Israel’s defense minister on Monday distanced himself from comments made by his military chief after Israel destroyed a Gaza Strip high-rise housing an Associated Press office and other news outlets, saying the remarks were not meant to be taken literally.
In an article published on the website of Channel 12 news over the weekend, the military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Aviv Kohavi, was quoted as saying that “the building was destroyed justly” and he did not have a “gram of regret”.
The article claimed that Hamas used various floors of the Jalaa Tower for “significant electronic warfare” meant to disrupt Israeli air force GPS communications.
Responding to Questions about why the Israeli military bombed the Gaza bureau of @AP, Lt. Gen. Aviv Kohavi claimed that AP journalists drank coffee with Hamas electronics experts in the building’s cafeteria.
Fact Check: The building had no cafeteria.https://t.co/dRYQzw5DHi
— Michael Biesecker (@mbieseck) May 31, 2021
According to the article, Kohavi also claimed that AP journalists drank coffee each morning in a cafeteria in the building’s entrance with Hamas electronics experts, whether they knew it or not.
The AP called the comments “patently false”, noting that “there was not even a cafeteria in the building”.
Asked about Kohavi’s comments, Defense Minister Benny Gantz told foreign journalists that the military chief was only speaking in figurative terms.
“When the chief of staff talked about it, he was trying to portray the atmosphere, not the actual aspects,” Gantz said. Gantz again alleged that “there was Hamas infrastructure in offices that operated from this building”.
IDF chief Aviv Kohavi has said that AP journalists, knowingly or unknowingly, drank their morning coffee alongside Hamas electronics experts at the tower’s ground-level cafeteriahttps://t.co/AvccZfkmnJ
— OpIndia.com (@OpIndia_com) May 30, 2021
Israel has yet to provide evidence for those claims.
Asked to respond to Gantz’s comments, the military spokesman’s office also said Kohavi’s statements were meant to be figurative.
The Israeli army gave occupants of the building around an hour to evacuate before the May 15 airstrike. No one was injured, but the high-rise was flattened into a pile of rubble. Israel leveled many of Gaza’s multistorey blocks during the bombing campaign, destroying homes and offices. More than 250 Palestinians were killed during the blitz, including dozens of children.
Israel has destroyed the tower block housing Al Jazeera and the Associated Press news agency in Gaza.
They are doing this for one reason – to stop the truth being known about their assault on the Palestinian people.
Share this and show the truth!
pic.twitter.com/88z30E3MeM— Richard Burgon MP (@RichardBurgon) May 15, 2021
The AP has said it had no indication of a Hamas presence in the building and was never warned of any possible presence before that day. It has called for an independent investigation and urged Israel to make public its intelligence.
Gantz said Israel has shared its intelligence with the US government, but he indicated that Israel has no intention of making the information public, saying it did not want to divulge its sources.
(The New Arab, PC, Social Media)
