach a resolution to the conflict.