Whoopi Goldberg, the famed American actress and co-host of the ABC daily talk show The View, has come under fire for seemingly questioning whether Hamas is a terror organization.
Remember when Whoopi Goldberg claimed the Holocaust wasn't racism, it was white people fighting white people?
Well, she's at it again…
This time she felt it appropriate to proclaim that not everyone thinks that Hamas are terrorists. pic.twitter.com/4vSEnzkZtY
— Israel Advocacy Movement (@israel_advocacy) November 23, 2022
During a discussion on The View about Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s past statements on foreign affairs, co-host Sara Haines brought up Omar’s June 2021 comment that equated the United States and Israel with the Taliban and Hamas.
While Haines was expressing her indignation at Omar’s comment, she referred to Hamas and the Taliban as “organized terrorist communities,” to which Goldberg responded, “Depends on who you talk to.”
So, to help Whoopi Goldberg and her viewers understand who considers Hamas to be a terrorist organization and why they do so, the following is a brief guide to everything you need to know about the organization.
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Hamas: Terrorizing Israel Since 1987
Hamas, also known as the Islamic Resistance Movement, is currently recognized as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union, Canada, the Organization of American States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. In addition, New Zealand and Paraguay have designated the military wing of Hamas as a terror organization.
The reason that so many states and supranational bodies designate Hamas as a terror organization is that, since its founding in 1987, Hamas has been responsible for some of the most heinous attacks on civilians in Israeli history.
Related Reading: The Media Achilles’ Heel That Is Hamas Propaganda
Founded by members of the Muslim Brotherhood at the beginning of the First Intifada, Hamas first gained worldwide attention during the mid-1990s, when it committed a series of attacks (including suicide bombings) in an effort to sidetrack the burgeoning peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
Then, in the early 2000s, Hamas became one of the leading Palestinian terror organizations to attack Israeli civilians throughout the Second Intifada.
Some of the most notable attacks carried out by Hamas during those years include the 2001 suicide bombing of the popular Sbarro restaurant in downtown Jerusalem (which killed 15 people, including seven children), the 2001 suicide bombing of the Dolphinarium Disco in Tel Aviv (which killed 21 people, most teenagers), the 2002 suicide bombing of a festive Passover Seder meal in a Netanya hotel (which killed 30 people and injured 140) and the bombing of the Hebrew University (which killed 9 people, including four American citizens).
Related Reading: HonestReporting Quick Guide: The Top 5 Terror Groups Threatening Israel’s Existence
In 2007, Hamas gained control over the Gaza Strip following a bloody civil war with Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party. Since then, Hamas has indiscriminately fired thousands of rockets at Israeli civilian centers and has engaged in four large-scale campaigns against the Jewish state: In 2008, 2012, 2014, and 2021.
In addition, Hamas held Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit hostage for five years and only released him in exchange for thousands of Palestinian terrorists who were imprisoned by Israel.
Hamas is currently holding two Israeli civilians hostage and is also holding onto the bodies of two Israeli soldiers, in the hopes that Israel will release more Palestinian terrorists in another exchange agreement.
For all of the above reasons, suicide bombings against Israeli civilian sites, indiscriminate rocket attacks, and hostage-taking, Hamas is considered a terrorist organization by the majority of Western states and supranational bodies.
Related Reading: From the Nazis to Hamas: The Mass Appeal of ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ Persists (VIDEO)
Whoopi Goldberg, the Holocaust and Israel
This comment by Whoopi Goldberg about Hamas is but the latest in a series of ill-informed statements that the American actress has made about Jewish and Israel-related matters.
In early 2022, Goldberg was suspended from The View for two weeks, following her claim that there was no racial aspect to the Holocaust and that it involved “two groups of white people.”
Ten years earlier, during Operation Pillar of Defense (one of the military operations that Israel fought against Hamas), Goldberg came under fire for retweeting that “men, women & children in Gaza, Palestine have been getting Massacred [sic] for the past week.”
In response to the backlash, Goldberg tweeted that she’s not going to stop “having an opinion cos someone somewhere is not gonna like it” and that she was looking for more information to understand the situation.
Much like in that case, Whoopi Goldberg’s comments about the Holocaust and Hamas seem to be off-the-cuff remarks about issues that she is not well-versed in and does not seem to fully grasp.
The fact that Goldberg’s dismissive remark about Hamas came less than 24 hours before the Palestinian terror organization publicly praised twin bombings in Jerusalem is all the more jarring.
It would behoove Whoopi Goldberg, as well as any other person commenting on Israel-related matters, to become fully informed on all the related issues before making these statements to such a large audience.
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