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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.
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Rafael Lemkin’s Family Fights to Have Anti-Israel Group Stop Using Name of Famed Zionist Who Coined Term ‘Genocide’

Raphael Lemkin being interviewed on Feb. 13, 1949. Photo: Screenshot
The family of Raphael Lemkin — the Polish-born Jewish lawyer who coined the term “genocide” and helped draft the Genocide Convention after World War II — is taking legal action against a stridently anti-Israel group based in the US, accusing the nonprofit organization of corrupting his family name and legacy.
Joseph Lemkin, the cousin of Raphael Lemkin and closest living relative, confirmed to The Algemeiner that his family is initiating legal proceedings against the Pennsylvania-based Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention, with the support of the European Jewish Association (EJA), to stop the misuse of his family name.
“From our perspective, the Lemkin Institute has no right to use his name. Their actions are completely opposed to what he stood for,” Lemkin told The Algemeiner, referring to his cousin. “He was a passionate Zionist who dedicated all his efforts and resources to one cause: the adoption of the Genocide Convention.”
Lemkin’s father was Raphael Lemkin’s first cousin, and he said the two men had a close relationship.
First reported by The Algemeiner, the institute has used the Lemkin name to advance an agenda of extreme anti-Israel activism, which Lemkin’s family called a “shameful betrayal” of their legacy.
Initially registered in Pennsylvania as a nonprofit organization in 2021, the institute received US federal tax-exempt status two years later.
Since the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the organization has shifted toward aggressive anti-Israel political advocacy, backing pro-Hamas campus protests and reaching millions on social media with posts that falsely accuse Israel of genocide.
Less than a week after the Oct. 7 atrocities, for example, the institute released a “genocide alert” calling the Palestinian terrorist group’s onslaught an “unprecedented military operation against Israel.”
Comparing Israel’s defensive military actions against Hamas to the Holocaust, the institute accused the Jewish state of carrying out a “genocide” against Palestinians — the very term Raphael Lemkin coined in 1943. Israel had not even launched its ground offensive in Gaza at the time of the social media posts.
Days later, the Lemkin Institute called on the International Criminal Court “to indict Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the crime of #genocide in light of the siege and bombardment of #Gaza and the many expressions of genocidal intent.” Israel still had not initiated its ground campaign.
Since then, the organization’s vocal anti-Israel advocacy has continued unabated for the past two years, accusing the Jewish state of genocide and terrorism while largely staying silent about Hamas.
According to the Lemkin family, such statements distort history and undermine their legacy, but even more, they disrespect the memory of six million Jews.
“The institute has used this term to promote an inflammatory, antisemitic stance against Israel — completely contrary to the principles he stood for,” Joseph Lemkin told The Algemeiner, referring to his cousin.
“Astonishingly, they have even expressed support for Hezbollah and Hamas — both internationally designated terrorist organizations — while smearing Israel,” he continued.
Now, legal steps are underway to hold the institute accountable, stop it from exploiting the Lemkin name to raise money, and end its Holocaust comparisons.
After first sending letters demanding that the institute change its name, the Lemkin family is now awaiting a response — and if no voluntary action is taken or Pennsylvania officials fail to intervene, the matter will be taken to court, Lemkin told The Algemeiner.
Beyond its communications with the institute, the EJA legal team also sent letters to Gov. Josh Shapiro and Pennsylvania’s Bureau of Corporations and Charitable Organizations regarding this issue.
“The Lemkin Institute, through its very name, as well as its marketing and other materials, represents itself as an embodiment of Mr. Lemkin’s ideology. In reality, the Lemkin Institute’s policies, positions, activities, and publications are anathema to Mr. Lemkin’s belief system,” the letter reads.
“The Lemkin Institute is not authorized by Raphael Lemkin’s family, his estate, or any custodian of his legacy to rely upon his name for any purpose,” it continues. “The European Jewish Association and Mr. Lemkin’s family are outraged by the Lemkin Institute’s use of Mr. Lemkin’s name, especially in the context of the Lemkin Institute’s anti-Israel agenda.”
EJA Chairman Rabbi Menachem Margolin has sharply condemned the institute’s actions and statements, saying it has “weaponized a sacred legacy against the very people it was meant to protect.”
“The Lemkin Institute was established to prevent genocide — not to distort its definition or fuel antisemitic tropes,” Margolin said in a statement.
Raphael Lemkin was born in Poland in 1900 and eventually escaped the Nazis to the US, where he joined the War Department, documenting Nazi atrocities and preparing for the prosecution of Nazi crimes at the Nuremberg trials. He dedicated much of his life to making the world recognize the horrors of the Holocaust and designating mass murder as a crime which could be prosecuted through international law. Forty-nine members of his family, including his parents, were killed in the Holocaust. He died in 1959.
A 2017 article by James Loeffler, who now teaches at Johns Hopkins University, described what he called “the forgotten Zionism of Raphael Lemkin.” Loeffler noted that while “dead international lawyers rarely become celebrities,” Lemkin “has emerged as a potent symbol for activists and politicians across the world.”
Loeffler traced Lemkin’s work as an editor and columnist of a Jewish publication, Zionist World. “The task of the Jewish people is … [to become] a permanent national majority in its own national home,” Lemkin wrote in one such column.
“It is not enough to know Zionism,” Lemkin wrote in another column quoted by Loeffler. “One must imbibe its spirit, one must make Zionism a part of one’s very own ‘self,’ and be prepared to make sacrifices on its behalf.”
Elisa von Joeden-Forgey, founder and executive director of the Lemkin Institute, told the online news site EJewish Philanthropy that her organization was named after Lemkin to “bring his name back into public discourse” but “there was no clear person to contact” when naming the institute in 2021.
“We don’t want to cause unhappiness for anybody in the Lemkin family. We did ask to know what legal basis exists for the complaint, and we have not received any response to that specific question,” she added.
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China Expands Influence Campaign Targeting Israel as Way to Hurt US, Study Finds

Chinese and US flags flutter outside the building of an American company in Beijing, China, April 8, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Tingshu Wang
China has increasingly used state media and covert campaigns to spread anti-Israel and antisemitic narratives in the United States, according to a new study.
The Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), an Israeli think tank, has released a report examining how China’s state media portrays Israel and the United States as solely responsible for the war in Gaza, depicting them as destabilizing actors while spreading anti-Israel and antisemitic messages.
“It is evident that China and its proxies play a significant role in the current wave of antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment in the United States,” Ofir Dayan, a research associate in the Israel-China Policy Center at INSS, writes in the report.
According to Dayan, China’s dissemination of anti-Israel narratives is not intended to directly harm Israel but rather to undermine the US, while preserving its valuable diplomatic and economic ties with Jerusalem.
“Israel is used as a tool to advance Beijing’s claim that Washington destabilizes both the international system and the regions where it operates,” the report says.
While China’s primary aim is to target the United States, Israel ends up suffering “collateral damage” as a result, the study finds.
In advancing these objectives, INSS explains that China covertly conducts influence campaigns across the United States, promoting anti-Israel and antisemitic narratives, including conspiracy theories about “Jewish control” of politics, the economy, and the media.
On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused China, along with Qatar, of orchestrating a campaign in Western media to “besiege” Israel by undermining its allies’ support.
There is “an effort to besiege — not isolate as much as besiege Israel — that is orchestrated by the same forces that supported Iran,” Netanyahu said, speaking to a delegation of 250 US state legislators at the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem.
“One is China. And the other is Qatar. They are organizing an attack on Israel … [through] the social media of the Western world and the United States,” the Israeli leader continued. “We will have to counter it, and we will counter it with our own methods.”
According to the INSS report, China’s role in promoting anti-Israel activity in the United States is evident in the narratives it spreads — both publicly, through state-run media, and covertly, through targeted cyber operations.
For example, China Daily — the official news outlet of the Chinese Communist Party — has been openly critical of Israel since the start of the Gaza war, using its coverage to attack Washington and depict it as a destabilizing force fueling conflict worldwide.
The Chinese news outlet has also published articles contending that neither Israel nor the United States care about Gazans or Israeli hostages held by Hamas, accusing the US of instigating wars for domestic political gain, and attempting to create divisions in American society by portraying support for Israel as unpopular.
The study also explains how China exploited the wave of protests across US universities following the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, to deepen divisions within American society.
It portrayed anti-Israel protesters as calm and peaceful defenders of free expression, while depicting pro-Israel demonstrators as violent.
“Posts on heavily censored social media in China were even more blatant, and at times antisemitic, claiming that Israel controls the United States and drawing comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany,” the report says.
“Some referred to Israel as a ‘terrorist organization,’ while describing Hamas as a resistance organization and spreading unfounded conspiracy theories,” it continues.
In the past, the US State Department has accused China of promoting conspiracy theories and antisemitism within the United States.
China also carries out covert influence campaigns through targeted cyber operations, aimed in part at shaping Israel’s image in the United States and undermining US-Israel relations.
According to the study, China-linked cyber campaigns have used troll networks to spread malicious content about Israel, disseminating antisemitic messages to American audiences that falsely claim Jewish and Israeli control over US politics.
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US Lawmakers Slam Zohran Mamdani Over Pledge to Scrap IHRA Definition of Antisemitism

Candidate Zohran Mamdani speaks during a Democratic New York City mayoral primary debate, June 4, 2025, in New York, US. Photo: Yuki Iwamura/Pool via REUTERS
Two members of the US Congress on Wednesday slammed New York City Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani after he pledged to abandon a widely used definition of antisemitism if elected.
Reps. Mike Lawler, a Republican from New York, and Josh Gottheimer, a Democrat from New Jersey, said in a joint statement that Mamdani’s plan to scrap the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism is “dangerous” and “shameful.” The IHRA definition — adopted by dozens of US states, dozens of countries, and hundreds of governing institutions, including the European Union and United Nations — has been a cornerstone of global efforts to monitor and combat antisemitic hate.
“Walking away from IHRA is not just reckless — it undermines the fight against antisemitism at a time when hate crimes are spiking,” Lawler said in his own statement. Gottheimer echoed that concern, arguing that dismantling the definition “sends exactly the wrong message to Jewish communities who feel under siege.”
The backlash followed Mamdani’s comments last week to Bloomberg News in which he vowed, if elected, to reverse New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ executive order in June adopting the IHRA standard. Mamdani, a democratic socialist and state assemblymember, argued that the IHRA definition blurs the line between antisemitism and political criticism of Israel and risks chilling free speech.
“I am someone who has supported and support BDS [the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement against Israel] and nonviolent approaches to address Israeli state violence,” he said at the time.
The BDS movement seeks to isolate Israel from the international community as a step toward its eventual elimination. Leaders of the movement have repeatedly stated their goal is to destroy the world’s only Jewish state.
“Let’s be extremely clear: the BDS movement is antisemitic. Efforts to delegitimize Israel’s right to exist are antisemitic. And refusing to outright condemn the violent call to ‘globalize the intifada’ — offering only that you’d discourage its use — is indefensible,” Lawler and Gottheimer said in their joint statement, referring to Mamdani’s recent partial backtracking after his initial defense of the use of the phrase “globalize the intifada.”
“There are no two sides about the meaning of this slogan — it is hate speech, plain and simple,” the lawmakers continued. “Given the sharp spike in antisemitic violence, families across the Tri-State area should be alarmed. Leaders cannot equivocate when it comes to standing against antisemitism and the incitement of violence against Jews.”
IHRA — an intergovernmental organization comprising dozens of countries including the US and Israel — adopted the “working definition” of antisemitism in 2016. Since then, the definition has been widely accepted by Jewish groups and lawmakers across the political spectrum.
According to the definition, antisemitism “is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” It provides 11 specific, contemporary examples of antisemitism in public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and in the religious sphere. Beyond classic antisemitic behavior associated with the likes of the medieval period and Nazi Germany, the examples include denial of the Holocaust and newer forms of antisemitism targeting Israel such as demonizing the Jewish state, denying its right to exist, and holding it to standards not expected of any other democratic state.
In a statement, the Mamdani campaign confirmed that the candidate would not use the IHRA definition of antisemitism, which major civil rights groups have said is essential for fighting an epidemic of anti-Jewish hatred sweeping across the US.
“A Mamdani administration will approach antisemitism in line with the Biden administration’s National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism — a strategy that emphasizes education, community engagement, and accountability to reverse the normalization of antisemitism and promote open dialogue,” Mamdani spokesperson Dora Pekec told the New York Post.
Lawler and Gottheimer’s pushback comes as Congress debates the Antisemitism Awareness Act, legislation that would codify IHRA’s definition into federal law. Advocacy groups such as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) have urged lawmakers to back the measure, warning that antisemitic incidents have surged nationwide over the past two years and having a clear definition will better enable law enforcement and others to combat it.
For Mamdani, the controversy over the IHRA definition adds a new flashpoint to a mayoral campaign already drawing national attention.
A little-known politician before this year’s Democratic primary campaign, Mamdani is an outspoken supporter of the BDS movement. He has also repeatedly refused to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, falsely suggesting the country does not offer “equal rights” for all its citizens, and promised to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he visits New York.
Mamdani especially came under fire during the summer when he initially defended the phrase “globalize the intifada”— which references previous periods of sustained Palestinian terrorism against Jews and Israels and has been widely interpreted as a call to expand political violence — by invoking the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising during World War II. However, Mamdani has since backpedaled on his support for the phrase, saying that he would discourage his supporters from using the slogan.