On Friday, the Israeli Air Force bombed a building in Gaza that served as headquarters for the Associated Press and Al Jazeera, the pro-Palestinian, Arab propaganda organ.
No one was hurt or killed because the IDF gave a one-hour warning that the building was going to be destroyed. That didn’t stop the AP from issuing a statement from its CEO Gary Pruitt that condemned Israel in the most hysterical terms.
“We are shocked and horrified that the Israeli military would target and destroy the building housing AP’s bureau and other news organizations in Gaza. They have long known the location of our bureau and knew journalists were there. We received a warning that the building would be hit.”
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“The Israeli government says the building contained Hamas military intelligence assets. We have called on the Israeli government to put forward the evidence. AP’s bureau has been in this building for 15 years. We have had no indication Hamas was in the building or active in the building. This is something we actively check to the best of our ability. We would never knowingly put our journalists at risk.”
Pruitt added, “The world will know less about what is happening in Gaza because of what transpired today.”
That last is pure fiction. But Pruitt wanted proof? The Israelis gave it to the Americans on Saturday.
Officials in more than one government office confirmed that US President Joe Biden’s phone call to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday was, in part, about the bombing of the building, and that Israel showed Biden and American officials the intelligence behind the action.
“We showed them the smoking gun proving Hamas worked out of that building,” a source close to Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi said. “I understand they found the explanation satisfactory.”
Of course, it didn’t help matters that the IDF had tweeted out a bit of misdirection the day before, leading the entire world to believe Israel had invaded Gaza with ground troops.
IDF air and ground troops are currently attacking in the Gaza Strip.
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) May 13, 2021
In fact, the disinformation was a smokescreen to hide a brilliant operation that took out the network of tunnels built by Hamas to smuggle arms and people into Israel.
The media — like your spouse — doesn’t like being lied to. So the press was probably a little on edge when the building housing AP’s offices was targeted for destruction.
Didn’t AP know that Hamas was operating in their headquarters building? Here’s where Pruitt’s disingenuousness got nauseating.
“The building housed the offices of civilian media, which the terrorist organization Hamas hides behind and uses as human shields,” the IDF said in a statement. “The terror organization Hamas deliberately places its military assets in the heart of the civilian population in the Gaza Strip. Prior to the attack, the IDF warned the civilians who were in the building and gave them sufficient time to evacuate.”
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AP knew that Hamas was there. They just chose not to report it.
After Operation Protective Edge in 2014, former AP reporter Matti Friedman wrote in The Atlantic: “Hamas understood that reporters could be intimidated when necessary and that they would not report the intimidation… The AP staff in Gaza City would witness a rocket launch right beside their office, endangering reporters and other civilians nearby – and the AP wouldn’t report it, not even in AP articles about Israeli claims that Hamas was launching rockets from residential areas.”
Joe Biden has been fairly restrained in his response to Israel’s war against Hamas terrorists. Not so his leftist allies, who have let loose an unbridled burst of hatred against Israel for defending itself. Gaza civilians are getting killed as part of a deliberate plan from Hamas to pile up dead bodies in front of TV cameras as proof of Israel’s “oppression.” You have to delude yourself — Right or Left — to believe that.
There are lots of delusional folks on the Left these days.
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