It turns out that the New York Times gets it after all: Steven Erlanger admits Hamas is a “bit of a problem” to talk to because its rhetoric is not exactly “polite.” But the question remains: Will London’s Guardian and its Hamas apologist Seumas Milne ever get it?

Some have argued that Steven Erlanger’s Times piece comes on the tails of his move from the unsafe West Bank (of the Jordan river) to the safer Left Bank (of Paris’ river, the Seine). One should be cautious to attribute motives–and Erlanger’s piece was as belated as it was welcome. Let’s not make the perfect the enemy of the good. Especially because when one compares the New York Times to the other Anglo-Saxon progressive daily of choice, the Guardian, what one discovers is that those who paper over Hamas’ rhetoric do not always do so because their office is in Gaza.

Truth is, apart from brief holiday trips to rub shoulders with Mideast revolutionaries and the occasional bout of nostalgia for Communism, Milne has been romanticizing Hamas, Hezbollah and just about every other anti-Western, anti-Zionist, fundamentalist organization from his comfortable Fleet Street office. It has less to do with personal safety, and more to do with genuine enthusiasm for these organizations and what they represent.

The seduction of unreason, as Richard Wolin called it in a recent, seminal book on the roots of Western anti-Westernism, is prevalent among a certain section of the Left not because it is expedient. They actually believe in it:

When combined with an anti-humanist-inspired Western self-hatred, ethical relativism engendered an uncritical Third Worldism, an orientation that climaxed in [Michel] Foucault’s enthusiastic endorsement of Iran’s Islamic Revolution.

That fascination with the enemies of Western values–not just the selective silence that may save a reporter’s life during a dangerous assignment–is what drives many Western commentators to downplay Hamas’ rhetoric, if not utterly glorify it in the name of the “struggle” against America and Israel.