America's morning news shows spread blame from Palestinian terrorist groups to Israel during Monday coverage of this weekend's rocket attacks.
Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fired nearly 700 rockets towards Israel over the weekend. Hundreds crossed into Israel, killing four civilians. The terror organizations fired the rockets from civilian centers in the Gaza Strip, which Israel fully vacated in 2005.
Most of these rockets are unguided short-range weapons, impossible to accurately aim. Though fired towards Israeli population centers, dozens failed to reach Israel and landed in Gaza, where one killed a young Palestinian girl.
Israel responded with several hundred precision airstrikes against strategic targets.
A video published on the Israel Defense Forces Twitter page Sunday shows a car destroyed by an Israeli missile. The attack destroys the car but leaves all nearby traffic unharmed.
PRECISION STRIKE: Earlier today, we targeted Hamed Ahmed Khudari in Gaza. He was responsible for transferring Iranian money to Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The funds were used to build the hundreds of rockets recently fired at Israel. Iran will need to find a new money man in Gaza. pic.twitter.com/2mv1oXLaB7
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) May 5, 2019
The IDF identified the car's passenger as Hamed Ahmed Khudari, a terror financier.
On CBS This Morning, John Dickerson shared the weekend's news with viewers. He described how "both sides have launched hundreds of rockets and missiles at one another since Friday."
CBS reporter Seth Doane, reporting from Israel, citing "Palestinians," claimed that Israeli strikes had killed an infant.
Doane did not mention that the Israeli government strongly denies killing the child and had concluded that a Palestinian-fired rocket was in fact responsible. He also did not share that his source was the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry.
NBC's Today news program included similar equivocations.
NBC host Craig Melvin described "the worst weekend of fighting between Israel and Gaza militants in about fire years," in which "two sides exchanging deadly rocket fire."
https://youtu.be/91vBwYnD3Rk
NBC's chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel downplayed Palestinians' moral culpability for firing hundreds of unguided rockets toward Israeli civilians.
Discussing the news as an expert guest Monday, Engel described Gaza as a "prison colony."
Israel provides hundreds of millions of dollars of humanitarian aide to the terrorist-run enclave. It also facilitates the entry of millions of dollars more in foreign aide while ensuring no terror weaponry slips through.
NBC's Engel justified the rocket attacks as a Palestinian temper tantrum. "Occasionally when they don't get what they want, when they don't get aid, when they don't get money, they turn up the heat," he said. "That's what we saw over this weekend."
Before becoming NBC's chief foreign correspondent, Engel was the cable giant's Middle East correspondent and Beirut bureau chief.