In the wake of the International Criminal Court's factually bogus, politically motivated, and morally bankrupt move Monday seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, the Associated Press fed the corrupt court's fallacious accusation that Israel is starving Gazan civilians. In a 1300-word article holding Israel responsible for the reported food shortage in Rafah, AP today concealed that it is Egypt – not Israel – that has forced the shutdown of the border crossing next to the southern Gaza Strip city, thereby stopping the flow of aid through that point.
In the article titled, "UN halts all food distribution in Rafah after running out of supplies in the southern Gaza City," it is clear that UN aid delivery stopped due to low supply. In the very first sentence of the article though, the robust team of three AP reporters, Samy Magdy, Lee Keath, and Tia Goldenberg, explained that Israel's military operation is at fault for the United Nations' cessation of food distribution in Rafah, saying, "The United Nations suspended food distribution in the southern Gaza city of Rafah on Tuesday due to a lack of supplies and an untenable security situation caused by Israel's expanding military operation."
AP egregiously covered up Egypt's closure of the Rafah crossing: "The humanitarian crisis deepened after Israeli forces pushed into Rafah on May 6. Tanks and troops seized the vital Rafah crossing into Egypt, and it's been closed ever since." The trio's omission of the fact that Egypt closed its side of the crossing – therefore preventing the entrance of food into the territory from that point – stinks to the high pyramids of Giza.
In reality, Egypt decided to halt the transfer of humanitarian aid in response to the launch of Israel's military operation earlier this month. At no point did AP clearly report that Egypt took this draconian step at the expense of Palestinian civilians. Even state-controlled Egyptian television reported that Egypt refused to coordinate with Israel on the transfer of aid, a fact that AP goes to great lengths to conceal.
In a May 16 item, AP danced around the fact that Egypt closed the border, casting the affair as a jumble of mutual Egyptian-Israeli recriminations of undetermined veracity. "Egypt slams Israel's top diplomat for blaming the closing of Gaza's Rafah crossing on Cairo," read the title.
"Egypt has expressed mounting frustration with Israel's seizure of the Palestinian side of the crossing last week, saying it threatens the two countries' decades-old peace treaty. Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said Israel 'is responsible for the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip. We reject the policy of distorting the facts,' Shoukry said in a statement on Tuesday, denouncing Israel's 'desperate attempts' to blame Egypt."
"He said Israel's incursion into Rafah was the main reason aid cannot enter through the crossing and called for Israel to allow more aid through its own crossings. Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said Tuesday that there was a 'need to persuade Egypt to reopen the Rafah crossing to allow the continued delivery of international humanitarian aid to Gaza. The world places the responsibility for the humanitarian situation on Israel, but the key to preventing a humanitarian crisis in Gaza is now in the hands of our Egyptian friends.'"
Reuters, on the other hand, provided straightforward coverage of the Egyptian refusal to transfer aid – a policy that creates serious implications for the UN's food distribution program in the city. Reuters stated this clearly on May 11, in an article titled, "Egypt refuses to coordinate with Israel on entry of aid from Rafah crossing, Alqahera News reports." The article reported that "Egypt has refused to coordinate with Israel on the entry of aid into Gaza from the Rafah crossing due to Israel's 'unacceptable escalation,' Egypt's state-affiliated Alqahera News satellite TV reported on Saturday, citing a senior official."
CAMERA's Gilead Ini in a fascinating webinar last week entitled, "Tampered Evidence," said, "Misreporting happens in a context where anti-Israel extremists are trying, and sometimes succeeding, at hijacking the conversation, and the media's misinformation serves as fodder for these activists and their message."
In concealing the fact that Egypt – not Israel – is preventing aid from flowing through the Rafah crossing, the AP piled on to the tampered evidence upon which the ICC has built its whole rotten case.
