MEDIA IGNORES HAMAS' DUPLICITY

Media Ignores Hamas Duplicity (HonestReporting)
While much of our efforts are focused upon critiquing what the media writes, often the situation in the Mideast is distorted by what doesn't make it to the newspapers and TV news. Leaving an impression that Israel is experiencing a period of relative calm, much of the media has consistently failed to report on the continuing Qassam missile attacks from Gaza and other terrorist activities, including an aborted Palestinian attempt to destroy the Karni Crossing from Gaza into Israel last week.

Perhaps more conspicuously absent from the media's coverage is the revelation, covered extensively in Israeli sources such as YNet and Haaretz as well as wire services AFP, Xinhua and Zee News, that Hamas was responsible for funding and training the terrorists of the Popular Resistance Committees, whose attempt to detonate a booby-trapped truck at the crossing was foiled by PA police in a shootout. While coverage was missing from the newspapers, as we went to press, even the BBC's website reported on the story.

This is the first time that Hamas has been exposed as being directly implicated in Palestinian terrorist activities since winning the PA elections in January, while claiming to have adhered to a self-proclaimed ceasefire. Yet, while some sections of the media choose to report on the growing funding crisis in the Palestinian territories, it seems that the hypocrisy of Hamas is ignored by many. For, as the Jerusalem Post points out:

Government officials noted the irony that while Hamas was warning of a humanitarian disaster inside the Gaza Strip, and while the Palestinian Authority was lobbying the world to pressure Israel to keep the Karni crossing open, Hamas was involved in an attack aimed at blowing up the crossing. Due to numerous terror specific warnings, Karni has been repeatedly opened and closed by Israel since the disengagement from Gaza last year. The closures are often depicted by the PA as collective punishment on the Palestinian people, which relies on the goods transferred through the crossing.

Mideast analyst Barry Rubin, writing in the same paper, notes that the PRC:

is headed by Jamal Abu Samhadana, who is also the man chosen by the Hamas government to run all the Palestinian security forces. In other words, the terrorists and police firing at each other - the regime supposedly maintaining a cease-fire and the terrorists breaking it - are all part of one big happy family. And even there it does not end. For the same Popular Resistance Committees are the group that three years ago deliberately attacked a US diplomatic convoy in the Gaza Strip (which was there to interview Palestinians for scholarships) killing three American security officers.

In order to get the full picture, isn't it time that the media reported on the real stories coming out of the Hamas-controlled Palestinian areas? Ask your local media outlet why it has chosen not to cover this story - you can find many contact details on our Media Contact Information page. You can also discuss this issue on Backspin, HonestReporting's blog.