National Review columnist Lee Habeeb appeared on CNN’s dreadful morning program “New Day” Monday to lay out an articulate, intellectual, and ethical case for how recent news coverage of Israel’s war of self defense in Gaza has turned the American media into the public relations branch of the terror group Hamas. All CNN’s Kate Bolduan could do in response was to play dumb with attacks on straw men.

This is a must-watch:

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KATE BOLDUAN: [Y]ou say Western media is enabling Hamas. You say it’s Hamas’s co-conspirators. Where is the media lacking? What is lacking?

 LEE HABEEB: Well, I think it’s context. I mean, who is Hamas? Who are they and what’s their history and their goal? I believe that the goal of Hamas’s strategy, the point of the spear is the media and dead children and dead women. They used to use women as human bombs, women and children. Now they’re using them as human shields. The American people, the world need to know Hamas’s strategy. And I don’t believe that the media is covering it. Where are the Hamas soldiers? We don’t see them because they’re hiding. We see the Israeli soldiers. They’re wearing uniforms. Why do we only see the images of dead women and children and not the images of Hamas soldiers? That needs to be contextualized by the media.

 BOLDUAN: But how then should the media cover it, do you believe? Do you believe the media should ignore the deaths?

Because CNN can’t defend its appalling anti-Israel coverage, all Bolduan’s got is this straw man to hurl:

Do you believe the media should ignore the deaths?

Which of course is not anything close to what Habeeb is suggesting. Later Bolduan hurls an even dumber straw man:  

But when you have a statement coming from the State department just overnight Lee, from Jen Psaki calling, talking about this latest attack near a UN shelter, calling – saying the United States is appalled and calling it disgraceful, you gotta to cover that as well.

Monday afternoon, CNN anchor Brooke Baldwin and media reporter Brian Stelter would act just as obtuse in a segment about Habeeb’s earlier appearance and CNN’s coverage in general. 

You see, it works like this…

When you can’t defend the argument in front of you, pretend your opponent is arguing something unreasonable — like asking you to not cover civilian deaths or to ignore statements from the State Department.

To intentionally make Israel look evil, what CNN and other American media outlets are doing is broadcasting pictures of dead Palestinian children without this contextual truth: Hamas started this war, wanted this war, targeted Israeli civilians with over 3000 rockets, uses Palestinian children as human shields, and intentionally wages war from densely populated residential areas in order to up the civilian deaths that they know CNN will use to hand them another propaganda victory.

There is no moral equivalence between those who target civilians and use them as human shields and those who target the evil who do such a thing.

CNN is not only pretending there is a moral equivalence, CNN has voluntarily become a public relations outlet for this evil — which has the added horror of encouraging Hamas to use more innocent children as human shields.  

When confronted with their aiding and abetting of Hamas, all CNN can respond with is, “Should we ignore the deaths, George? Should we ignore them? Can we see the rabbits now, George? Tell me about the rabbits, George.”

CNN’s ratings are not only in a freefall because the public hates bias. The public also knows when  a news outlet has blood on its hands and knows that willful stupidity is no defense for that blood.

Follow  John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC