Hamas raps reporters who sought rocket sites

Hamas spokeswoman Isra Al-Mudallal, who had admitted in an interview with Lebanese TV channel Al-Mayadeen that her movement obstructed the work of foreign journalists covering Operation Protective Edge in Gaza, adds information on Hamas’s motives in curtailing journalistic work in Gaza.

“Any measure that is taken against any foreign journalist working in Gaza is based on the extent to which he or she upholds standards of professional journalism and fair reporting,” Mudallal wrote on her Facebook page early Sunday morning.”We have seen serious breaches of these standards by a small number of journalists whose main task seemed to be locating the places where Palestinian resistance rockets were launched or reporting on the whereabouts of Palestinian resistance fighters while ignoring reporting on the sheer violence and destruction and bloodshed wreaked by the Israeli occupation army on the Gaza population.”

According to Mudallal, journalists wishing to report on Hamas rocket launches were “unfairly and unjustifiably siding with Israel and parroting Israel’s propaganda machine.” Their reporting, she added, “seems to be telling only half-truths or propagating lies and misinformation, offering sensitive information for free to the Israeli occupation.”

— Elhanan Miller