The AP just can't figure it out.

Meryl Yourish is good at identifying AP bias. Here's her take on a current AP report, as published in many papers including the DM Register. //Mark
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Yourish: Let’s look at the headline that’s been going around since last night about a large, deadly explosion in Gaza:

Unexplained explosions kill 5, wound 20 in Gaza

Isn’t it interesting how the AP is so tentative about assigning blame to this attack? Funny how they’re usually so quick to blame Israel, quoting Palestinian eyewitnesses and terrorist spokesmen, yet here they are, half a day later, and the best they can come up with is “Unexplained explosions” in this headline. Hm. Why is it they would suddenly become so leery of assigning blame?

A powerful explosion ripped through a car on a busy Gaza City beach Friday night, killing a Hamas field commander and three other people, security officials said.

It was the third unexplained blast of the day in this coastal territory after a relatively calm period since Israel and the Islamic militants of Hamas agreed on a cease-fire last month. A total of five people died from the explosions, and 23 suffered injuries.

Wow, it’s the third mystery blast of the day. The crack AP staff can’t figure out who’s behind them. I wonder why that is? (Hint: Because Israel didn’t do it?) And by this time in an AP lead, you generally learn if any children were killed. The “three other people” in this lead are civilians, of course, one of them a child.

No one in Gaza blamed Israel for the violence, indicating it was likely Palestinian infighting.

Oh, how nice of the AP to explain this to us. It’s “likely” that it was Palestinian “infighting.” That’s a cute name for civil war.

The late night blast killed Amar Musubah, a Hamas military field commander, and another Hamas militant, Eyad Al-Hia, medical officials said. A child and a fourth unknown individual also died.

Earlier, unknown assailants set off two bombs in Gaza City, killing one man.

Finally, the child is mentioned, and yet, there is no age given. If this were a story about Israel causing civilian casualties, by now you would know the names and ages of all the victims, soon to be followed by mournful quotes from their relatives, and calls for revenge from terrorists. Funny how the AP writer can’t find this information out when the dead aren’t killed by Israeli fire.

And now, waaaay down in the story, the AP tries to assign blame for the blasts. Guess who they blame first, backhandedly?

Gaza is the scene of regular bloodshed between Israeli forces and Palestinian militants, though the territory has been quiet over the past month because of the truce between Israel and the territory’s Hamas rulers.

Uh-huh. “Regular bloodshed”—what a quaint way of putting the fighting between soldiers and terrorists. Now that we’ve got the blame-Israel-first thing out of the way, we have the real suspect, and note the difference in phrasing:

Gaza is also a common site of internal Palestinian violence between Hamas and Fatah. Hamas fighters defeated Fatah forces during five days of combat in Gaza a year ago, and tensions remain high.

It’s “bloodshed” when Israelis are fighting, but only “violence” when Palestinians fight each other. Now, the AP might tell you that they’re simply trying not to repeat the same word in two paragraphs, but there are many, many words other than “violence” that you can use for the fighting between Hamas and Fatah that resulted in over 100 deaths, including many civilians. Like, “civil war.” But then, when you’re the AP, you have to keep the narrative, and exposing the murderous actions of Palestinian-on-Palestinian “violence” isn’t sticking to the narrative of the peaceful victims of Israeli agression that only want to be left alone to build their state in peace and happiness, forever and ever.

Yet another example of the pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel media bias.