Let’s play a game of “Spot the bias in the AP headline.”
First, the headline.
Israel strikes tunnels, Gaza militants fire rocket
Next, the first paragraph of the story.
Israeli warplanes bombed the Gaza-Egypt border Tuesday, aiming for tunnels used by Gaza’s Hamas rulers to smuggle in weapons and supplies in strikes launched after a Palestinian rocket hit a city in southern Israel.
Have you got it yet? Let’s look at that paragraph with the pertinent parts in bold.
Israeli warplanes bombed the Gaza-Egypt border Tuesday, aiming for tunnels used by Gaza’s Hamas rulers to smuggle in weapons and supplies in strikes launched after a Palestinian rocket hit a city in southern Israel.
Have we got the bias yet? Cause-and-effect are reversed by the AP editors and/or writers. I’m going to assume it’s the editor, because I’ve been told that Mark Lavie is not an anti-Israel creep. But his editors can’t seem to follow events that occur in a really simple timeline:
A Grad rocket exploded Tuesday morning in Ashkelon, an Israeli city of 122,000 people on the Mediterranean coast about 10 miles (16 kilometers) north of Gaza. The blast damaged vehicles and buildings, but no one was hurt.
[…] Israel hit back at nightfall. Warplanes blasted the 8-mile (14-kilometer) Gaza-Egypt border after warning residents to leave – alerts that have become routine preceding almost daily airstrikes on the tunnels. The Israeli military said the planes hit five tunnels, a rocket-launching site and a Hamas outpost. No casualties were reported.
Let’s take yet another look at the headline:
Israel strikes tunnels, Gaza militants fire rocket
Yes, that’s right. Israel struck smuggling tunnels in response to a Grad rocket landing 10 miles deep inside Israel, but the headline—and the lead—make it seem that Israel struck the tunnels first, and Hamas launched the rocket in response. This is not the first time we’ve seen this. I doubt it will be the last. But it is the media narrative on Israel. They must always try to make Israel the aggressor, even when, clearly, the aggressor is Hamas.
And they tell me there is no anti-Israel media bias. I’m imagining it.
Uh-huh.