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Sometimes you have to go with your gut instincts, and I wish I’d stuck with mine yesterday.
Wednesday morning it was my happy duty to report on the assassination of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, Iran, the night before. „My first thought was that a Mossad assassination team had snuck in, done some dirty work that needed doing, and then snuck back out“, is what my gut assured me had happened. But then reports came in that Haniyeh had been killed in a precision airstrike.
„Never trust first reports.“ I’m going to write that on a blackboard 100 times later today — and not for the first time, either.
If you weren’t familiar with Haniyeh or missed yesterday’s column, he was usually presented as the „moderate“ face of Hamas because our press seems to be largely made up of willing dupes and terrorist sympathizers. They would never put it that way, of course. In their minds, they’re just on the side of „the oppressed.“ In Haniyeh’s case, he was oppressed to the tune of an estimated three billion dollars he’d skimmed off of Western relief funds for the Arabs of Gaza.
To be fair, his voice has been moderated since last night.
