As surely as Hamas opposes Israel, it’s also a proxy of global jihadist Iran and, as such, viciously wishes death to the United States.

Former Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh explained why he has no problem when Palestinians in Gaza are killed: “The blood of the women, children and elderly … we are the ones who need this blood, so it awakens within us the revolutionary spirit.”

Haniyeh was recently assassinated in Tehran. Despite his monstrous deeds over the decades, some prominent media outlets lamented the passing of what they called a “moderate.”

Likewise, many media outlets attempt to whitewash Hamas terrorists and the group itself, which is designated by the United States, Canada, the U.K., E.U. and Japan as a terrorist organization. Strikingly, mainstream media doggedly avoid the label, preferring to call Hamas terrorists “fighters,” “militants” or “gunmen.” Encyclopedia Britannica says felicitously that Hamas is a “militant Palestinian nationalist and Islamist movement,” avoiding the terrorist designation.

But the word terrorism means something. It describes violent acts directed at innocent civilians to achieve a political or military objective. It’s the precise word for what Palestinians—and especially Hamas—do on a daily basis.

Indeed, Palestinians have honed their terrorism tactics over decades to a gruesome, deadly skill, which they’ve used to kill and injure thousands of Israelis in suicide bombings of public buses, restaurants and religious events.

But Hamas has taken terrorism to new levels—from their targeting of some 10,000 rockets at Israel’s civilian centers to the barbaric Oct. 7 massacre, in which they mutilated, raped and kidnapped some 1,500 innocent children, elderly, mothers and fathers.

When a media organization chooses not to describe such acts as terrorism but rather to use words like “resistance”—they are lying. But more than lying: Under the cover of “journalism,” they promote a radical-left political line, which in Hamas’s case is justification to kill Jews as part of a global Islamist jihad.

Indeed, much media coverage of Hamas supports the terrorist group’s false narrative that it is a liberation movement fighting for Palestinian independence, rather than for the Islamic state clearly described in its official charter.

The media’s whitewash of Haniyeh, Hamas and its savage terrorist minions openly serves to support campus radicals who call for genocide in Israel “from the river to the sea.” These media lies also falsely excuse the Biden administration’s restrictions on weapon shipments to Israel and its calls for an immediate ceasefire, preventing Israel’s destruction of Hamas.

Haniyeh was no “moderate.” For 30 years, he developed an organization of monsters. While media in the 1930s often made excuses for Adolf Hitler’s aggression, they never called him a moderate. But that’s exactly what the BBC and The Washington Post called Haniyeh. CNN called him a “moderating force,” while The Wall Street Journal described him as “the strongest voice advocating for a ceasefire.”

Yet Haniyeh bore responsibility for all Hamas’s evils—from expelling the Palestinian Authority from Gaza in 2007 to throwing members of the Fatah ruling party from rooftops and bombing Israeli population centers to the Oct. 7 mass murder. Haniyeh is an undisputed war criminal for headquartering Hamas military forces in and under civilian residences, schools, hospitals and mosques. No wonder the U.S. named him a “specially designated global terrorist.”

The media disguise Hamas as if they are not terrorists at all. Indeed, Al Jazeera describes the group’s genocidal acts as “armed resistance,” as does PBS, which used the same term to describe Hamas in an article published just three days after the Oct. 7 massacre.

The BBC justifies not calling Hamas terrorists by saying, “It’s simply not the BBC’s job to tell people who to support and who to condemn—who are the good guys and who are the bad guys.” This moral agnosticism is arrogant nonsense. The dictionary definition of terrorism is not subjective; it does not take sides: The term applies unequivocally to Hamas’s actions, which are evil.

The Hamas Charter clearly defines the group as a genocidal terrorist movement. Its preamble reads: “Israel … will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it.” It continues: “There is no solution for the Palestinian problem except by jihad.” Furthermore, “The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight Jews and kill them.” Hamas doesn’t only advocate “armed resistance.” It advocates armed genocide.

Hamas has the blood of thousands of innocents on its hands. Even before Oct. 7, Hamas terrorist attacks killed thousands of Israelis and citizens of other countries. The terrorist group purposely targets civilians with suicide bombings, shootings, stabbings, car-rammings and thousands of rockets launched at Israeli communities.

Hamas ruthlessly oppresses its own people. Though Gazans are oppressed by the cruel tyranny of the Hamas dictatorship—with no civil liberties or rule of law, arbitrary arrests, torture, oppression of women, theft of humanitarian aid and use of human shields—the media unconscionably ignore these conditions. Nor do they mention that Hamas repeatedly provokes war against Israel and is responsible for tens of thousands of war dead in Gaza.

The media’s whitewash of Hamas and their crimes encourages the “ceasefire hoax.” Media coverage of Hamas promotes the terrorist group’s false narrative that they are fighting for Palestinian self-determination—and the lie that Israel is responsible for Gazans killed in the war that Hamas started. These myths also support the Biden Administration’s pressure on Israel for an immediate ceasefire and cutting off weapon supplies.

More than harming Israel, the media cover-up of Hamas’s monstrosities betrays the United States. Only a tiny minority of nations have democracies as strong as Israel’s; no nation so consistently supports U.S. security interests on the ground in the Middle East and international forums; and few nations engender so strongly the political and religious values on which the United States was founded. Any narrative that portrays Hamas as the “good guy” and Israel as the “bad guy” is not just false, it betrays the U.S.

Whitewashing the evil of the Hamas terrorist group is not only a travesty and an injustice against the Jewish state, it’s a betrayal of America’s interests and values. As surely as Hamas opposes Israel, it’s also a proxy of global jihadist Iran and, as such, viciously wishes death to the United States.

James Sinkinson is president of Facts and Logic About the Middle East (FLAME), which publishes educational messages to correct lies and misperceptions about Israel and its relationship to the United States.