I'm not going to defend Hollywood's portrayal of Muslims in the months after 9/11--except to say that if you compare it to a portrayal of the Japanese during WWII, or the Vietnamese during Vietnam, or Walt Disney's portrayal of African Americans up through the 1980s, etc. etc.... you'll agree that Western society has come a long way since then. Are there questionable portrayals? Absolutely. But as a whole, mass culture in North America is interested in controversy and debate, and that shows in their portrayal of, for instance, the War on Terror in any number of police procedurals in recent years. The trend is toward dialogue on the issue, even if the portrayals are occasionally questionable.
What Hamas is doing is quite different. There's no interest in dialogue, merely an interest in indoctrinating children with their hatred to perpetuate a cycle of violence that borders on the nihilistic. There's no trend toward dialogue, just propaganda that teaches young people to accept the voice of authority and to demonize the enemy. And it's evil. I think peter12 is right that we need to make sure we draw a clear line in the sand between pluralism and relativism. One is good--the other is very, very bad.
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