A man gestures the victory sign as he holds a Hezbollah flag, on the second day of the ceasefire between Israel and Iran-backed group Hezbollah, in Tyre, southern Lebanon, Nov. 28, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Aziz Taher

The United States targeted two senior Hezbollah officials and two financial facilitators with new sanctions on Thursday for their role in coordinating financial transfers to the Iran–backed terrorist group, the Treasury Department said.

The latest sanctions come as President Donald Trump said on Thursday that the United States was getting very close to securing a nuclear deal with Iran, and Tehran had “sort of” agreed to the terms.

The people targeted were based in Lebanon and Iran and worked to get money to Hezbollah from overseas donors, the department said in a statement.

Treasury said overseas donations make up a significant portion of the Islamist group’s budget.

Thursday’s action highlights Hezbollah‘s “extensive global reach through its network of terrorist donors and supporters, particularly in Tehran,” said Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Michael Faulkender.

“As part of our ongoing efforts to address Iran’s support for terrorism, Treasury will continue to intensify economic pressure on the key individuals in the Iranian regime and its proxies who enable these deadly activities.”

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Schaeffer Hall, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa. Photo: Flickr.

“Your teacher needs teaching.” This quote appalled me because, although challenging ideas is crucial to democratic values, it’s dangerous to assume your perspective is the definitive truth.

When I saw that the University of Iowa’s Arabic Department was promoting a “Palestine Storytime and Craft” in the Iowa City Public Library (ICPL)’s Children’s Room, I was curious about what it would convey, especially as someone who has worked with children for almost a decade, was employed in my hometown library’s children’s department, and participated avidly in those programs growing up.

The comment sections on ICPL’s Instagram and Facebook pages were flooded with support and comments like “love this.”

The event was cosponsored by Iowans for Palestine (IFP) and a local activist.

Besides spreading misleading information at their weekly protests and campus events, IFP has worked on a piece with Al Jazeera, which Israel and others have repeatedly accused of bias. Additionally, IFP has promoted multiple fundraisers raising thousands of dollars for the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, which has been accused by watchdogs of funneling money to Hamas.

In October 2024, a pro-Palestinian community member spoke at an Iowa City School Board meeting, where she declared, “How much time has been given in schools to understand the Indigenous People’s struggle for liberation from their occupiers or colonizers? All the while, an act of genocide is happening right now against the indigenous Palestinian people. The education system has been used before to hide or ignore the truth, lie or mislead against the many atrocities indigenous people have faced … The abuse of education risks leading people to dehumanize an already embattled indigenous population … Standing against colonialism and apartheid is to stand with truth to power.”

This same activist took on the role of storyteller for the library event. She first read My Olive Tree by Hazar Elbayya, recognized as a Booklist Best Book of the Year, followed by A Map for Falasteen, written by Maysa Odeh and illustrated by Aliaa Betawi, which has received multiple honors, including Kirkus Best Book of 2024 and Booklist Editors’ Choice 2024.

The presenter repeatedly emphasized that the one thing she wanted everyone to focus on was the adults’ attire in the stories. She encouraged them to compare it to what she was wearing: a black and white keffiyeh.

In My Olive Tree, Hazar Elbayya portrays Israel as the villain through the eyes of a young girl who dreams of growing an olive tree, a cherished symbol of peace in her community, while soldiers are described as “forcefully march[ing] into our land and destroy[ing] everything in their path.”

A Map for Falasteen opens with a young girl struggling to find her family’s homeland on a map, while her classmates confidently share their own stories. When she asks why “Palestine” isn’t shown, her teacher dismissively suggests it may not exist, prompting the girl to turn to her family in search of answers. After reading the first page, the community member said to the audience, “It’s not actually on the map — it exists, but it’s not on the map.”

In the story, the girl’s grandpa draws a map of  “Palestine” and says, “Your teacher needs teaching. You can show this to her, so all of your friends can learn too.”

It was not hard at all to spot the keffiyehs, watermelons, and Palestinian flags throughout the books.

After she was finished reading, the organizer took the keffiyeh off her neck to show the children and their families. She said the pattern resembling a fishing net is a tribute to Palestinian fishermen. Another pattern, with squiggly lines, symbolizes olive leaves, which she described as an essential part of Palestinian culture. According to her, the straight lines represent the borders between the cities and villages of Palestine.

While the reader’s son — wearing a “Free Palestine” hoodie — and a few friends were notably engaged, the rest of the very young children seemed more interested in the craft portion of the event than the radical messaging.

It is a disheartening reality that many institutions, from college campuses to local libraries, are no longer prioritizing unbiased, meaningful education but instead are becoming platforms for harmful agendas.

This event is just one example of how young minds can be subtly influenced by radical messaging under the guise of innocent storytelling and community engagement.

As parents, educators, and responsible citizens, we must remain vigilant about what our children are exposed to. Just because a book has won awards does not mean it is objective, age-appropriate, or free from dangerous messaging.

It is our duty to ensure that young people are not preyed upon by pro-terrorist rhetoric or manipulated into adopting ideologies before they are old enough to critically assess them, especially when children are regularly weaponized by terrorists that try to appeal to them. Just look at how Hamas has used children to celebrate the deaths of babies held hostage — this is the destructive path that unchecked radicalization can lead to.

 Jasmyn Jordan is a spring 2025 graduate of the University of Iowa, where she was a Presidential Scholar, double majoring in Political Science and International Relations with a minor in Journalism. She was a 2024–2025 CAMERA Fellow and organized a variety of pro-Israel initiatives, including bringing a speaker to campus. Her work has appeared in The College Fix, New Guard, and Breitbart, and she has been featured in interviews at the local, state, and national levels.

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23-year-old German-Israeli Shani Louk, who was murdered by Hamas on October 7, 2023. (Photo: Instagram)

Calling a terror operative a journalist doesn’t make him one.

Just ask the Associated Press (AP). The vaunted news agency’s rough schooling in this lesson began with a mundane correspondence, progressed to the most devastating slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, and continued with a hugely embarrassing court case. 

The first chapter of the unfortunate saga dates to 2018. At the time, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America questioned the AP’s reliance on photographer Hassan Eslaiah, identified in the wire service coverage as a “local journalist” who corroborated a Hamas accusation that Israel was responsible for the death of a child at the Gaza border fence.

When CAMERA requested specifics regarding Eslaiah’s journalistic credentials, an AP official declined to identify the Palestinian’s professional affiliation. The editor insisted that he “is independent and reliable and not Hamas.”

CAMERA did its own research, and in very short order discovered an Electronic Intifada article revealing that the “not Hamas” source was, at the time, a camera operator with the very much Hamas-affiliated Quds TV. 

CAMERA shared this information with the AP. But the news agency, which says it its “advancing the power of facts,” failed to amend its coverage to acknowledge that the supposedly independent and reliable local journalist, who ostensibly substantiated an unverified Hamas claim, was himself working with Hamas.

Later, in 2020, CAMERA tweeted a photograph of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar kissing and embracing Eslaiah, and tagged the AP.

Fast forward to Oct. 7, 2023. By then, Eslaiah’s status at the AP had advanced. He was no longer a “local journalist” trotted out to verify Hamas’ questionable claims. He was now the wire service’s freelance photographer at the forefront of Hamas’ horrific massacre, earning cash for his images of the unspeakable terror carried out by his Hamas colleagues. 

“Not Hamas” Eslaiah was among the freelance photographers from the Gaza Strip who crossed the border into Israel alongside thousands of Hamas-led terrorists who came to murder, rape, kidnap, torture, maim, and loot.

The most recent chapter of the AP’s hard knocks education in the mutually exclusive professions of journalism and terror moves from the killing fields of southern Israel to the Federal court of the Southern District of Florida.

As reported in The Times of Israel, terror victims sued the Associated Press in February 2024 for publishing Eslaiah’s Oct. 7 photographs, charging: “AP has long been on notice of their freelancer’s Hamas connections, and chose to ignore those connections.”

A recap: the AP was on notice because of CAMERA’s 2018 correspondence. The CAMERA-AP exchange stands at the foundation of the terror victim’s lawsuit against the leading news agency.

In those 2018 emails, dusted off in 2024 by studious lawyers who did their homework, CAMERA also documented that Eslaiah’s social media was a veritable reader’s guide to ideological identification with Hamas, glorification of terrorism, and anti-Jewish statements.

Even following Oct. 7, Eslaiah’s social media was as open as a textbook. A November 2023 CAMERA report documented Eslaiah’s celebration of the Oct. 7 atrocities, including praise for the Hamas “warriors” and reflections on how “storming the settlements” is a “beautiful thing.”

But Eslaiah’s identification with Hamas didn’t stop at lyrical posts. Last April, when Eslaiah was injured in an Israeli airstrike, the Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet reported that Eslaiah was a member of Hamas’ Khan Younis Brigade and was operating “under the guise of a journalist and owner of a press company.”

When Hassan Eslaiah was killed in an Israeli air strike this week, Hamas rushed to claim that a journalist was among the three fatalities.

As the lawsuit against the AP is still ongoing, the final chapter of the AP’s Eslaiah Hamas-not-journalist curriculum has yet to be written. Nevertheless, the enduring lesson should be clear: a terror operative is not a journalist.

And yet, the slow learners are nothing if not consistent: “Gaza journalist Hassan Aslih killed in Israeli strike,” BBC blared. “Israeli strike on Gaza hospital kills wounded journalist,” Reuters misled.

Tamar Sternthal is director of the Israel office of CAMERA.

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