The AP: Back to its normal anti-Israel bias

The AP bias returns: In this article about Lebanon attempting to “reassure” Congress that Hezbullah has nothing at all to do with its army, the AP describes the Lebanese ambush on the IDF as follows:

The Congressman Berman said his concerns about Hezbollah’s influence over the Lebanese armed forces were reinforced a day after he suspended the aid when Israeli and Lebanese army forces clashed along their common border.

Hezbollah and the Lebanese army both insisted the militant group did not take part in the clash, and the State Department said Monday there was no evidence American-supplied equipment had been used by Lebanese soldiers. It said it was not yet clear whether the soldiers involved had received U.S. military training.

The fighting was the worst since 2006 in the area, killing two Lebanese soldiers, a Lebanese journalist and an Israeli officer. It underlined how easily tensions can re-ignite along the frontier where Israel and Hezbollah fought a war four years ago.

This, in spite of the fact that the Lebanese army itself declared that it fired first, admitting that its troops ambushed the Israelis. Ynet managed to find this quote by Congressman Berman, but the AP article elided the quote to the words in bold:

Berman continued, “I strongly condemn the unprovoked attacked by the Lebanese Army that resulted in the death of an Israeli officer. Until we know more about this incident and the nature of Hizballah influence on the LAF — and can assure that the LAF is a responsible actor — I cannot in good conscience allow the United States to continue sending weapons to Lebanon.”

There, in a nutshell, is how you bias an article. Remove any reference to the Lebanese responsibility for the attack on Israeli troops. Don’t mention the presence of a television crew sent by Hassan Nasrallah to film the ambush. Don’t mention the extraordinary number of journalists present at a regular tree pruning. But do pretend that it was a battle caused by both sides, when in fact, it was an ambush that was responded to with force.

Yep. The AP is back to normal. I expect they fired the editor of the unbiased pieces.