The Associated Press would have the world believe the “news” organization had no clue Hamas was the same building in Gaza.

“Press freedom advocates condemned Israel’s airstrike Saturday on a Gaza building that housed offices of foreign media, including The Associated Press and Al-Jazeera.

After it was struck by missiles, the 12-story al-Jalaa tower, which had also been home to apartments and other offices, collapsed in giant cloud of dust, disrupting coverage of the conflict between Israel and Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip, which has escalated in the last week, killing dozens of people.”

You know, the IDF really didn’t have to give advance notice to the residents of the building. Hamas had been shelling Israel for days by then. Thousands of rockets, paid for by Iran, have been launched into Israel. According to the leftist media, of which the Associate Press is part of, along with The Squad and others are blasting Israel for daring to defend themselves against Hamas. 

Now, with that building being leveled, because YES, Hamas took up residence there years ago, the Associated Press is in full whine mode about how they knew nothing about anything Sgt. Shultz style. As noted by Powerline blog, the AP is clutching pearls all over the place about HOW DARE ISRAEL put their lives at risk! Except for that pesky evacuation advance notice. 

Secretary of State Anthony Blinken also jumped on the, ‘I haven’t seen the data’ bandwagon. 

“Blinken also said he had asked Israel for any evidence for its claim that Hamas was operating in an Gaza office building housing The Associated Press and Al Jazeera news bureaus that was destroyed in an Israeli airstrike over the weekend. But he said that he personally has “not seen any information provided.”

You know whom I’m inclined to believe? Israel. They’ve been dealing with Hamas for years, and it’s absolutely been documented that Hamas has a history of hiding themselves in the civilian population. Guess what folks, the Associated Press has known that for years. YEARS. 

“Most consumers of the Israel story don’t understand how the story is manufactured. But Hamas does. Since assuming power in Gaza in 2007, the Islamic Resistance Movement has come to understand that many reporters are committed to a narrative wherein Israelis are oppressors and Palestinians passive victims with reasonable goals, and are uninterested in contradictory information. Recognizing this, certain Hamas spokesmen have taken to confiding to Western journalists, including some I know personally, that the group is in fact a secretly pragmatic outfit with bellicose rhetoric, and journalists—eager to believe the confession, and sometimes unwilling to credit locals with the smarts necessary to deceive them—have taken it as a scoop instead of as spin.

~Snip

When Hamas’s leaders surveyed their assets before this summer’s round of fighting, they knew that among those assets was the international press. 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. (This happened.) Hamas fighters would burst into the AP’s Gaza bureau and threaten the staff—and the AP wouldn’t report it. (This also happened.) Cameramen waiting outside Shifa Hospital in Gaza City would film the arrival of civilian casualties and then, at a signal from an official, turn off their cameras when wounded and dead fighters came in, helping Hamas maintain the illusion that only civilians were dying. (This too happened; the information comes from multiple sources with firsthand knowledge of these incidents.)

Colford, the AP spokesman, confirmed that armed militants entered the AP’s Gaza office in the early days of the war to complain about a photo showing the location of a rocket launch, though he said that Hamas claimed that the men “did not represent the group.” The AP “does not report many interactions with militias, armies, thugs or governments,” he wrote. “These incidents are part of the challenge of getting out the news—and not themselves news.”

A former Associated Press reporter with years of experience in Russia, Georgia, the Middle East, and specifically Israel and Gaza wrote the above. I’d read it all as it is highly illuminating as to how in the tank the Associated Press is with organizations such as the Palestinian government, Hamas, and others. 

Kind of loving the media "Israel used us to trick Hamas" with "Why yes we are sharing office space with Hamas, why do you ask?"

— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) May 15, 2021

Did…Hamas @ap stringers write the article? This is not journalism. It’s something quite different and legitimately sinister. https://t.co/4EwI37TxMo

— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) May 15, 2021

Objective journalism?? No such thing with the Associated Press. Particularly when it involves their mad scramble to gaslight the public into believing that they have never noticed anything related to Hamas in their building for the last fifteen years. 

Memo to the Associated Press and other media organizations. Catering to terrorists in hopes that bombs and missiles will pass right on by is about the same as carting a scorpion around on your back, and believing it will never sting you.

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Feature Photo Credit: mock reporter by Alexas_Fotos via Pixabay, cropped and modified