How many anti-Israel stories can one news service publish in a week?
Depends. How many stories on Israel or the Palestinians did the AP publish that week?
Here’s a new one: Mean, horrible Israel is causing eight Gazan students to lose their Fulbright scholarships because they can’t get vias from Israel to leave Gaza.
Hadeel Abu Kawik was supposed to spend next year in the United States on the prestigious Fulbright scholarship program, but now it appears she will remain trapped in the Gaza Strip by an Israeli blockade.
Word that the U.S. State Department was canceling her scholarship came after Abu Kawik, 23 and a computer engineering student, went through a lengthy process for the scholarship that included interviews, exams and an English test.
“I was building my hope on this scholarship,” she said Friday.
There you go, the three grafs that usually wind up in your local newspaper’s “world” section. In the next two paragraphs, you find out why Israel is refusing to grant visas to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Seven other Gaza students also lost their grants. The decision was made because they would not be able to get exit visas from Israel, according to State Department spokesman Tom Casey.
The teeming coastal territory and its 1.5 million inhabitants have been controlled by the Islamic militant group Hamas for nearly a year. Israel has kept its border crossings closed to everything but humanitarian aid in an attempt to weaken the group and end frequent rocket barrages aimed at Israeli towns.
Oh, yeah. Those crude, homemade rockets that rarely do any damage. The ones that killed two Israelis in the last few weeks. The ones that are still falling on Israel every day. The ones that Hamas refuses to stop firing, or allowing others to fire. Gee. Why is it that Israel refuses to give anyone visas out of Gaza? Could it be because when they do, Hamas takes advantage of it and tries to get terrorists into Israel using medical excuses and the like?
Meanwhile, a Hamas publicity stunt turned violent (I know, shocking to hear that). Hamas has been threatening to force the crossings into Israel for quite a while now. Also from the AP:
Seven Palestinian protesters were wounded Friday when they were shot by IDF troops during a demonstration at Sufa border crossing, Palestinian doctors reported.
More than 10,000 Palestinians waving Hamas flags approached the crossing calling for an end to the blockade imposed on Gaza. The demonstrators burned tires and chanted anti-Israeli slogans.
How much you want to bet those “anti-Israel slogans” included “Death to Israel”? The AP never seems to elaborate on those anti-Israel slogans the Hamas uses to get its crowds into a frenzy, but they all include calling for the end of the Jewish state. (Which is why, of course, the AP will never quote them directly. Can’t change the narrative and make the Palestinians out to be the villains.)
Hamas had called the protest march, which began following Friday prayers, and several protesters got within yards of the border fence.
The IDF confirmed troops were on the scene at the demo but did not immediately comment on whether they fired.
The army had issued a directive to soldiers to prevent Palestinian penetration of the Sufa terminal at any cost, even the cost of using live ammunition.
Of course there’s no confirmation. Most AP stories publish Palestinian eyewitness accounts, or quote Palestinian “medics,” while never truly confirming the accusations. And they have been caught more than once lying about what happened. For instance, when a kassam rocket falls in Gaza and hurts or kills Palestinians, the “medics” immediately blame Israeli shelling, and the AP dutifully reports it. Witness:
Meanwhile, a 65-year-old woman died of her wounds a day after she was shot along the Gaza-Israel border, a Palestinian health official said.
Dr. Moaiya Hassanain said the woman was near her home around 300 yards from the border fence when she was shot on Thursday evening.
Hassanain said the gunfire came from an IDF border position, but the army said it had no record of any shooting in the area at the time.
Uh-huh.
Those wacky “Palestinian health officials”.