“I was told: you have 10 minutes,” wrote Associated Press journalist Fares Akram—10 minutes before Israeli missiles would descend on the building that had housed the AP in Gaza, destroying it completely. In an account widely read over the weekend as violence in the region escalated, Akram described scrambling to gather his possessions, choosing “just a handful,” turning around for one last look at the place. Then “I put on my helmet,” he wrote, “and I ran.”
The harrowing account drew the attention of the wider journalistic community, particularly as reporters race to make sense of the events on the ground, and questions emerge about the Israeli army’s version of events. The Israeli army said the building, which had housed the AP’s Gaza bureau for 15 years, along with residential apartments and offices of Al Jazeera and other media outlets, was leveled because Hamas, the armed Palestinian group that governs the Gaza Strip, was using it as a “military intelligence” base. But on Monday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he had not yet seen evidence that the group was operating out of the building.
Blinken made the comments at a press conference in Denmark, where he noted that his office had requested “additional details regarding [Israel’s] justification” for the strike shortly after it took place. “[I] will leave it to others to characterize if any information has been shared and our assessment of that information,” Blinken added. In a statement to Axios, a senior State Department official said, “The secretary was referring only to what he personally had seen. As he made clear, any such information would be provided to others in the administration, not directly to the secretary of State.”
Elsewhere, comments have been more pointed. The Paris–based press advocacy organization Reporters Without Borders requested that the International Criminal Court investigate the strike and Israeli strikes on other media outlets in Gaza in recent days. The watchdog group, which is commonly referred to by its French acronym RSF, released a statement noting that “Targeted Israeli air force attacks have destroyed the premises of 23 Palestinian and international media outlets in the past week.” In a letter to the ICC’s chief prosecutor, RSF also said it had a strong reason to believe that Israel was intentionally targeting media organizations and destroying their equipment in an effort “to reduce, if not neutralize, the media’s capacity to inform the public.”
The Associated Press itself claimed to have been caught by surprise; AP president and CEO Gary Pruitt said the outlet had not seen evidence that Hamas was using the building and called on the Israeli government to provide it. Pruitt said in a statement that he is “shocked and horrified that the Israeli military would target and destroy the building housing AP’s bureau and other news organizations in Gaza.… The world will know less about what is happening in Gaza because of what happened [on Saturday].” AP executive editor Sally Buzbee—who will take over from Martin Baron as executive editor of The Washington Post—said in a Sunday appearance on CNN’s Reliable Sources, “We are in a conflict situation. We do not take sides in that conflict. We have heard the Israelis say they have evidence; we don’t know what that evidence is.” Buzbee also called for “an independent investigation” into Israel’s targeting of the press tower. While Buzbee said the AP’s correspondents in Gaza were “rattled,” they were able to evacuate their offices following Israel’s warning and are continuing their work. “This does impact the world’s right to know what is happening on both sides of the conflict in real time,” she added.
Israel has held firm in its decision. During his own CNN appearance on Sunday, Israeli army spokesperson Jonathan Conricus claimed that Hamas was “actively using [the building] to fight against Israel. They were using the infrastructure as their command center and intelligence center. They had special technological equipment in the building, which they used to actively fight and disrupt Israeli actions. And as such…we deem it to be a legitimate military target.” Conricus purported that evidence justifying the bombing is in the “process” of being delivered, describing it as “information [that] will be presented” in due time.
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