AP’s report goes further with its moral equivalence:
Civilians paid a staggering cost on both sides. More than 300 people have been killed in Gaza, while residents fled homes near the border to escape Israeli strikes, heading deeper inside the territory after warnings from the Israeli military. In Israel, TV news aired a stream of accounts from the relatives of captive or missing Israelis, who wailed and begged for assistance amid uncertainty about the fate of their loved ones.
It may be subtle, but when a major news agency says “civilians paid a staggering cost on both sides,” the absurdity of putting Hamas and Israel on the same moral level is consumed by millions.
Terrorists are not “Fighters”
Yet this is AP’s headline about “fighting” done by Hamas:
Terrorists have overrun Israeli communities, are holding civilians hostage, massacring them in the streets, and kidnapping families into Gaza.
These are not “fighters” engaged in “gunbattles,” @AP.
This. Is. Terrorism. pic.twitter.com/qHbT1OYdFK
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) October 7, 2023
This pattern of minimizing the perpetrators’ obscene acts is also achieved by the sin of omission.
The following Reuters page initially presented a video piece showing only Israeli strikes on Gaza, without including any of the horrific clips of Hamas atrocities posted on social media since yesterday. Those were only added much later on Sunday. An earlier version of the page included only footage of Hamas gunmen walking through the border fence and around an Israeli military base. Rest assured that when it comes to Palestinian victims, Reuters doesn’t delay and usually has no qualms about showing almost every visual detail.
Failed Explanations
The third category of biased reporting can look like an attempt to give necessary background. But instead of just reminding their audience that Hamas has always been sworn to Israel’s destruction, wire services covering yesterday’s outrage have reached impressive levels of denial, at best, or blaming Israel, at worst.
In a section titled “What Prompted the Attack?” in a recent explainer piece, AP’s Isabel Debre parrots Hamas’ excuses about Jews visiting “the sensitive Al-Aqsa Mosque Compound.”
Unfortunately, she fails to add the necessary background mentioning it’s the holiest site for Jews, who are allowed to visit it.
She goes on to mention the expansion of Jewish settlements, recent violent protests defying the “blockade” along the Gaza border, and Hamas’ objection to current US-brokered talks on normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Some may argue on the relevance of these reasons, of course, but what they all have in common is that they don’t hold Hamas accountable for anything.
On the contrary, they blame the Jewish state for events leading to the recent catastrophe.
Debre could have simply read Hamas’ charter which declares “we will raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine” in order to realize it has always tried to slaughter Jews and never needed any other excuse for doing so.
