Palestinian PM and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh is kicking Hamas' global spin campaign into overdrive as an op-ed in The Washington Post. I beg your pardon?

You heard correctly. But you are surprised that WaPo has endorsed these shameless lies penned by this terrorist thug? Don't be. As soon as the MSM saw the writing on the wall for Abbas, a new 'moderate' had to be inaugurated, and fast: As Palestinian PM and Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh clearly had to be the man.

Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has threatened to resign, dismantle the Authority and leave the Territories [...]. Abbas made the statements during a telephone conversation with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who requested that he use his authority to help free Cpl. Gilad Shalit. Abbas responded that he no longer had any authority

Consider the WaPo article as a formal gesture; recognizing Haniyeh's ascendancy to 'moderate' status, which Yasser Arrafat so famously gained in 1994 when he won the Nobel Peace Prize and shared it with Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres - may the Nobel committee, who so permanently and disgracefully dishonored the Peace Prize for all future generations with their nomination of this murdering thug, and to top it, alongside these two great statesmen, forever relive the stigma of their calculated reasoning - and who so spectacularly squandered this coveted status at the end of his life.

Meryl Yourish is wandering whether Jimmy Carter wrote Haniyeh’s column, by any chance. Nice one Meryl. Didn't he write some speeches for Yasser Arafat in his day?

In fact, by deceitfully crafting the camouflaging status of a 'moderate' in the context of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Yasser Arafat has perhaps left, what could arguably be in a tragic sense his principal legacy to this world: Russian, European pogrom and Nazi Holocaust came and went, but the world continues to deny the Jews a peaceful home.

So, now that the MSM have collectively decided to dress the wolf in sheep's clothing it follows logically to tirelessly force-feed the otherwise inconceivable notion of the transmogrification of the murdering terrorist organization Hamas into a 'moderate' political party. Haniyeh is clearly up to the task as he raises the bar from 1967 to 1948:

If Israel is prepared to negotiate seriously and fairly, and resolve the core 1948 issues, rather than the secondary ones from 1967, a fair and permanent peace is possible. Based on a hudna (comprehensive cessation of hostilities for an agreed time), the Holy Land still has an opportunity to be a peaceful and stable economic powerhouse for all the Semitic people of the region. If Americans only knew the truth, possibility might become reality.

And the truth they shall know, as Carl in Jerusalem @ Israel Matzav points out (h/t my friend Jeremayakovka):

I'm glad you said this, Ismail, I really am. And now I'm glad that the Washington Post gave you this soapbox. Because now the American people understand that what you're offering is not 'peace' but a 'hudna,' a temporary truce that will give you time to regroup. And what you're after isn't just the 'territory conquered in 1967' as you call it, but the whole ball of wax. What you're after is to vitiate the existence of the State of Israel. And the American people will never willingly allow that.

We have certainly become more familiar with the term since 9/11, as Ed Morrissey quite rightly points out, in answer to Haniyeh's "deception-filled screed":

If Israel is prepared to negotiate seriously and fairly, and resolve the core 1948 issues, rather than the secondary ones from 1967, a fair and permanent peace is possible. Based on a hudna (comprehensive cessation of hostilities for an agreed time), the Holy Land still has an opportunity to be a peaceful and stable economic powerhouse for all the Semitic people of the region.

The hudna goes back to Mohammed, who used the device to gather his strength while weakening his enemy. Haniyeh knows full well what a hudna means, even if he thinks his audience does not. It's the final prevarication in a column full of lies and half-truths, hyperbole and hypocrisy. We leave Haniyeh's column more convinced than ever that Hamas has no intention of negotiating for Palestinian statehood along the framework of previous agreements, but intends to wage terrorism against Israel until it concedes.

More work for us bloggers in this David vs Goliath fight for truth and justice. 'Clearing the Summer Rains' @ Honest Reporting is another forceful and thorough rebuttal of Haniyeh's lies. My friend Michael van der Galien has more, and so do my estimable friends @ Vital Perspective.