The ‘Israel Is a Monster for Bombing the Associated Press’ Office Building in Gaza’ Narrative Just Collapsed. By Matt Vespa.
Israel launched an airstrike that leveled a building in Gaza that also contained Al-Jazeera and Associated Press offices. Katie wrote about it yesterday. There’s been outrage. There have been allegations that Israel violated international law. And the news coverage has been predictably trashy …
Israel shared intelligence with the US showing how Hamas operated inside the same building with the Associated Press and Al-Jazeera in Gaza, officials in Jerusalem said on Sunday.
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 senior diplomatic source said. “I understand they found the explanation satisfactory.” …
Netanyahu also remarked that there were “no deaths whatsoever” from the strike on the building, because of measures Israel takes to avoid harming civilians, including giving an advance warning. …
“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.”
AP are complicit and untruthful:
AP CEO: “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’d never knowingly put our journalists at risk.”
What if I told you that a former @AP journalist (@MattiFriedman) had written IN 2014 that Hamas regularly operated in and around the AP office in Gaza? https://t.co/MXdTcCqvOc pic.twitter.com/dlx01utSLS
— Seffi Kogen (@seffikogen) May 16, 2021
Hamas systematically uses the media towers and studios in Gaza for military purposes. They've been doing it since they took over in late 2000s. It would count as an open secret but it's not even a secret. Anyone who pretends they don't know is either very new to this, or lying. pic.twitter.com/VIX5H0p05h
— Omri Ceren (@omriceren) May 16, 2021
AP are also so hypocritical. Last year, in the summer of BLM riots in the US, AP said:
AP stated we must not focus on property destruction it is only the underlying grievance that matters! https://t.co/qnZsQJNrtK
— Jack Posobiec (@JackPosobiec) May 15, 2021
Babylon Bee sums it up: Oops! AP Reporter Forgets To Remove Hamas Headband Before Going Live
Finally, a bit of history to put all this in context: