IDF Reveals Why It Razed Building Housing AP, Alleges Hamas Was Working on a Deadly Project Right Under Journalists' Noses

By Kevin Catapano June 9, 2021 at 1:11pm

On Tuesday, the Israel Defense Forces revealed the reason it leveled a media building housing Associated Press journalists last month during the 11-day conflict between the Israeli military and Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip.

According to The Times of Israel, “The Israel Defense Forces says Hamas was operating within a Gaza media tower housing the offices of international media outlets, including The Associated Press, to develop a system to disrupt the Iron Dome missile defense system.”

It should be no surprise that Hamas would infiltrate an outpost housing international journalists, given that the terrorist group routinely hides behind its own people in Gaza while firing rockets at Israeli civilians across the way.

Hamas hides in civilian buildings in Gaza. Don’t believe us?

Hear it for yourself from the Head of Hamas in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar: pic.twitter.com/rcFPSmEfRZ

— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) June 6, 2021

This sort of situation presents a win-win scenario for Hamas because it knows that Israel does not target civilians or journalists and that the Western media routinely slaps Israel with unfairly critical coverage.

It’s not easy fighting a terrorist organization that embeds its military infrastructure in civilian areas.

We use the latest military technology to precisely strike Hamas targets, while minimizing damage to the surrounding areas.

Take a look: pic.twitter.com/oSXDZTVZlW

— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) May 20, 2021

Either Israel leaves the building standing and Hamas gets to continue its terrorist activities, or Israel hits the building and the international media — which is in the tank for Israel’s enemies — reports on Israel’s unforgivable war crimes, even though it was defending itself against terrorists using noncombatants as human shields.

Do you believe the IDF that Hamas was operating in the building?

“The site was used by the Hamas terror organization for intelligence R&D and to carry out SIGINT (signals intelligence), ELINT (electronic signals intelligence), and EW (electronic warfare) operations, targeting both IDF operational activity and civilian systems in Israel,” the IDF said, according to The Times of Israel.

In other words, as a headquarters for international journalists, the building was equipped with technologies and communications channels that surrounding buildings would not have offered.

It presented quite the opportunity for a secretive guerilla warfare campaign on the part of terrorists targeting Israel’s high-tech Iron Dome system, which locates incoming missiles and shoots them down before they can hit civilian areas.

Israel has little choice but to disrupt operations against Iron Dome. It happens to be the country’s primary defense against relentless terrorist attacks coming from all sides.

The lives of Israeli civilians depend upon it.

So why does this matter, aside from the obvious?

It raises serious questions as to the motivations of establishment Western media outlets, the AP in particular.

Following the airstrike last month, AP president and CEO Gary Pruitt issued a statement condemning the state of Israel for hitting the building.

“The world will know less about what is happening in Gaza because of what happened today,” he said in a statement. “We are shocked and horrified that the Israeli military would target and destroy the building housing AP’s bureau and other news organizations in Gaza.”

Pruitt didn’t speculate as to why this might have happened, nor did he admit knowledge of Hamas activity inside the building.

His statement suggested to any reasonable person that Israel had aggressed international journalists, ostensibly to prevent them from reporting on actions that Israel wanted hidden from the Western public.

As per the usual narrative, the establishment media was positioned as the courageous and martyred guardians of the truth, standing up for the oppressed and making enemies with the Western powers that be.

Another Western-style democracy was supposedly guilty of threatening the safety of journalists, even though an Israeli military official called an hour before the strike to warn occupants to evacuate the building, as it was being used by terrorists and would be destroyed.

The free press was under siege.

Or, alternatively, the establishment media is just comprised of leftist political activists who have bought into the lie that Israel, as the more powerful force in the region, is the oppressor and must be overthrown by terrorist groups to reverse the balance of power.

But the real question amid all this is not necessarily why the IDF hit the building or why the AP regularly skews anti-Israel in its coverage.

The better question is just why exactly AP journalists were sharing office space with Hamas terrorists — and nobody had anything to say about that until it was made public not by truth-seeking investigative journalists but by a military defending its country against terror attacks.

That is something that the public should be “shocked and horrified” about.

But of all the corrupt power structures that the establishment media says need to be held accountable, the establishment media is not one of them, at least as far as its members are concerned.

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