Hamas beauty makeover continues

There's a movement afoot at Reuters to recast Hamas as a moderate "nationalist" group opposed to violent Jihad.  In today's installment, "Jihadists Challenge Hamas Western Approach", correspondent Nidal al-Mughrabi reports on a terror attack at a Gaza wedding party by anonymous gunmen purportedly upset that Hamas is not extremist enough:

They had just finished performing east of Khan Younis when armed militants burst in, set fire to $40,000 worth of instruments and fired shots between the legs of band members.

Al-Mughrabi then repeats the lie issued earlier this week in his story of a terror attack at a UN summer camp:

The threat comes from Salafi jihadists whose agenda of global holy war against the West is against the nationalist goals of Gaza's rulers Hamas...

Au contraire, as we noted in our post at the time, Jihadism (holy war) is very much at the core of Hamas' identity.

Moreover, we wonder how al-Mughrabi knows the attacks are being perpetrated by Salafi jihadists when apparently no one was arrested following the wedding party incident and Hamas has refused to identify the affiliation of the attackers in the earlier UN summer camp incident.

But not to fear, although many members of the Jihadist Salafi factions "were once trained activists of Hamas' armed wing, Izz el-Deen Al-Qassam Brigades", the moderate law and order guys at Hamas have things well in hand:

Ehab al-Ghsain, spokesman of the Hamas interior ministry, said security services had finalised the plan to provide security protection to public places where residents would go to enjoy summer holidays including restaurants and beaches... Ghsain attributed a drop in bomb attacks in the territory to a security campaign to "arrest characters involved in causing chaos" and to an educational plan to rehabilitate members.

 Well, thank heaven for that.