‘Austere Religious Scholar’ Taken, Islamist Terrorists Compete For Remaining Washington Post Obit Euphemisms

Nasrallah: “Expert Student of Underground Décor.”

Khan Yunis, July 17 – The mounting number of high-ranking figures in Hamas and similar organizations has sparked a rush to claim flattering, sanitized terminology for use in the new articles that one of the leading American news outlets will employ to report on their inevitable deaths.

Surviving members of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, and other terrorist groups in the Middle East realized over the last several months that if they hope to snag any positive rhetoric from the Washington Post and its ilk in their eventual obituaries that can in any way compare to that paper’s reference to brutal Islamic State leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi as an “austere religious scholar,” they must invest significant effort in cultivating contacts within those newsrooms to help guarantee that other dead terrorists do not garner the desired positive descriptions.

“It’s already getting hard to secure unique descriptors simply because of the proliferation of fighters called ‘teachers,’ ‘humanitarian aid workers,’ ‘doctors,’ and ‘journalists,'” explained Hamas military leader Muhammad Deff in an interview last month. His own obituary might not see publication, since reports of his death in an Israeli airstrike over the weekend remain unconfirmed.

Remarks from senior leaders in the terrorist organizations appear to support indications of a scramble. “Hamas Chief] Ismail Haniyeh instructed his staff to establish contact with Post and New York Times reporters with known Hamas sympathies,” attested a contact in Doha, Qatar, with knowledge of the Hamas bigwigs’ affairs. “I haven’t seen solid proof, but from what I can tell, Haniyeh wants his obituary headline to refer to him as a ‘Dedicated Man of the Palestinian People.'”

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, for his part, has forbidden anyone outside his inner circle from making such inquiries, and now requires his closest aides and subordinates to seek his approval for any obituary adjectives and nouns in the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, British Broadcasting Corporation, Sky News, The Guardian, The Times of London, Reuters, the Associated Press, and at least a dozen other major media organizations. Nasrallah himself has reserved the term, “Inspirational Shia Sheikh,” but has also barred other Hezbollah personnel from claiming the terms, “Devoted Lebanese Father-Figure” and “Expert Student of Underground Décor.”

Washington Post journalists insisted they will not likely agree to reserving any of the terms for specific terrorist figures. “I appreciate what they’re trying to do, but they don’t have a grasp of the subtleties,” remarked an obituary researcher for the Post. “It has to be so glaringly offensive to normal sensibilities that it invites outrage, not just mockery. The phrases you mentioned before are nice, but they lack the punch of, say, ‘spirited advocate for Islamic masculinity.'”

Please support our work through Patreon.
Buy In The Biblical Sense: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B92QYWSL