A growing controversy over plans by Washington D.C.’s Newseum to memorialize two Hamas terrorists slain last November grew significantly Sunday evening. Leading Jewish and human rights organizations expressed “shock and outrage” at the possibility that operatives, paid by a U.S.-designated terrorist entity blacklisted by the Obama administration under Executive Order 13324, would be honored as “journalists.”
Commenting on the firestorm of controversy, Buzzfeed editor Ben Smith observed late Sunday night that “it’s not entirely clear that the Newseum has thought this one through.”
Both the American Jewish Committee (AJC) and The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) issued statements Sunday ringing as harsh and powerful as any in recent memory. The groups joined the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which on Friday blasted the Newseum for “a shameful decision based on a falsehood that besmirches the true heroes of journalism who died while pursuing their mission of seeking and reporting the truth,” in calling on the museum to reverse its decision.
The two operatives worked for Hamas’ Al-Aqsa TV, a designated terrorist entity that the United States has blacklisted and that France has banned. Broadcasts from the station, embedded below, have been referenced by officials as typically odious.
“Anwar al-Awalki has been connected with inspiring several terrorist attacks on the United States through his online sermons. Had Awalki described himself a documentary maker or a journalist, rather than a preacher, perhaps he could have been honored too,” one DC-insider told TheTower.org, referring to the Al Qaeda imam killed by a U.S. drone in September 2011. “The Newseum’s blunder here is surreal. Honoring terrorists who use the cover of journalism to smuggle weapons in cars marked TV, who help plan and command terrorist attacks, who teach children that ‘killing Jews is worship’ – [that] is unsustainable in a town built on credibility, especially for an organization that exists to honor, not defile, the profession and legacy of journalism.”
The ADL’s statement on Sunday emphasized the organization’s “shock and outrage,” and quoted ADL National Director Abraham H. Foxman describing the event as a “dark day.” The ADL “urged the Newseum to reconsider the decision and remove the names… before they are officially added to the permanent memorial scheduled to be unveiled on Monday.”
In one video, the orphaned children of female suicide bomber Reem Riyashi were invited to the Al-Aqsa TV studios as special guests on a children’s show. They watched a music video based on their mother, showing her reenacting the preparation for her suicide attack. The segment concludes with her daughter reaching for a stick of dynamite as the lyrics say “I am following Mommy in her footsteps.”
When designating the group in 2010, Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Stuart Levey declared that “Treasury will not distinguish between a business financed and controlled by a terrorist group, such as Al-Aqsa Television, and the terrorist group itself.”
Meanwhile the American Jewish Committee described the Newseum’s decision as “a shocking assault on the memory of journalists who have died in conflict situations.” said AJC Executive Director David Harris, “seeking to conflate authentic journalists and operatives for a murderous group banned by the U.S. and European Union.”