In an interview with the BBC this week, Israel Defense Forces Spokesman Jonathan Conricus took the network and one of its correspondents — and by extension the rest of the media outlets that are showing an inexplicable and increasing pro-Hamas bias in their reporting — to task for parroting terrorist disinformation straight from Hamas.
"I listened in to your correspondent...where he says with absolute security and drama that this was an Israeli missile. What was that based on?" Conricus asked his BBC interviewer.
"In fairness," the host pushed back before saying the correspondent in question said there was a "claim" that it was an Israeli missile.
"No, he said in the beginning, a 'missile' strikes the hospital — he begins very dramatically," Conricus responded. "He's saying it was a 'missile' based on Hamas information. He hasn't been on the ground, he hasn't verified it himself, he's taking Hamas information and displaying that as the truth," Conricus emphasized.
"We are dealing with the most ruthless and vile organization," Conricus continued. "We've spoken about the atrocities...but there's also the other domain of information here. We have seen Hamas do the most despicable acts against Israeli civilians and against its own civilians and I think that it is about time for journalists who are doing their professional duty as journalists to act extremely cautiously when starting reporting of events with casualties in Gaza," he warned. "All of the information coming out of Gaza is run and ruled by Hamas and they have no issues with lying — they don't answer to anybody — they are not beholden to truth and they don't care to lie and distort and to misrepresent events on the ground as long as it serves their purposes and they can blame Israel," Conricus reminded. "This appears to be just such an example of an event that happened that we did not do, that happened as the result of a misfire, and immediately — almost immediately — the first response is blaming Israel for the attack without checking the data," he added of the latest egregious show of pro-Hamas and anti-Israel bias.
"The duty of journalists is to verify data that we provide, definitely hold us accountable and hold our feet to the fire, but do the same thing with Hamas," Conricus said. "Verify and make sure that whatever they say isn't automatically put into a story...claiming that a 'missile' struck because it wasn't a missile."
Apalled by the double standards in reporting: breaking coverage on @BBCWorld automatically blames Israel for an explosion at a Gaza hospital, based solely on what terrorist Hamas claims!
— Jonathan Conricus (@jconricus) October 18, 2023
And when we investigate and refute the claims, evidence must be delivered. I have no issue… pic.twitter.com/EJTOLFKmk7
As Townhall reported, a blast at a hospital in Gaza City saw Hamas quickly blame an Israeli airstrike. Despite the fact that initial evidence pointed to a terrorist rocket as the cause of the explosion, many media outlets repeated Hamas' claim and blamed the IDF. Even though Al Jazeera aired a rocket launching from Gaza and then spiraling into the hospital live on its network and the IDF was not active in the area, American and international media rushed to blame Israel without anything but Hamas terrorists' — who just slaughtered hundreds upon hundreds of innocent Israelis — word to go on. Additional evidence piled up — even from Hamas terrorists in Gaza and pro-Gaza media outlets — as did more footage, and it was confirmed that Palestinian Islamic Jihad had fired a rocket with the intention of killing innocent Israelis, but it misfired and took out a hospital in Gaza instead. There have been scant retractions or apologies from those who peddled terrorist disinformation, and the lie started by Hamas and helped around the world by apparent Hamas sympathizers in the media set off protests around the Arab world against Israel, even though it had nothing to do with the blast.
"This has been said and I want to say it," Conricus emphasized in his BBC interview. "We do not intentionally target anything civilian — all of our strikes have an address, and that address is Hamas. We are fighting Hamas and they are using civilian infrastructure for their military purposes, and they have a documented history of using civilians as their human shields."
"They have stopped the evacuation from the north, they have erected roadblocks, they have intimidated people and told them not to move south in order for them to stay in northern Gaza despite the fact that they know it is much more dangerous for the civilians to stay there," Conricus reminded of Hamas' efforts to retain the human shields behind which they hide their terrorist infrastructure and weapons. "That needs to be factored in."