The Mehdi Hasan Show on MSNBC is where all critical thinking and common sense goes to die as evidenced by a Sunday segment where Hasan accused Israel of shifting the goalposts on its narrative of where Hamas’s HQ is because he refused to entertain the simple idea that Hamas’s leadership could’ve fled south in the early days of the fighting.
Speaking to political analyst Omar Baddar, Hasan asked, “Omar, the Israelis are now suggesting that they’ll escalate in the south of Gaza having already taken over and basically depopulated Northern Gaza. They suggested the Al-Shifa hospital was the beating heart, the HQ of Hamas, we've yet to see evidence of that claim. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is now saying that the real headquarters of Hamas is in southern Gaza, in the Khan Younis Refugee Camp. Omar, do you hear the sound of goalposts shifting?”
There’s a lot there. First, he wants to condemn Israel for civilian casualties while simultaneously condemning them for urging civilians to flee the combat zone. Second, this show aired on Sunday by which time additional footage of tunnels, captured IDF vehicles, and of hostages being transported to Al-Shifa against their will had been revealed. What more evidence does Hasan want?
Third, if Hasan had bothered to read from the cited Jerusalem Post article about Olmert, he would've had to report that Olmert didn't dismiss Al-Shifa's importance, noting the weapons found there, he simply gave his opinion that Khan Younis is where Hamas's leaders are. Fourth and finally, he apparently doesn’t know how wars work. Prior to his Sunday show, he sent out a Saturday tweet making the same argument to which an Israeli spokesman responded by asking if it was really so hard to believe that Hamas leaders simply ran away.
Mehdi. Are you surprised that once completely encircled and stripped of most of their human shields, Hamas leaders would try to escape, after we surrendered the element of surprise and spent a month urging civilians to evacuate? Is this surprising for you?
— Eylon Levy (@EylonALevy) November 19, 2023
Baddar’s response wasn’t any better, “To say the least. I mean, this is honestly, it's insulting to everybody's intelligence that we're playing this silly game of pretending that Hamas headquarters is here or there. Obviously, if they had any clue where it was that would've been the first thing that they would've hit, that would've been the end of that conversation, we’ve hit the headquarters, the end of that.”
After countless days of accusing Israel of recklessness and worse, MSNBC and Baddar are now saying that if Israel truly thought Al-Shifa Hospital was Hamas’s HQ it could’ve simply flattened it. Again, they are trying to have it both ways.
Doing precisely that, Baddar continued:
But they have no idea what they're doing and there isn’t a real endgame. Frankly, there isn't a real way to defeat Hamas militarily, completely, without obliterating the entirety of the Gaza Strip, which seems to be what Israel is actually doing in effect.
…
We are here in the first place precisely because Palestinians have been denied freedom for decade after decade. And this is the reason why organizations like Hamas become empowered because that kind of despair produces the resentment that leads people to want to take up arms and retaliate using violence. The only way out of this is gonna be resolving this so that Palestinians can be free in order to have a more secure future for both Palestinians and Israelis.
No, we are here because the dead-enders, which apparently includes the vast majority of Palestinians, still want to turn the clock back to 1919.
Here is a transcript for the November 19 show:
MSNBC The Mehdi Hasan Show
11/19/2023
8:37 PM ET
MEHDI HASAN: Omar, the Israelis are now suggesting that they’ll escalate in the south of Gaza having already taken over and basically depopulated Northern Gaza. They suggested the Al-Shifa hospital was the beating heart, the HQ of Hamas, we've yet to see evidence of that claim. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is now saying that the real headquarters of Hamas is in southern Gaza, in the Khan Younis Refugee Camp. Omar, do you hear the sound of goalposts shifting?
OMAR BADDAR: To say the least. I mean, this is honestly, it's insulting to everybody's intelligence that we're playing this silly game of pretending that Hamas headquarters is here or there. Obviously, if they had any clue where it was that would've been the first thing that they would've hit, that would've been the end of that conversation, we’ve hit the headquarters, the end of that.
But they have no idea what they're doing and there isn’t a real endgame. Frankly, there isn't a real way to defeat Hamas militarily, completely, without obliterating the entirety of the Gaza Strip, which seems to be what Israel is actually doing in effect. Having destroyed, you know, 50 percent of the housing units throughout the entirety of the Gaza Strip, and now moving on to where they've told the people to move, claiming that--
HASAN: Yeah.
BADDAR: -- this is where the safe area is and having already bombed it relentlessly to begin with, and now talk about escalating there. It really is a horror show. And just, Mehdi, to the point that Peter had just made, we are here in the first place precisely because Palestinians have been denied freedom for decade after decade.
And this is the reason why organizations like Hamas become empowered because that kind of despair produces the resentment that leads people to want to take up arms and retaliate using violence. The only way out of this is gonna be resolving this so that Palestinians can be free in order to have a more secure future for both Palestinians and Israelis.
