NBC didn’t show footage of the bomb shelters constructed by Hamas.
Via MRC
Reporting from the Gaza Strip during MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports on July 14, NBC foreign correspondent Ayman Mohyeldin, formerly of Al Jazerra and CNN, parroted Hamas denials that it deliberately placed missile batteries in civilian buildings in Gaza.
They definitely reject the labeling of using civilians as human shields….Hamas military wing people that we’ve been speaking to and others – not just on these past few days, but in the past several years, because this is an issue that always comes up against Hamas – they will say that this is the nature of the battlefield that they have to fight in. That this is not an issue by design, but as a reality of what Gaza is like because it’s so densely populated.
Immediately following Mohyeldin touting the Palestinian terrorist organization’s talking points, host Andrea Mitchell invited Mark Regev, the spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to response. Regev blasted the Hamas claims:
I think their denials, Andrea, are frankly ludicrous. The facts are clear. In fact, if you go to the Hamas interior ministry in Gaza you’ll see they’ve actually called upon the citizens of Gaza to act as human shields. As my prime minister said yesterday, in Israel we’ve got missiles to defend our people and in Gaza they’ve got people to defend their missiles. That’s what Hamas does.
There’s no reason why they should put their command and control in the basement of a hospital or put missile stockpiles in schools. They are war crimes. They shouldn’t be doing that. And they have to be condemned for that.
Moments later, Mitchell glossed over those facts and wondered when Israel would give in:
Well, given the fact that you have got so much pressure now, calls from the United Nations, calls from the European Union for a cease-fire. The pressure, the political pressure internationally is growing, no matter what the equities are on the ground. The situation is that on one side you’ve got missile defense and on the other side you’ve got civilian populations and people dying in large numbers. How long can you politically withstand the pressure for a cease-fire?