How is Meshal and Hamas misportrayed by American government elites and or the mainstream media?
I spend a fair amount of time going into Hamas in the book. It began as a distinctly rightwing fundamentalist group that was tolerated by Israel because Israeli authorities wanted to split the Palestinians at the time, and they saw the PLO as the main danger. But Hamas has evolved and developed a sizeable base of support, as reflected in the elections. But then they faced the problem of “How do you actually govern?” A lot of their fundamentalist ideology didn’t work because the Palestinians, at their core, are secular. They aren’t interested in a fundamentalist government running them like in Iran or Saudi Arabia. The U.S. and Israel at that time should have acknowleged the changes in Hamas. It wasn’t the Hamas of 20 years ago. There could have been some major breakthroughs. All you have to do is look at the history of the PLO. I remember when Yasser Arafat was the “chief terrorist,” when Israeli leaders called him another “Hitler.” The PLO began advocating a two-state solution in the
