Hamas apologist William Sieghart, who is behind the “think tank” Forward Thinking, is writing in The Times today giving the Islamist group’s PR image a bit of a shine. We have it all wrong. Hamas are just a bunch of well educated public servants.
Sieghart, who last year brought Hamas spokesman Ghazi Hamad to the Hay on Wye literary festival, writes that “without doubt the past 18 months had seen a comparative calm on the streets of Gaza; no gunmen on the streets, no more kidnappings”. Clearly he wasn’t listening to Hamad very closely. He tells a different story admitting that following Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza about 500 Palestinians have been killed and 3,000 wounded after a failure to impose law and order.
He goes on to gush that the political leadership of Hamas is “probably the most highly qualified in the world. Boasting more than 500 PhDs in its ranks, the majority are middle-class professionals – doctors, dentists, scientists and engineers”.
Probably. Bet they drink Carlsberg. That stuff is like rocket fuel.
