The state broadcaster has spent considerable resources and waited for months to gain an audience with the Hamas leadership in Turkey.
The result is an interview in which the terrorist organisation’s spokesperson serves up gross conspiracy theories about 7 October without NRK’s correspondent Yama Wolasmal being able to properly confront him with the obvious lies.
After sending requests for seven months and waiting four days in Istanbul, NRK was finally allowed into the warmth of Hamas. At a secret address in the Turkish metropolis, the state channel’s team turned up to interview Osama Hamdan. He is the face of the movement and is high on Israel’s lists of wanted terrorists. What unfolded during the interview seems more like a microphone stand for extremist propaganda than critical journalism.
Conspiracy theories in prime time
During the interview, Hamdan manages to claim that Hamas did not kill civilians during the massacre on 7 October 2023. Despite the fact that the terrorists themselves documented the killings with their own body cameras and posted videos of brutal assaults on innocent festival participants, Hamdan is allowed to launch an absurd theory that Israel itself was behind it. He claims that Israeli forces dressed people up as Hamas fighters to kill their own people and thus justify the war in Gaza.
Although Wolasmal asks how he can claim this when there are videos of the events, the terrorist leader’s answer is left as an alternative truth in NRK’s report. Hamdan is given the opportunity to cast doubt on one of the best-documented massacres of modern times by calling the evidence fabricated stories. The fact that a Norwegian public service broadcaster chooses to publish such wild allegations from a terrorist organisation raises serious questions of press ethics.
Compares terror to freedom struggle
Instead of challenging Hamas on their responsibility for the suffering of the civilian population in Gaza, NRK allows the spokesperson to draw parallels to the history of Norwegian occupation. Hamdan rhetorically asks whether Norwegians would accept occupation just to survive, and equates Hamas’ brutal behaviour with legitimate freedom struggle.
When Wolasmal asks whether the price Gaza has paid has been worth it, Hamdan is allowed to talk undisturbed about living in a free nation. The critical perspective that Hamas uses its own civilian population as a living shield and refuses to surrender to save lives is lost in the terrorist leader’s ideological interpretations.
Refuses peace solution
The interview also reveals that Hamas has no intention of bowing to international pressure. Despite signalling that it may relinquish administrative control of Gaza to technocrats, the message from Hamdan is crystal clear when it comes to a ceasefire. The terrorist group refuses to lay down its arms, as demanded by both Israel and incoming US President Donald Trump.
Hamdan maintains that the militia will remain and that the weapons are there to protect the people. This is a statement that stands on its own merits, given the enormous suffering Hamas’ warfare has inflicted on the “Palestinian people”. By giving Hamas this platform, NRK is helping to legitimise an organisation that actively opposes peace and openly lies about its own war crimes.
It is remarkable that licence-paid journalists travel the world to give speaking time to men who deny the realities of 7 October 2023.