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Saudi TV host rips into top Hamas leader during interview: ‘The people of Gaza were not consulted about this’

October 21, 2023 | | Print Article

A Saudi Arabian TV host took a terrorist leader to task in an interview challenging the Palestinian propaganda peddled by Hamas.

While corporate media outlets have appeared all too willing to run with narratives pushed by terrorists, including the spreading of unsubstantiated reports like the now infamous Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital explosion in Gaza, Rasha Nabil of the Al-Arabiya Network confronted the propaganda head-on.

Friday, in an interview with Hamas founding member and current leader Khaled Mashal, the same man who had called for a global jihad on Oct. 13 with a “general mobilization,” Nabil grilled him over the atrocities committed by his militant group.

“The kind of attack Hamas carried out is not a regular operation. It is more like a declaration of war. So some people ask what you expected would be the Israeli reaction,” Memri-TV’s translation detailed. “We are watching the great human tragedy that is unfolding in the Gaza Strip. The people of Gaza woke up to this. The other factions, the Palestinian Authority, and the people of Gaza were not consulted about this. You made the decision all by yourselves.”

Mashal tried to qualify the terrorist attacks that had slaughtered more than 1,400 men, women and children as part of a “legitimate resistance” stirring immediate pushback from the host who pointed to the documented brutality that Hamas members themselves had filmed, “…but what the people in the West have seen on their TV screens, was transgressions by Hamas against Israeli civilians. You are responsible for Hamas’s image abroad. Hamas is now being compared to ISIS.”

“This is an accusation fabricated by [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, and unfortunately, the West is collaborating with this,” the terrorist leader tried.

He went on to push the idea that sacrifices were needed for the cause and claimed “our military organizations focus their resistance on the occupation forces, on the soldiers, but in all wars, there are some civilian victims. We are not responsible for them.”

“Will you apologize for what was done to the Israeli civilians on October 7?” Nabil went on to ask as she navigated around the carefully crafted claims of her guest.

“With all due respect,…Apologies should be demanded from Israel…Hamas does not kill civilians on purpose. It focuses on the soldiers. Period,” he tried.

Of course, this was further disproved by a hostage video produced by Hamas of one young woman who had been taken as at least 260 civilians were slaughtered at a music festival attended by thousands on Oct. 7, hardly the collateral damage that Mashal tried to paint it as.

As the terrorist leader called for more action from Egypt, Jordan and Hezbollah forces in Lebanon, Nabil wanted to know what he meant by “more.”

“The last thing [Lebanon needs] is another war that will come with another bill to pay. They say: Khaled Mashal is sitting in an air-conditioned room, talking about war, jihad, and bombings,” she added.

“We are in the middle of the battlefield,” he deflected again. “Nobody is sitting this one out. The Hamas leaders in Gaza and abroad are running this war together.”

Again, such a claim was readily discredited as Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian had recently been filmed meeting with Hamas leaders in Qatar.

Before the interview concluded, Mashal called for the release of 10,000 prisoners in Israel in exchange for the roughly 200 being held by Hamas, skirting the fact that civilians were among the supposed “dozens of soldiers and officers” that the terrorists had taken.

For her efforts, Nabil was lauded on social media.

Kevin Haggerty
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