Pro-Hamas ‘Journalists’ Blur the Line between Coverage and Propaganda

C ritiques of “the media” tend to treat it as a kind of amorphous entity. But it’s crucial to remember that the media consist of individuals, each influencing coverage, oftentimes based on personal ideological biases. That journalists are biased is troubling enough on its own, but it becomes particularly alarming when reporters express sympathy or support for terrorists. In the coverage of the Hamas–Israel conflict, local Gazan journalists have significantly shaped the narrative consumed by people across the world.

Most recently, Gazan journalists promulgated the despicable lie that Israeli troops were raping Palestinians en masse in Shifa Hospital. The story was so outlandish and counterproductive to Hamas (it unintentionally caused Palestinians to flee toward the south, thereby depriving Hamas of its human shields) that the terror group itself had to issue a statement that the story was false.

One of the key drivers of the “mass rape” narrative was Hossam Shabat, a supposedly independent journalist who is in fact a member of the Hamas-affiliated Youth Council of Beit Hanoun (a city in northeast Gaza). When he’s not promoting falsehoods, Shabat publicly expresses his admiration for Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and states that his goal is to “expose the crimes of the criminal Zionist occupation.” Not exactly an objective observer.

But Shabat isn’t alone.

Since the Hamas-led massacre on October 7, numerous journalists in the Gaza Strip have had their links to terror organizations exposed to the public. For example, the Israel Defense Forces disclosed that Al Jazeera journalist Ismail Abu Omar, who was wounded by a drone strike in February, was simultaneously serving as a deputy company commander for Hamas’s eastern battalion in the southern city of Khan Younis.

Even without the IDF’s confirmation, the problematic bias and behavior of journalists like Abu Omar is evident on their social-media pages. On the morning of October 7, Abu Omar posted that “our children will play with their heads,” undoubtedly referring to the Israelis about to be massacred. He also uploaded videos of himself breaching the Israel–Gaza security fence that very morning, where he can be heard on video crying tears of joy.

Despite all this, many of the terrorist-journalists in Gaza are still glorified in the West. Following the strike that injured Abu Omar, the Committee to Protect Journalists, a nonprofit organization based in New York that promotes “press freedom worldwide,” released a statement saying it was just “another horrific example of the high personal price that journalists in Gaza are paying to cover the war so that the world can witness what is happening. . . . We are deeply alarmed by this new attack and call for an independent investigation into whether the journalists were targeted, which constitutes a war crime.” The statement was not revised following the revelations that Abu Omar is a Hamas commander.

The latest high-profile Gaza-based journalist to have her terror support on full display is Hind Khoudary, who has even been profiled by the New York Times, among other papers. After briefly examining her social-media pages, I posted a thread last week on X (formerly Twitter) that highlighted some of the publicly available content from Khoudary’s social-media accounts to show that she was unfit to don a press vest, including her affiliation with the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, a Switzerland-based organization with deep ties to Hamas, and the fact that she has repeatedly glorified terrorists and violence. Such behavior should be completely unacceptable for any media outlet using Khoudary’s work (as well as for the United Nations World Food Programme, for which she works as a content producer).

Unsurprisingly, upon posting the findings about Khoudary, I faced the wrath of pro-Hamas activists for supposedly putting a “kill target” on her and insisting that I should be held responsible if she were to be killed. All because I simply reposted her own content.

A similar situation occurred when the founder and editor of the Free Press, Bari Weiss, brought attention to disturbing posts by Refaat Alareer, a Gazan professor, poet, writer, activist, and journalist who once tweeted, under the account “Gaza Writes Back,” “Are most Jews evil? Of course they are.” Weiss was subject to the mob’s ire for flagging a post in which Alareer mocked babies who were slaughtered by terrorists on October 7. When Alareer was later killed in an Israeli airstrike, radicals unjustly placed the blame on Weiss.

Journalists in conflict zones bear a significant responsibility. Ideally, they serve as objective sources from which the public can derive reliable information on which to base their own opinions. However, the reality often falls short of this ideal.

Given these alarming examples, perhaps the most troubling revelation is that the objectivity of a journalist, once the cornerstone of trustworthy reporting, is no longer a chief concern for many. This shift, evident in the media’s acceptance and even glorification of biased narratives during the current war, underscores a worrying trend in the dissemination of news and information.

In a world increasingly fragmented by biased narratives, the role of journalism becomes even more critical. And in such a world, contrary to the claims of some vocal online activists, journalists should be subject to the highest level of scrutiny.