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#AP slammed for claiming it was unaware of Hamas presence

#AP slammed for claiming it was unaware of Hamas presence

The Associated Press has been blasted for claiming it had no clue Hamas militants maintained a presence at the news agency’s Gaza headquarters that was destroyed in an Israeli airstrike.

Israel said it shared “smoking gun” evidence with Biden administration officials that Hamas was operating out of the Al-Jalaa tower, which housed the AP, Al Jazeera and other news outlets, according to a report Sunday.

The strike destroyed the 12-story building an hour after the Israeli military ordered it evacuated, saying the high rise was targeted because it was being used by Hamas military intelligence, Fox News reported.

The AP condemned Israel for the attack and claimed to have “no indication” that the terror group operated from the building.

“We have had no indication Hamas was in the building or active in the building,” AP President and CEO Gary Pruitt said in a statement. “This is something we actively check to the best of our ability. We would never knowingly put our journalists at risk.”

He added that he was “shocked and horrified that the Israeli military would target and destroy the building housing AP’s bureau and other news organizations in Gaza.”

However, a 2014 article in The Atlantic written by a journalist in the region described a questionable history between the news agency and Hamas.

“When Hamas’s leaders surveyed their assets before this summer’s round of fighting, they knew that among those assets was the international press,” Matti Friedman wrote.

“The AP staff in Gaza City would witness a rocket launch right beside their office, endangering reporters and other civilians nearby — and the AP wouldn’t report it,” he wrote.

Friedman claimed the Hamas militants would regularly “burst into the AP’s Gaza bureau and threaten the staff — and the AP wouldn’t report it.”

Gary Pruitt, President and CEO of the Associated Press.
AP President and CEO Gary Pruitt said the company had “no indication” Hamas was operating out of their building.
AP

Gabe Hoffman, producer of the documentary “An Open Secret,” said in a tweet: “@AP didn’t know about sharing a building w/ Hamas for 15 years?!?”

Noah Pollack, a contributor to the Free Beacon, said in a tweet: “Spoke to a well-placed friend in the IDF just now. The bombed AP office building contained multiple Hamas operations & offices including weapons manufacturing and military intelligence. The building also housed an Islamic Jihad office. And AP’s local reporters knew about it.”

Another user wrote in a tweet about the AP that it “doesn’t say much for their reporting abilities if they missed a Hamas staging office a floor away.”

Rubble of the al-Jalaa tower.
The al-Jalaa tower reduced to rubble following an Israeli airstrike.
AP

Meanwhile, AP Executive Editor Sally Buzbee is calling for an independent investigation into the Israeli airstrike, saying the government has yet to provide clear evidence supporting the attack.

Buzbee said The AP has had offices in al-Jalaa tower for 15 years and never was informed or had any indication that Hamas might be in the building.

“We are in a conflict situation,” Buzbee said. “We do not take sides in that conflict. We heard Israelis say they have evidence; we don’t know what that evidence is. We think it’s appropriate at this point for there to be an independent look at what happened yesterday — an independent investigation.”

The building housing the offices of The Associated Press and other media in Gaza City collapsing after an airstrike.
Israel told Biden administration officials that Hamas was operating out of the al-Jalaa tower.
AP

Separately, Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders asked the International Criminal Court to investigate Israel’s attack as a possible war crime.

The group, known by its French acronym RSF, said it had strong reason to believe that the IDF’s “intentional targeting of media organizations and intentional destruction of their equipment” could violate one of the court’s statutes.

It said Israel’s actions serve “to reduce, if not neutralize, the media’s capacity to inform the public.”

RSF asked the court, based in the Dutch city of The Hague, to include the recent attacks in a war crimes investigation opened in March into Israel’s practices in Palestinian territories.

IIDF spokesman Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus said Israel was compiling evidence for the US but declined to commit to providing it within the next couple of days.

“We’re in the middle of fighting. That’s in process and I’m sure in due time that information will be presented,” he said Sunday.

President Biden spoke to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday, a discussion that included the bombing of the building, and Israel showed Biden and other US officials the intelligence behind their decision, the Jerusalem Post reported Sunday.

“We showed them the smoking gun proving Hamas worked out of that building,” the newspaper reported, citing a source close to Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi. “I understand they found the explanation satisfactory.”

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