AP stands by reporting after Huckabee claimed outlet complicit in antisemitic attacks

The Associated Press says it stands by its reporting on a mass-casualty incident outside a Gaza aid distribution site on Sunday, after US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee accused the wire outlet and other American news sites of “contributing to the antisemitic climate” that resulted in the recent attacks targeting Israeli embassy staffers in Washington and Israeli activists for the Gaza hostages in Colorado.

AP says its reporting included multiple eyewitness accounts, interviews with health and hospital officials and the Red Cross, as well as statements from the Israeli military and the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.

“The Israeli military later released a video of what it said were masked men firing at civilians trying to collect aid, which the AP included in its coverage. That video was shot in daylight from the city of Khan Younis, miles from the incident in Rafah that witnesses described,” the AP statement says.

“The Rafah incident occurred in an Israeli military zone that international journalists have been barred from entering except on approved military embeds. AP and other news organizations have repeatedly called for international journalists to be allowed into Gaza to report on the war,” the statement adds.

Huckabee claimed yesterday that “without verification of any source other than Hamas and its collaborators, the New York Times, CNN, and Associated Press reported that a number of people seeking to receive humanitarian food boxes from the Gaza Humanitarian Fund were shot or killed by the Israeli Defense Forces.”

“These reports were FALSE. Drone video and first-hand accounts clearly showed that there were no injuries, no fatalities, no shooting, no chaos,” Huckabee asserted.

It is unclear what drone footage and first-hand accounts Huckabee was referring to.

A US embassy spokesperson cited IDF drone footage when pressed by The Times of Israel, but the footage released by the IDF was not shot at the time or place where the incident in question took place.