Ever the AP whitewash

Hamas had a big anniversary party the other day. They invited their exiled leader, Khaled Mashaal, to join them. Since Egypt is now ruled by the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Muslim Brotherhood is the parent of Hamas, he went to Gaza after 25 years in exile and from there proclaimed that Hamas will destroy Israel.

Reuters headlined a story properly.

Hamas leader vows never to recognize Israel

The AP did not.

Gazans rally with exiled Hamas chief

Reuters filed the story with a proper lead.

Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal, making his first ever visit to the Gaza Strip, vowed on Saturday never to recognize Israel and said his Islamist group would never abandon its claim to all Israeli territory.

“Palestine is ours from the river to the sea and from the south to the north. There will be no concession on an inch of the land,” he told a sea of supporters at an open-air rally, the highlight of his three-day stay in Gaza.

“We will never recognize the legitimacy of the Israeli occupation and therefore there is no legitimacy for Israel, no matter how long it will take.”

The AP did not.

The leader of the Islamic militant group Hamas vowed to continue fighting Israel Saturday, as hundreds of thousands of flag-waving Gazans turned out to celebrate the organization’s 25th anniversary.

Khaled Mashaal’s visit to the Palestinian territory — a first in his lifetime of exile — underscores Hamas’ rising clout and regional acceptance since its eight-day conflict with Israel last month.

At the main stage in Gaza City, a roaring crowd greeted Mashaal and Gaza Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, who emerged from a door built into a large model of a rocket fired at Israeli cities during the recent fighting.

Paragraph five of the above lead (and most newspapers now carry only one to three paragraphs of wire news stories, no longer three to five):

“We are not giving up any inch of Palestine. It will remain Islamic and Arab for us and nobody else. Jihad and armed resistance is the only way,” Mashaal said, referring to holy war. “We cannot recognize Israel’s legitimacy.”

The AP writers and editors carefully construct a narrative that they know newspapers around the world will carry. They whitewash Israel enemies and emphasize the concept that Israel is the aggressor. Here’s the latest AP whitewash and spin on Israel’s response to Hamas calling–yet again–for their destruction.

First, note the headline. It’s another “Israel says” style, used when the AP wants people to doubt that Israel or her representatives are telling the truth.

Israeli PM: Hamas leader seeks to destroy Israel

Now the story, all four paragraphs of it. Notice anything missing?

Israel’s prime minister says comments by the leader of Hamas shows that the Palestinian militant group wants to destroy Israel.

In his first reference to Khaled Mashaal’s visit to the Gaza Strip, Benjamin Netanyahu told his Cabinet Sunday that a speech given by Mashaal a day earlier showed that Hamas remained an enemy to the Jewish state.

Netanyahu said: “We have been exposed once again, over the past day, to the true face of our enemies. They have no intention of compromising with us. They want to destroy our country, but they will obviously fail.”

Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, does not recognize the existence of the state of Israel. Mashaal, its exiled leader, arrived for his first-ever visit to the coastal territory on Friday.

Where are the quotes by Mashaal, where he said he wants to destroy Israel? If you read only this story–and especially only the first three paragraphs, which is the most you’ll see in the World News section of your local paper–you would think that Netanyahu is just blowing smoke out of his ass about Hamas. Why are there no quotes from Hamas? Because it would prove that Netanyahu is right. As has been seen many times before on this blog, the AP can’t even be bothered quoting from its own stories when those quotes will put the Palestinians in a bad light. Here’s what the AP wrote 24 hours before the above piece.

“We are not giving up any inch of Palestine. It will remain Islamic and Arab for us and nobody else. Jihad and armed resistance is the only way,” Mashaal said, referring to holy war. “We cannot recognize Israel’s legitimacy.”

This is why Israel has to fight both the media and her enemies. Because the media covers up the reasons that cause Israel to go into Gaza and take out Hamas weapons depots.

You know what you didn’t see on TV news reports about the last Gaza campaign? The secondary explosions indicating that Israel hit a weapons depot. There were plenty of them.

The media war. Israel has to fight it every day.

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