After Mahdi Sheri, described by the Associated Press as a 23-year-old “Hezbollah fighter,” responded to a message on his pager that, unknown to him, was a highly targeted Israeli attack on the terror group, he “felt a sharp pain in his head and eyes,” the news wire reporter.
“His bed was covered in blood. Thinking he had been hit by a drone, he stumbled outside and passed out,” the AP reported in an article about “survivors” of the Israeli attack. “He was first treated in Syria, then in Iraq, as hospitals in Lebanon struggled to handle the high number of patients. Shrapnel was removed from his left eye socket, and he had a prosthetic eye installed.”
Nowhere in the more than 2,150-word article, nor in an accompanying photo essay, did the AP note that the United States has designated Hezbollah as a terror organization for nearly 30 years. The word “terror” doesn’t appear at all.
The AP did report that Sheri’s eyesight has dimmed. “He can no longer play football,” it reported. “Hezbollah is helping him find a new job. Sheri realizes it’s impossible now to find a role alongside Hezbollah fighters.”
The news wire reported that Israel detonated thousands of pagers “distributed to the Hezbollah group” on Sept. 17, 2024. “Hezbollah had been firing rockets into Israel almost daily for nearly a year in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza,” it reported.
“Israel boasts of it as a show of its technological and intelligence prowess. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently presented U.S. President Donald Trump with a golden pager as a gift,” the AP reported. “Human rights and United Nations reports, however, say the attack may have violated international law, calling it indiscriminate.”
“Hezbollah, also a major Shi’ite political party with a wide network of social institutions, has acknowledged that most of those wounded and killed were its fighters or personnel,” it reported. “Hezbollah won’t say how many civilians were hurt, but says most were relatives of the group’s personnel or workers in Hezbollah-linked institutions, including hospitals.”
The AP reported that “rights groups have argued the attack was indiscriminate, because the pagers detonated in populated areas, and it was nearly impossible to know who was holding the devices or where they were when they exploded.”
The article did not say if any “rights groups” argued that Hezbollah’s rocket fire into Israeli civilian areas was “indiscriminate.”
