Israel war: McConnell slams academia and corporate media’s treatment of conflict

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) lambasted the media on Wednesday over its bungled and confusing reporting on who was responsible for Tuesday’s deadly airstrike on a Christian hospital in Gaza.

Hamas, the Iran-backed terror group behind the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, immediately blamed the hospital strike on the Israelis, which the majority of corporate news organizations accepted as fact before the Israeli Defense Forces could respond. Most outlets had reversed course by Wednesday morning when Israel said the assault was actually carried out by Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

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After noting how the “overwhelming majority of Americans think the United States should publicly support our closest ally in the Middle East,” the top Senate Republican decried how “the default position in some highly influential corners of our society — from national newsrooms to elite college campuses — how quickly they’ve been to blindly amplify terrorists’ version of events.”

McConnell then pointed to the media’s coverage of the hospital attack, remarking how major outlets took Hamas at their word instead of questioning the terror group’s claims.

“In the hours since this tragedy, credible evidence has emerged suggesting that the same terrorists who use innocent civilians as human shields were themselves responsible,” he said on the Senate floor. “Well, the media can revise its headlines. But the shameful, antisemitic fringe of our society has already heard what it wants to hear.”

The GOP leader also used his floor remarks to criticize how leading higher education institutions had responded to Hamas’s initial attack on Israel, the largest assault against Jewish people since the Holocaust.

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He referenced the ongoing controversy at Harvard, where more than 30 student groups signed on to a statement condemning Israel and absolving Hamas of responsibility and called out the presidents of Columbia University, Dartmouth College, Stanford University, and the American Bar Association for declining to stand firmly against the carnage.

“I can only hope that the leaders of America’s universities recognize what time it is in America,” McConnell said. “This is a time for moral clarity, not a time for anti-Semitic hate dressed in faculty-lounge jargon.”