By Tom O’Connor
Amid a global outcry, the Israel Defense Forces have defended their targeting of a Gaza Strip office tower housing international media outlets, arguing the primary purpose of the structure was not journalistic but rather to serve as a headquarters for the Hamas movement and other Palestinian factions.
The IDF warned the occupants of Gaza’s Al-Jalaa Tower on Saturday that an airstrike was imminent, resulting in a futile plea by the building’s owner to delay the attack and frantic scenes as inhabitants, including personnel from major news outlets such as The Associated Press and Al Jazeera scrambled to grab what equipment they could before evacuating.
Less than an hour later, the 12-story structure was reduced to rubble.
The IDF claimed the tower “contained military assets belonging to Hamas military intelligence,” making Al-Jalaa a legitimate target in the ongoing conflict that erupted Monday, as Hamas fired a barrage of rockets estimated to be close to 3,000 against Israel, and the IDF blasted the Gaza Strip with attacks now coming from air, land and sea.
The Israeli airstrike was met with criticism and condemnation from journalists, and even prompted a call from the White House.
Facing questions over the operation during a press briefing later Saturday, IDF spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus dismissed the notion that the site was protected due to the presence of journalists.
“It’s not a media tower, and it’s not a media center,” Conricus said.
He argued that the building was home to an elaborate militant operation by Hamas, with Palestinian Islamic Jihad offices present as well. He laid out three main purposes the building served for the Palestinian organization.
The first entailed “officers of the military intelligence, basically collection and analysis of military intelligence, obviously used for military purposes, against us.”
The second was “research and development, where the best subject matter experts were operating from inside that building, using the hardware, computers and other facilities inside the building to develop weapons, military weapons against us as well.”
The third involved “highly advanced technological tools that are in or on the building.”
Conricus declined to go into specifics, but said such tools were used by Hamas “in fighting against us in order to hamper or limit the activity of the IDF inside Israel and on civilian activity along with the Gaza envelope.” He reiterated as well the extent to which the IDF has identified how groups like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad embedded their military infrastructure “within civilian facilities.”
Conricus also acknowledged that the push for deeper answers was “legitimate,” but said he could not go into further detail on the final point at the present moment “for reasons of source security and not compromising our collection efforts.”
“Out of consideration for the safety of civilians, non-combatants, of course, journalists, then enough time was given for these people to evacuate the building, knowing that that time was also used by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, to salvage a lot of very important equipment,” he added, “but that is a military loss that we are willing to quote-unquote suffer in order to minimize and to make sure that there are no civilian casualties in the strike on the building.”
Shortly after the Al-Jalaa Tower fell in dramatic images caught on camera and video…
