Hamas has resumed full-scale attacks on Israel, complete with wounded Israelis in Sderot, and the headline to the AP story is this:
Gaza violence continues with airstrike, rockets
Notice the order of events in the headline. Airstrikes come first, even though they are in response to the rocketing of Israeli cities. But according to the AP, the rockets are in “response” to the airstrikes.
Palestinian militants attacked a major city in southern Israel with rocket fire on Friday, a serious escalation of widening violence that has all but buried a five-month-old truce.
Hamas fighters launched rocket barrages at Ashkelon, 11 miles north of Gaza, causing panic but no casualties. They also unleashed rockets at nearby Sderot, where rescue services said one person was lightly wounded by shrapnel. Several rockets hit open areas.
The Israeli military warned residents of communities near Gaza to remain in their homes, and police and rescue services went on high alert in preparation for more attacks.
Friday’s barrages followed an earlier strike by Israeli aircraft targeting militants firing rockets in northern Gaza. Dr. Moaiya Hassanain of Gaza’s Health Ministry said two gunmen were moderately wounded.
Do you see the deliberate anti-Israel slant of the AP reporting? The barrage was in response to airstrikes, which were carried out because of an earlier rocket barrage—and somehow, the AP manages to place the blame squarely on Israel’s shoulders, once again, for defending herself against terrorists launching rockets at the civilian population. And notice the attempt to play down the damages by the rockets.
And in upside-down world, even the AP is noticing that maybe—just maybe—the truce is over.
Hamas, like Israel, said it wants to continue the truce, but events signaled the opposite is happening.
This is after they already published this in the article:
Hamas claimed responsibility for the rocket fire, and said it fired deep into Israel to demonstrate the price the Jewish state would pay if the truce collapsed.
“The resistance…is able to hit the Zionist depth,” said Hamas lawmaker Mushir al-Masri. “Either there’s full commitment to the truce and all its conditions, or the resistance will have a position on every Zionist crime.”
And what would an AP article be without pointing out that Hamas rocket barrages are mostly harmless, but Israel’s kill Palestinians. The fact that they mostly kill terrorists? Irrelevant.
The Egyptian-mediated truce has largely halted a cycle of Palestinian rocket attacks and deadly Israeli reprisals.
Funny how the actual toll of Palestinian rocket attacks never makes it into the AP articles. Well, no, not really. The AP bias is pretty well known here.
But there’s worse to come. Stay tuned.