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PrintMarch 20, 2011
Wash. Post covers Hamas' war on Israel, but not Hamas' war on journalists
The Washington Post, in its Sunday, March 20, edition, reports an escalation of mortar fire against Israel from Gaza, but curiously omits any mention that in the same news cycle Hamas goons attacked several news offices in Gaza City, beating journalists, and confiscating cameras and videotape. The motive appears to be Hamas's displeasure with correspondents filming Hamas security officers forcefully dispersing demonstrators for Palestinian unity.
The intruders, announcing they were members of Hamas security services, ransacked the Reuters bureau. They struck one Reuters reporter with a metal bar. They also broke into the offices of CNN, Japan's NHK bureau and a local media production company.
None of this was reported by the Washington Post, even though the Sunday edition has the biggest news hole of the week. There was plenty of space for a few paragraphs on Hamas's assault on the press. Newspapers usually are very sensitive to such attacks on the media, wherever they may occur, and promptly publicize them.
So what gives in this instance? The Washington Post may cover a sharp uptick in mortar fire against Israel from Hamas-ruled Gaza, although it all too often ignores daily lower-level rocket attacks. But even more often, the Post tends to ignore how repressive the Hamas regime in Gaza has become, not only against the press, but against its own people, using brutal tactics against political opposition and any deviation from Hamas's Islamist code.
The result has been the sanitizing of Hamas, an iron-fisted, Iran-backed terror organization -- not by what the Post reports, but by what it fails to report. As happened with the Sunday paper.
