The real scandal: Why didn't journalists report that Hamas was in their building in Gaza?

Journalists in Gaza are carrying water for Hamas.

There is no other way to spin the faux outrage they are writing about after Israel bombed a building that housed the offices of AP, Al Jazeera, Middle East Eye and other media outlets.

Al Jazeera issued a statement accusing Israel of targeting them:

Al Jazeera condemns in the strongest terms bombing and destruction of its offices by the Israeli military in Gaza, and views this as a clear act to stop journalist from conducting their sacred duty to inform the world and report events on the ground. Al Jazeera vows to pursue every available route to hold the Israeli government responsible for its actions.

Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch quoted a journalist saying "The last attack by @IDF  raises the specter that Israel is deliberately targeting media facilities in Gaza to disrupt coverage."

Notice that none of these journalists are denying that Hamas had offices in that same building they were in.

Chances are very good that they knew about it - and withheld that information from the public.

An IDF source told Noah Pollak that the Al Jalaa tower contained multiple Hamas operations and offices including weapons manufacturing and military intelligence. It also hosted an Islamic Jihad office. And, the source says, AP's local reporters knew about it.

If AP and Al Jazeera knew about these terrorist offices, then they have been and continue to withhold relevant information from the public. It isn't Israel that is trying to disrupt coverage - it is the media themselves who self-censor and don't tell the world the truth about Hamas. 

More color comes from Matti Friedman, who used to work for AP, and wrote in The Atlantic in 2014:

Hamas understood that journalists would not only accept as fact the Hamas-reported civilian death toll—relayed through the UN or through something called the “Gaza Health Ministry,” an office controlled by Hamas—but would make those numbers the center of coverage. Hamas understood that reporters could be intimidated when necessary and that they would not report the intimidation; Western news organizations tend to see no ethical imperative to inform readers of the restrictions shaping their coverage in repressive states or other dangerous areas. In the war’s aftermath, the NGO-UN-media alliance could be depended upon to unleash the organs of the international community on Israel, and to leave the jihadist group alone.

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.)

It is beyond absurd to imagine that Israel targeted journalists to slant coverage. If anything, coverage of Israel would become more critical as a result. There is absolutely no gain for the IDF to target journalists while trying to cripple Hamas' rocket attacks. Only people who know nothing about professional armies would even imagine that. 

Unfortunately, that includes journalists whose entire job is to understand and explain the fact to their readers. 

The sad fact is that Gaza journalists only say what Hamas allows them to say, and they willingly deceive the public who think that there are still journalistic standards. 

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