RSS
A Lesson for the Media: Terrorists Are Not Journalists
A Palestinian Hamas terrorist shakes hands with a child as they stand guard as people gather on the day of the handover of Israeli hostages, as part of a ceasefire and a hostages-prisoners swap deal between Hamas and Israel, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, Feb. 22, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
Terrorists are not journalists. But some in the media would have you think otherwise.
In the Israel-Islamist conflict, there is a longstanding trend of news outlets portraying terror operatives as reporters. In doing so, they diminish the work of, and endanger, real journalists who are often doing dangerous work.
An April 1, 2025 article in Foreign Policy magazine embodies the problem. FP claims that the latest war between Israel and Hamas “has killed more journalists than the US Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the wars in Yugoslavia, the post-911 war in Afghanistan combined.”
The publication cited a new report by Brown University’s Costs of War project for proof. But there’s a problem with this claim: it’s a lie.
As the Middle East analyst Daniel Laufer observed on X, FP “rewrote WWI/II to demonize the Jewish state.” The magazine “laundered Al Jazeera claims of Gaza media killed” while Al Jazeera “staff moonlight as terrorists.” This is a fact.
Numerous Al Jazeera employees have been caught working as terror operatives. As the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a Washington D.C.-based think tank, noted in an August 2024 briefing, an Al Jazeera employee, Ismail al-Ghoul, who was killed in a July 31, 2024 missile strike, was a member of Hamas’s elite Nukhba force.
After his death, Al Jazeera accused Israel of “assassinating” its journalists. Yet not only was Ghoul a Hamas operative, but he also took part in the October 7 massacre. Ghoul helped instruct Hamas operatives on “how to record attacks on IDF forces and published the resulting videos,” FDD noted. The IDF and Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, called this a “vital part of Hamas’s military activity.” And he was far from the only Al Jazeera employee moonlighting as a Hamas operative.
In October 2024, Israel’s Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi said that it had “proof” that Al Jazeera reporters were “passing sensitive information to the enemy” about IDF troop locations.
Moreover, as FDD noted, on Jan. 7, 2024 “Al-Jazeera journalist Hamza al-Dahdouh and cameraman Mustafa Thuraya were killed in a targeted IDF strike as they were traveling from Khan Younis to Rafah. The IDF later revealed that al-Dahdouh — the son of the network’s Gaza bureau chief — was an operative in the ‘Electronic Engineering Unit’ and a regional official in the ‘Rocket Unit’ of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist group. The IDF also revealed that Thuraya’s name appeared on a list of operatives fighting for Hamas’s Al-Qadisiya Battalion.”
And in February 2024, the IDF revealed that Al Jazeera correspondents Muhammed Wishah and Ismail Abu Omar were also serving as Hamas commanders. Abu Omar had even filmed himself participating in the October 7 massacre. Jonathan Schanzer, the executive director of FDD and a former terror analyst for the US Treasury Department, highlighted Al Jazeera’s ties with Hamas in an exhaustive March 2024 article for Commentary Magazine. It’s a long list.
The numerous instances of collaboration between the two prompted Israel to shutter the faux news organization in the spring of 2024. Tellingly, FP’s article omitted all of this relevant information. Yet none of it is surprising.
Indeed, Al Jazeera itself is the state media of Qatar. Numerous former Al Jazeera employees have made their way to Western news outlets, including Reuters and The Washington Post, among others. In fact, the Post has employed more than two dozen staffers with links to Al Jazeera, the Qatar Foundation, and other similar orgs funded by Doha. The Qatar Foundation has even helped “shape” columns filed by Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post columnist who was killed in a Saudi consulate in 2018.
In a December 22 2018, article, the Post revealed that “text messages between Khashoggi and an executive at Qatar Foundation International show that the executive, Maggie Mitchell Salem, at times shaped the columns he submitted to The Washington Post, proposing topics, drafting material and prodding him to take a harder line against the Saudi government.” The newspaper also acknowledged that Khashoggi “appears to have relied on a researcher and translator affiliated with the organization.”
Khashoggi’s editor, the Post’s Karen Attiah, has never addressed whether she was aware that the columns under her purview were effectively being written by someone else. Now a columnist herself, Attiah has become known for accusing Israel of genocide and proudly retweeting “what did y’all think decolonization meant?” on October 7. The Post itself has flogged the idea that the Jewish State intentionally targets journalists and has given free ad space to Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists.
As the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA) has noted, both of these organizations have listed known terrorists as journalists. CPJ’s own database of slain journalists even identifies some who have worked for outlets associated with Hamas and Hezbollah, among other designated terrorist groups.
Notably, Qatari-linked entities have also funded numerous Western universities and think tanks. As CAMERA has documented, Brown University is foremost among them. CAMERA’s investigations into Brown revealed that the university has excluded Jewish students, had student organizations who called the October 7 massacre “just,” and hosted forums where speakers cheered the attack.
Until recently, Brown’s “Choices” program, which served approximately one million students and 8,000 schools, was supported by the Qatar International Foundation. Brown ended the program in April 2025 after “growing scrutiny over alleged anti-Israel content in the program and accusations of indirect Qatari funding,” Ynet reported.
Nor is FP itself immune. As Tablet’s Armin Rosen reported, the magazine is the “official podcasting partner of the Doha Forum and the only media organization whose logo appears on the front page of the website for the Doha Debates. Both events are a project of the state-funded Qatar Foundation.”
Suffice to say: Al Jazeera, Brown, Foreign Policy Magazine, and The Washington Post are hardly unbiased when it comes to reporting on Qatar, Hamas, and Israel. Their ability to judge what constitutes journalism and terrorism is, at best, severely compromised.
But others have worked to blur the lines between the two.
As CAMERA documented, on June 2, 2022, the National Press Club released a statement “calling attention to the shooting of another Palestinian journalist by Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).” The NPC lamented the death of Ghufran Hamed Warasneh, a “radio presenter” who was merely “commuting to work.”
But the day before, the Times of Israel reported that Warasneh was “armed with a knife” and had “approached a soldier stationed in the southern West Bank before being shot and killed.”
The Times of Israel even obtained pictures of the knife that was found at the scene. Further, Israel’s Channel 12 news noted that Warasneh had “attempted a stabbing attack in the past” in Hebron.
Yet, the NPC, which bills itself as a “professional and social club for working journalists and communications professionals,” was unmoved.
Nor is the problem new.
In 2015, for example, the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate published a list of 17 “journalists” who they claimed were killed in IDF operations in 2014. But a study by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center found that “almost half (eight out of 17) were names of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terrorist operatives, or were journalists who worked for the Hamas media.” Yet, “the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate and the Gaza office of the ministry of information tried to hide their military-terrorist identity, representing them only as journalists and media personnel.” The Center’s 2015 study was burnished with extensive evidence, including pictures of the “journalists” carrying weapons and wearing headbands identifying them as terrorists.
Indeed, as CAMERA noted in 2016, the Newseum, a now defunct D.C. museum that sought to “educate the public about the value of a free press in a free society,” had listed several slain members of terrorist groups in its memorial to fallen journalists. Among them were Hussam Salama and Mahmoud al-Kumi, operatives who worked for Hamas’s al-Aqsa TV, which was run by Fathi Hammad, a man named by the US State Department in 2016 as a “specially designated terrorist.”
These individuals aren’t journalists. One doesn’t just set aside his Hamas headband and put on a flak jacket labeled “press” and magically transform into a reporter. News organizations that conflate terrorists with journalists endanger their own employees and beclown the standards of their own profession.
The writer is a Senior Research Analyst for CAMERA, the 65,000-member, Boston-based Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis.
The post A Lesson for the Media: Terrorists Are Not Journalists first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Prominent Palestinian Writer Dismisses Victims of Fatal DC Shooting as ‘Genocide Cheerleaders’
Palestinian American writer and activist Susan Abulhawa. Photo: Screenshot
Prominent Palestinian-American writer Susan Abulhawa has seemingly justified the murder of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, DC, on Wednesday night, dismissing the victims as “genocidal cheerleaders,” warning that “no Zionist should be safe,” and suggesting without evidence that the shooting may have been a “false flag” operation.
“Natural logic: when governments fail to hold Israel accountable for an actual holocaust being committed before our very eyes, no genocidal Zionist should be safe anywhere in the world,” Abulhawa posted on X/Twitter on Thursday, the day after the shooting. “What Mr. Rodriguez did should come as no surprise. In fact, I’m surprised it has not happened sooner. Human beings with a conscience literally cannot bear to witness such evil day and day out being inflicted upon the bodies, minds, and futures of an utterly defenseless people, by such a hateful, racist, colonial state.”
Natural logic: when governments fail to hold Israel accountable for an actual holocaust being committed before our very eyes, no genocidal Zionist should be safe anywhere in the world. What Mr. Rodriguez did should come as no surprise. In fact, I’m surprised it has not happened…
— susan abulhawa | سوزان ابو الهوى (@susanabulhawa) May 22, 2025
Elias Rodriguez, a 30-year-old left-wing and anti-Israel activist from Chicago, was charged on Thursday in US federal court with two counts of first-degree murder. He is accused of fatally shooting Yaron Lischinsky, 30, and Sarah Lynn Milgrim, 26, a young couple about to become engaged to be married, as they left an event at the Capital Jewish Museum for young professionals and diplomatic staff hosted by the American Jewish Committee (AJC) in the US capital.
An affidavit filed by US federal authorities in support of the criminal complaint charging Rodriguez revealed that he said at the scene of the shooting, “I did it for Palestine; I did it for Gaza.” He also chanted “Free Palestine, Free Palestine” after being taken into custody, according to video of the incident.
In the aftermath of the shooting, many anti-Israel activists rushed to defend the antisemitic attack as justifiable “resistance,” arguing that Lischinsky and Milgrim deserved to be murdered because they support Israel, which they falsely claim has been perpetrating a genocide in Gaza while waging a military campaign against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.
“Now we’re supposed to feel bad for two genocide cheerleaders after watching these colonizer baby killers slaughter people by the hundreds every day for two years,” Abulhawa posted to X/Twitter on Thursday. “I’ve seen the inside of too many children’s skulls to give a crap about the human garbage who get off on mass murder.”
Abulhawa then seemingly suggested, without any evidence, that either Israel or the Jewish community was actually behind the shooting to make the public focus on the surge of antisemitism — a surge that she claimed was a lie despite copious documentation providing a historic spike in antisemitic incidents.
“It wouldn’t surprise me if it was a false flag to focus on manufactured antisemitism instead of the actual holocaust being committed by Jewish supremacists,” she wrote.
Now we’re supposed to feel bad for two genocide cheerleaders after watching these colonizer baby killers slaughter people by the hundreds every day for two years. I’ve seen the inside of too many children’s skulls to give a crap about the human garbage who get off on mass murder.…
— susan abulhawa | سوزان ابو الهوى (@susanabulhawa) May 22, 2025
The author later added, “Once you understand that Zionism and Nazism are two sides of the same coin, the world we live in will make a lot more sense.” She then peddled antisemitic tropes, accusing Israel, the only Jewish state in the world, of possessing “worldwide tentacles” and controlling international governments.
Abulhawa proceeded to compare Wednesday night’s shooting to a Jewish person killing a member of the Nazi party as retaliation for the Holocaust. She declared the terrorist act as legitimate “resistance” to fight the so-called “genocide” occurring in Gaza.
“A person (Jewish) killed a Nazi as an act of resistance because governments refused to stop a genocide perpetrated by Nazis. Today, a person killed a Zionist as an act of resistance because governments refuse to stop a genocide perpetrated by Zionists,” the writer said.
Abulhawa has an extensive history of publicly condemning those who support Israel’s right to self-defense. In an X/Twitter post, she accused Dana Stroul, a former US deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East, of having a “single loyalty to a foreign country, for which they endlessly extort US tax dollars and spill American blood to maintain.” She also castigated Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D), who is Jewish, for being “a major player in the Zionist death cult infecting the world.” She added that that Zionists “aren’t human like us” and that “we’re ruled by spawns of Satan.”
Last year, the writer accused then-US Secretary of State Antony Blinken of having a “single loyalty to Israel,” perpetuating the antisemitic conspiracy theory that Jewish people are inherently untrustworthy citizens more loyal to Israel than their own countries.
Abulhawa has also celebrated Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of southern Israel, saying that the massacre “wasn’t the beginning of violence; it is the beginning of the end of a genocidal colonial entity.” In an article published in the anti-Israel outlet Electronic Intifada just days after the atrocities, Abulhawa wrote that “Palestinian fighters finally broke free on 7 October 2023 in a spectacular moment that shocked the world.” Lauding the Hamas terrorists, she stated that “these brave Palestinian fighters overtook Israeli colonies built on their ancestral villages, seeing their stolen lands for the first time in their lives.”
Despite her comments against Jews, Zionists, and Israelis, Abulhawa’s work has been widely read. Mornings in Jenin, a novel penned by Abdulhawa, sold over one million copies worldwide. The activist also served as the lead organizer for the “Palestine Writes” festival at the University of Pennsylvania in 2023. The event, which featured a litany of anti-Israel speakers, incensed Jewish alumni and donors.
The post Prominent Palestinian Writer Dismisses Victims of Fatal DC Shooting as ‘Genocide Cheerleaders’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
George Washington University Sued in New Antisemitism Lawsuit
Pro-Hamas supporters at George Washington University in Washington, DC on March 21, 2025, to protest the war in Gaza. Photo: Bryan Dozier/NurPhoto via Reuters Connect.
George Washington University enabled an outburst of antisemitic discrimination and harassment on its campus, a new lawsuit brought on behalf of two recent graduates of the institution alleges.
Filed on Thursday in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, the complaint recounts dozens of antisemitic incidents following the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel which the university allegedly failed to respond to adequately because of anti-Jewish, as well as anti-Zionist, bias. Among the incidents detailed, the campus Hillel Center was vandalized; someone threw a rock through the window of a truck owned by a Jewish advocacy group; and a Jewish student was told to “kill yourself” and “watch your back” in a hate message which also called her a “filthy k—ke.”
That and more transpired, court documents charge.
“Protesters at GWU raised repulsive, antisemitic signs and shouted slogans like ‘final solution,’ ‘the irony of being what you once hatred,’ a message that equated the swastika to the Star of David; and ‘Globalize the Intifada,’ an express call for violence against Jews,” the complaint adds. “Protesters vandalized university property in what amounted to rioting and blocked Jewish students from traversing campus freely, attending class, and otherwise engaging in educational opportunities.”
The plaintiffs, Sabrina Soffer and Ari Shapiro, say the university’s anemic response to campus antisemitism constitutes a violation of Title VI of the US Civil Rights Act. They are seeking damages and injunctive relief.
“I have long been proud to call George Washington University my academic home. Yet, after nearly four years of bringing attention to the university’s persistent antisemitism problem, I remain disheartened by its failure to take sufficient action to protect against the hostile environment facing the Jewish and Israeli community,” Soffer said in a statement shared with The Algemeiner. “My sincere hope is that this lawsuit marks a turning point — one that restores accountability and reaffirms a genuine commitment to the values the university professes to uphold.”
As previously reported, George Washington University has been a hub of extreme anti-Zionist activity that school officials have struggled to quell. A major source of such conduct has been Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), which, among other conduct, has threatened a Jewish professor and intimidated Jews on campus.
Most recently, a student used her commencement speech to lodge accusations of apartheid and genocide against Israel, a notion trafficked by neo-Nazi groups and jihadist terror organizations.
The student, Cecilia Culver, accused Israel of targeting Palestinians “simply for [their] remaining in the country of their ancestors” and said that GW students are passive contributors to the “imperialist system.” An economics and statistics major, Culver deceived administrators who selected her to address the Columbian College of the Arts and Sciences ceremony, the university said in a statement.
GW faculty have also allegedly contributed to the promotion of antisemitism on campus. In 2023, former psychology professor Lara Sheehi was accused of verbally abusing and discriminating against her Jewish graduate students.
As recounted in a 2023 civil rights complaint filed by StandWithUs, Sheehi expressed contempt for Jews when, on the first day of term in August 2022, she asked every student to share information about their backgrounds and cultures. Replying to a student who revealed that she was Israeli, Sheehi said, “It’s not your fault you were born in Israel.” Jewish students said they made several attempts to persuade the university to correct Sheehi’s behavior or arrange an alternative option for fulfilling the requirements of her course. Each time, StandWithUs alleged, administrators said nothing could be done.
Later, the complaint added, Sheehi spread rumors that her Jewish students were “combative” racists and filed misconduct charges against them. One student told The Algemeiner at the time that she never learned what university policies Sheehi accused her and her classmates of violating.
“GWU has obligations under Title VI and other laws to protect its Jewish students and faculty, and our complaint demonstrates that GWU has failed its obligation,” attorney Jason Torchinsky, who is representing Soffer and Shapiro, said in a statement on Friday. “We look forward to this case and to protecting current and future Jewish students at GWU.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post George Washington University Sued in New Antisemitism Lawsuit first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Lebanon, PA Reach Agreement to Disarm Palestinian Refugee Camps; Hamas Excluded From Talks
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun meets with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at the presidential palace in Baabda, Lebanon, May 21, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
The disarmament of Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon is set to begin next month, following an agreement between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Lebanese government, as part of the latter’s effort to assert control over its entire territory.
The agreement follows a three-day visit to Beirut by PA President Mahmoud Abbas, during which he met with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun to discuss the disarmament of all 12 Palestinian refugee camps across Lebanon.
During their meeting, both leaders agreed that Palestinian factions would not use Lebanese territory as a launchpad for attacks against Israel and that all weapons would be placed under the authority of the Lebanese government.
In a statement, Lebanese authorities announced that both sides agreed to “launch the process of handing over weapons according to a specific timetable, accompanied by practical steps to bolster the economic and social rights of Palestinian refugees.”
Hamas — a rival of Abbas’s Fatah faction that dominates the PA — criticized the agreement for excluding them from the discussions, arguing that the demilitarization process lacked proper representation without their involvement.
The Palestinian terrorist group also urged the Lebanese government to hold a dialogue with all Palestinian factions present in the country.
“We call on the Lebanese government to open a responsible dialogue with the Joint Palestinian Action Committee, which includes all Palestinian factions and forces, to discuss the Palestinian situation from all its aspects,” Ali Baraka, Hamas’s head of foreign relations, said in a statement.
“Limiting the discussion to the security framework alone could open the door to the trap of resettlement or displacement, which is what [Israel] seeks,” Baraka continued.
By a long-standing agreement, the Lebanese army refrains from entering the refugee camps — where Fatah, Hamas, and other armed groups operate — and instead leaves security responsibilities to the factions within the settlements.
According to UNRWA, the UN agency responsible for Palestinian refugees and their descendants, Lebanon is home to more than 200,000 Palestinian refugees who are subject to government restrictions that bar them from many professional jobs, limit their legal protections, and prohibit them from owning property.
Under the new agreement, Hamas — which has long maintained operations in Lebanon — will reportedly only be allowed to operate in the country for political activities, with no involvement in military matters, Lebanese officials said.
In the past, Hamas has claimed multiple attacks on Israel launched from Lebanese territory, especially during last year’s conflict between the Jewish state and Hezbollah — a war that erupted after the terrorist group expressed “solidarity” with Hamas following the group’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
In November, Lebanon and Israel reached a US-brokered ceasefire agreement that ended a year of fighting between the Jewish state and Hezbollah. Under the agreement, Israel was given 60 days to withdraw from Lebanon’s southern border, allowing the Lebanese army and UN forces to take over security as Hezbollah disarms and moves away from Israel’s northern border.
Israel, which decimated much of Hezbollah’s senior leadership during last year’s war, has continued to carry out regular airstrikes in southern Lebanon since the ceasefire.
Israeli officials assert that Hezbollah continues to maintain infrastructure in the south of the country, while Lebanon and Hezbollah accuse Israel of occupying Lebanese territory by refusing to withdraw from five hilltop positions.
The post Lebanon, PA Reach Agreement to Disarm Palestinian Refugee Camps; Hamas Excluded From Talks first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login