Really, I should just get someone to write me a script, since the AP makes me repeat and repeat and repeat myself.
This is a four-paragraph story sent out over the wires. Most newspapers carry one, two, or three paragraphs for each World News item in the World News section. Look what the AP chose to but in the fourth paragraph–knowing full well it will be cut by nearly every newspaper on the list.
RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — Hamas has staged new rallies in the West Bank, one day after thousands of its activists turned out for the first marches there by the militant group there in five years.
Friday’s marches in several cities appeared larger than Thursday’s demonstrations, the first in the Palestinian territory since the 2007 split in which Hamas seized Gaza and the secular-leaning Fatah was left in control of the West Bank.
The rivals have been making overtures toward each other since last month, when Hamas fought an eight-day conflict with Israel and the West Bank’s Western-backed president Mahmoud Abbas won U.N. recognition of a de facto Palestinian state.
Marchers chanted for Hamas to bomb Israel. Hamas’ leader in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, addressed crowds by phone — an unusual concession by Fatah.
The AP: You can always count on them to carry water for the bad guys. They did the same thing in their longer story on the previous day’s Hamas terror march. Here’s paragraph four:
Marchers chanted, “Hamas — you are the guns; we are the bullets,” and, “Hamas, fire more rockets on Tel Aviv.” Some women held models of the rockets Gaza militants fired at Israeli cities in last month’s fighting.
Funny how that stuff never makes it into the lead.