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There's No Justification for the Murder of Jamal Khashoggi, But Don't Whitewash What He Believed
(Ha'aretz) Petra Marquardt-Bigman - It doesn't really matter what views Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi held. Opinions quite simply never justify murder. Yet there is a widespread misperception that Khashoggi was some kind of liberal dissident. As the New York Times noted, Khashoggi joined the Muslim Brotherhood as a young man, and he "remained conversant in its conservative, Islamist and often anti-Western rhetoric." Khashoggi told Al Jazeera Arabic a year ago he "deplored the [Saudi] authorities' decision to allow some in the Saudi news media to express support for Israel against the Palestinians." For Khashoggi, the "struggle against Israel" was a critical part of the Islamist agenda he embraced. Khashoggi's intense hatred for Israel is clearly reflected in his Al Hayat columns. Israel's "existence is outside the context of history and logic...it came into being by force, it will live by force and it will die by force," he wrote. He praised Hamas for accomplishing the "miracle" of procuring rockets and explosives, and was full of admiration that "the huge network of tunnels that extends for miles under Gaza and the borders with Israel and Egypt were used brilliantly to inflict unprecedented losses on the enemy."