AP Journos Thought Hamas Rockets In Their Building Were Just Vases Or Something

“It’s hard for me to accept that the rockets we saw coming in and out of there were weapons of war.”

Gaza City, May 18 – Reporters and staff from news organizations whose headquarters in this embattled coastal territory collapsed after an Israeli airstrike Sunday explained that they had no idea the structure, parts of which they leased from a known Hamas operative, held war materiel, because all the rockets, explosives, and other weapons they routinely encountered there served a mere decorative function, and could not, how dare you suggest it, have presented a legitimate military target.

Associated Press and Al Jazeera personnel in Gaza continued to react Tuesday to the Israeli strike earlier this week that took down the high-rise building housing their headquarters, with the most frequent expression involving the disbelief that the benevolent Islamist militant terrorist group that exerted effective control over the building could have used it to store weapons or to house command facilities.

“I’m still trying to wrap my head around the gall to attack the media,” stated AP journalist Bligh Ndazabat, who, along with all his colleagues, heeded the IDF’s warning of the imminent strike and evacuated the building. “It’s hard for me to accept that the rockets we saw coming in and out of there were weapons of war. You’ll have a hard time convincing me Hamas would even do that with objects they reserve for killing innocents.” No journalists were injured as a result of the strike that leveled the building.

“Missiles look just like flowerpots,” explained bureau editor Dee Niall. “It’s an easy mistake to make. I don’t see why Israel is so upset about it. As if no one’s ever misidentified things before, such as confusing such totally, totally different things as anti-Zionism with antisemitism.”

Tensions between media organizations and the IDF had already risen prior to the strike following revelations that the IDF had induced the New York Times to report that a ground operation into Gaza had commenced late Thursday, when in fact no such movement had occurred. The apparent confirmation of such a development by a major media outlet led Hamas to concentrate fighters in an underground tunnel and command complex in anticipation of a ground assault, but in fact the IDF then sortied hundreds of attack aircraft to deploy bunker-busting munitions against the tunnel system and killing dozens, perhaps hundreds, of Hamas terrorists. Media organizations objected to their use as a vehicle for deception, a complaint that has seldom prevented them from uncritical repetition of tendentious or false statistics and claims by Hamas and allied groups.

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