I know the AP likes to think of itself as an unbiased, objective media outlet. But this interview with a top PIJ terrorist belies that.
Abu Hamza is a small, soft-spoken man with a wide smile, but the rockets that Islamic Jihad fires into Israel almost daily serve as constant reminders that renewed talk of Mideast peace remains a distant dream in the violence-torn Gaza Strip.
Israel’s military says Gaza militants have fired some 980 rockets into Israel since June, when Hamas seized power in the coastal territory. That compares to 440 in the preceding four months. In all, thousands of crude rockets fired over the past seven years have killed 12 Israelis, wounded dozens and disrupted life for thousands.
What a nice terrorist! He speaks softly, smiles widely, and launches thousands of “crude” rockets that have only killed 12 Israelis in the past seven years, and only wounded dozens (which is bullshit, by the way—dozens were wounded in one attack this year), and gee, disrupted life for thousands. Let’s look at those “disruptions“:
As I walked through the center of Sderot, an entire store had just been shattered by a Palestinian missile. Nothing special or newsworthy… just part of our daily routine, here in Sderot. On the radio, I hear a dry, lifeless news report that “Two people were lightly injured from shrapnel….â€I stop to think: Wasn’t the army in Beit Hanon supposed to stop this?
I had just gotten off the phone with the Voice of Israel Radio English news, telling them about that morning in Sderot, when a missile fell two meters from the Yeshiva Hesder LearningAcademy in Sderot, where 120 students study. The missile has missed their study hall by 30 feet.
Funny how the AP can’t seem to profile the lives of the people of Sderot, who are on the receiving end of that soft-spoken murderer.
And then we have some flat-out passing on of lies.
Israeli troops and settlers withdrew from Gaza more than two years ago and Israel has begun a fledgling peace process with the moderate Palestinian forces now in control of the West Bank. So why is Islamic Jihad still raining missiles on Israeli towns, provoking fierce retaliation and a new Israeli threat to cut off Gaza’s electricity?
This is the Palestinians’ way of offsetting Israel’s sophisticated military machine, Abu Hamza said. Israel’s decision to seal Gaza’s borders after Hamas militants took control is another reason the rockets are justified, he said.
“Our rockets go over those borders,” he said.
Really? They fire the rockets because it’s a way of “offsetting” the IDF? Gee. If you read a little further in the article, you read this:
Abu Hamza spoke softly and methodically, making frequent eye contact with an American reporter. But there was no mistaking the bitterness of his words.
“Resistance must continue until we uproot the occupation from all the land of Palestine … from the sea to the river,” he said, outlining Islamic Jihad’s position that a future Palestinian state must replace Israel, not live alongside it.
Sounds to me that those rockets are being launched for a very different reason than to “offset” the power of the IDF. But then, the reporter and editor knew that, and still wrote the bullshit of the previous paragraphs. And then a little further on is this:
He said that Palestinian rocket fire forced Israel out of Gaza in 2005 and that he expected the same result in southern Israeli towns like Sderot and Ashkelon.
So tell me again, Mr. AP Editor, how is it that the reasons for PIJ firing rockets into Gaza can be characterized as this crap:
This is the Palestinians’ way of offsetting Israel’s sophisticated military machine, Abu Hamza said. Israel’s decision to seal Gaza’s borders after Hamas militants took control is another reason the rockets are justified, he said.
This is pathetically bad editing. But then, that’s par for the course when it comes to interviewing terrorists. The media constantly try to give us the other side, as if the opinion of men whose main goal in life is to murder schoolchildren is worth hearing.
This is about the only truthful part of the entire article:
At one point, Abu Hamza said his group would consider a temporary halt to rocket fire if Israel stopped pursuing militants and opened Gaza’s borders. But that statement was rendered meaningless by his subsequent assertion that other forms of “resistance” such as suicide attacks and roadside bombs would continue during any rocket truce.
The rest of the article is all about how Israel is going to send the IDF into Gaza to clean out the terrorists like Abu Hamza (and may a Hellfire missile find him soon). But there’s one last piece to the article, at the very end, that pretty much solves the riddle of why the PIJ gets a bye on so much terror:
Associated Press writer Ibrahim Barzak contributed to this report.
Uh-huh.
Exit question: I have seen exactly ONE AP article that shows being on the Israeli side of a terror attack. How many have we seen that have interviewed terrorists?