The building housing Al-Aqsa TV, Hamas’ broadcasting network, was among the targets in Gaza hit by the IDF on Tuesday. Both Al-Aqsa TV and Hamas, the station’s owner and operator, are designated by the U.S. government as terrorist organizations.
An Israeli air strike hit a media building housing Hamas’s Al-Aqsa TV and Al-Aqsa Radio channel in the centre of Gaza City early on Tuesday morning.
The television station continued to broadcast, but the radio station went silent.
A number of news outlets, including AFP, described Al-Aqsa TV as a target because it is a “symbol” of Hamas’ power. However, these reports fail to mention the degree to which the station incites violence against Israel, as the Treasury Department noted when it designated the station as a terrorist organization in 2010.
Also designated today is Al-Aqsa Television, a television station financed and controlled by Hamas. Al-Aqsa is a primary Hamas media outlet and airs programs and music videos designed to recruit children to become Hamas armed fighters and suicide bombers upon reaching adulthood.
“Treasury will not distinguish between a business financed and controlled by a terrorist group, such as Al-Aqsa Television, and the terrorist group itself,” Levey said.
During Operation of Pillar of Defense in 2012, the IDF described numerous ways Hamas used Al-Aqsa TV to further its aims.
Throughout Operation Pillar of Defense, Palestinian terrorists were using offices in media buildings for military purposes. For example, on the 7th floor of a media building in the Rimal district of Gaza City, Hamas was operating an intelligence and command center. The IDF surgically targeted it. …
Faced with serious accusations of Al-Aqsa TV’s connections to terrorism, the head of the network, Mohammad Thouraya, denied that Al-Aqsa was the voice of Hamas — a hard fact to deny, since the channel is financed and controlled by Hamas — but he did admit that his employees were “all part of the resistance.”
Being “part of the resistance”, in other words, could mean that those carrying a camera during the day could be carrying rockets at night.
By embedding themselves among real reporters, Al-Aqsa employees could protect themselves by using the legitimate reporters as human shields.
Al-Aqsa Television was targeted not because it was a “symbol,” but because it was an important part of Hamas’ terror activities.
[Photo: Lilly Green / YouTube ]