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How Israel Lost a Battle to Al Jazeera — and How It Must Do Better Next Time
The Al Jazeera Media Network logo is seen on its headquarters building in Doha, Qatar, June 8, 2017. Photo: REUTERS/Naseem Zeitoon
If you are going to kill someone famous, be prepared to justify your actions.
On July 31, an Israeli airstrike killed Al Jazeera reporter Ismail al-Ghoul along with his cameraman and a 17-year-old bystander. The strike came in broad daylight, and footage of al-Ghoul’s decapitated body began to circulate on social media. A wave of stories reported the death of another journalist in Gaza. The Israeli military had no comment.
The next day, the IDF released a statement on social media asserting that Ghoul was a Hamas military operative and part of the Nukhba force that carried out the October 7 massacre.
Surging global media coverage took note of the Israeli statement, but its emphasis remained on the tragic death of a young reporter who left behind a widow and one-year-old daughter. After two additional days, the IDF returned to social media, posting an image of a captured Hamas spreadsheet from 2021 that identified Ghoul as an operative, along with his rank, specialty, and official ID numbers. But the news cycle had moved on.
If the story ended there, the lesson would be straightforward: The IDF should have a dossier of declassified intelligence ready to publicize the moment it strikes a Hamas terrorist with a high-profile civilian day job.
Yet in the case of Ismail al-Ghoul, it is not classified documents, but his own social media posts that provide much of the relevant information about his attachment to Hamas.
The journalists who covered Ghoul’s demise clearly did not conduct basic due diligence. Yet the IDF shares responsibility; Israeli intelligence should pay close attention to its targets’ social media activity.
The first clue that Ghoul’s social media deserved closer scrutiny was his decision to open a series of new accounts — and delete or suspend the old ones — shortly after he began working for Al Jazeera during the first weeks of the fighting in Gaza. He created a new Instagram account in November, as well as a new Telegram channel. Next came a new Facebook page in December, and a second new page in January. That same month, he launched two new X accounts and one on TikTok. In February, he launched another Telegram channel.
The names of these new accounts incorporated some version of Ghoul’s name along with the number two, suggesting they were successors to an earlier account.
For example, he chose “ismail_gh2” as the handle for both his Instagram account and one of the two on X. The former now has more than 650,000 followers, while the latter has more than 100,000. One of the two Facebook pages has another half million followers while more than 45,000 users follow him on Telegram. If nothing else, this should have made it clear to the IDF that they were dealing with a target whose death could have a major political impact.
Although Ghoul disabled his original account on X, most of its contents remain available thanks to the Internet Archive.
Eitan Fischberger, an Israel army veteran turned media analyst, examined Ghoul’s posts in March. In a post from April 2020, the second month of the Covid-19 pandemic, Ghoul opined that the real disease is “the Israeli entity and every Arab trying to normalize it,” adding the hashtag #COVID48, a reference to the year of Israel’s founding.
In July of that year, Ghoul tweeted a graphic celebrating young Palestinians’ use of “alternative tools” against Israelis: knives, axes, rocks, and Molotov cocktails.
Yet the most important piece of information to glean from Ghoul’s old X account is the fact that he previously worked for two other media outlets — Felesteen and al-Resalah — both aligned with Hamas.
Felesteen debuted in May 2007, becoming Palestinians’ fifth daily newspaper. Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader recently assassinated in Iran, spoke at a pre-launch reception for Felesteen. An interview with Haniyeh was the centerpiece of its first edition. The Associated Press, which covered the publication’s debut, described it as “a 24-page newspaper catering largely to Hamas supporters and seen as an attempt by the Islamic militant group to increase its influence.”
The precise nature of Ghoul’s work at Felesteen and al-Resalah is not clear; his name does not appear on old bylines. Yet both publications lionize Hamas.
In a brief article on August 7, 2024, al-Resalah reported the selection of Yahya Sinwar as Hamas’ new leader while noting the “brave, wise, and open-minded leadership” of Ismail Haniyeh, Sinwar’s late predecessor. During his time at al-Resalah, Ghoul said an Israeli soldier shot him, injuring his hand with shrapnel, while he was covering protests at the Gaza-Israel border in 2018.
Despite Ghoul’s reinvention of his social media presence during the current war, he chose to leave intact his personal Facebook profile, which remains public. The clearest indication of his disposition toward Hamas is a photo he posted in 2021, showing Yahya Sinwar sitting defiantly in the ruins of his Gaza home.
Ghoul said of Sinwar, “May Allah protect you.” Ghoul also left no doubt that he celebrated violence. In September 2023, he reposted another well-known image, this one of Palestinian teenager Basel al-Shawamrah, who stabbed two Israelis outside the Jerusalem Central Bus station. A photographer captured Shawamra grinning contentedly while lying on a stretcher after he was shot. Ghoul captioned the photo “The Smile of Victory.” On numerous occasions, Ghoul shared photos of rocket fire from Gaza, calling the rockets “the pride of local industry.”
According to the IDF, two of Ghoul’s cousins were also Hamas operatives. In February, the IDF announced the death of Ahmed al-Ghoul, commander of the Shati Battalion, “who participated in the massacre on October 7” and later held one of the Israeli hostages, Cpl. Noa Marciano, whose remains were later found near al-Shifa hospital.
In May, a second announcement reported the death of Naim al-Ghoul, a fighter in the Shati Battalion, who also held Marciano before her death. Ismail al-Ghoul posted photos of himself at his cousin’s funeral, shovel in hand, wearing a blue flak jacket displaying the English word “PRESS” in large capital letters. Ghoul described his cousin as “a man of humanity who continued to perform his humanitarian duty sincerely.”
One source of support Ghoul could rely on was his wife, who posted many verses in honor of Hamas’ military wing, the Qassam Brigades.
During the clash the IDF calls Operation Protective Edge, she wrote to the Qassam fighters, “May God protect you, make you steadfast and be with you.” Above a photo of a Palestinian fighter she posted, “Fire your guns, don’t be merciful.” Her timeline also includes commemorations of fighters such as Yahya Ayyash, the bombmaker who equipped many suicide operatives in the 1990s.
She also denounced Palestinians who reject Hamas as agents of the Jews. Above a photo of Jews dancing in Jerusalem on the anniversary of the IDF’s reclaiming the city in 1967, Ghoul’s wife lamented, “Is there a more hideous sight than this?”
None of this material on Facebook amounts to evidence that Ghoul was a Hamas military operative. Nor do expressions of support for Hamas, nor even justifications of its violence, render Ghoul a legitimate military target. Yet they show he was an extremist and belie the post-mortem claims by Al Jazeera that Ghoul was a model journalist. The network’s managing editor, Mohamed Moawad, wrote, “Ismail was renowned for his professionalism and dedication, bringing the world’s attention to the suffering and atrocities committed in Gaza.”
Did the network know of Ghoul’s support for Hamas when it hired him? His previous work on behalf of Felesteen and al-Resalah would have made his affinity obvious. A review of Ghoul’s social media would not have required much effort. Had the IDF prepared a suitable dossier with selections from Ghoul’s postings, it might have turned the tables on Al Jazeera, pushing Western journalists to press the network for answers. Instead, Western media uncritically reprinted testimonials to Ghoul from admiring colleagues.
While the news cycle has passed, the IDF should nevertheless commit the manpower necessary to produce a full dossier on Ghoul, including both declassified intelligence and publicly available material. There is a tendency for past incidents to become the subject of intense re-litigation. In January, an Israeli airstrike killed two of Ghoul’s colleagues at Al Jazeera, Hamza Dahdouh and Mustafa Thuraya. Three days later, the IDF released a screenshot of what it said was a personnel roster from Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a Hamas partner, showing that Dahdouh belonged to an electronic engineering unit. Two months later, The Washington Post published a detailed investigation asserting the innocence of Dahdouh and Thuraya, while casting doubt on the document shared by the IDF. In response to inquiries from the Post, the IDF simply responded, “We have nothing to add.”
While the IDF may question the fairness of the Post’s coverage, its non-response amounts to unilateral disarmament. When the re-litigation of Ghoul’s death begins, the IDF should be better prepared. For instance, it should be able to demonstrate the authenticity of the spreadsheet listing Ghoul as a Hamas operative. On its own, the document has shortcomings. For example, there is a column that lists the “Date of military rank” for each of the individuals listed. Yet in the case of Ghoul and many others, this date precedes the “Date of recruitment” by several years.
Other parts of the document hold up better under scrutiny. One column provides a nine-digit ID for each individual. All of these have the correct format for the numbers that the Israeli Ministry of the Interior assigns to Palestinians. Five of the 33 names in the document also appear on the Gaza Health Ministry’s list of the dead. Of those, two reportedly died on October 7, according to a Palestinian NGO that tracks fatalities.
Four of the names on the spreadsheet belong to individuals that Ghoul’s Facebook account lists as friends. One is Samer Balawi, who has not posted on Facebook since May, yet his final post shows him standing side by side with Ghoul, both smiling. It reveals little about their relationship, but underscores the importance of synthesizing information from open source and classified materials.
While the IDF may have lost the battle with Al Jazeera that followed Ghoul’s death, the battle is not the war. The question is whether the IDF will learn from this setback and be better prepared for the next round.
David Adesnik is a senior fellow and director of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies
The post How Israel Lost a Battle to Al Jazeera — and How It Must Do Better Next Time first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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US Clamps Sanctions on Israel-bashing UN Rights Monitor Albanese
Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, attends a side event during the Human Rights Council at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, March 26, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
The Trump administration has imposed sweeping sanctions against Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, citing the UN official’s lengthy record of singling out Israel for condemnation.
In a post on X, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the sanctions under a February executive order targeting those who “prompt International Criminal Court (ICC) action against U.S. and Israeli officials, companies, and executives.” He accused Albanese of waging “political and economic warfare” against both nations and asserted that “such efforts will no longer be tolerated.”
“Today I am imposing sanctions on UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese for her illegitimate and shameful efforts to prompt [International Criminal Court] action against U.S. and Israeli officials, companies, and executives,” Rubio announced on X/Twitter.
“Albanese’s campaign of political and economic warfare against the United States and Israel will no longer be tolerated,” declared the Trump administration’s top foreign affairs official. “We will always stand by our partners in their right to self-defense.”
Rubio concluded: “The United States will continue to take whatever actions we deem necessary to respond to lawfare and protect our sovereignty and that of our allies.”
The decision to impose sanctions on Albanese marks an escalation in the ongoing feud between the White House and the United Nations over Israel. The Trump administration has repeatedly accused the UN and Albanese of unfairly targeting Israel and mischaracterizing the Jewish state’s conduct in Gaza.
Albanese, an Italian lawyer and academic, has held the position of UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories since 2022. The position authorizes her to monitor and report on alleged “human rights violations” by Israel against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
Last week, Albanese issued a scathing report accusing companies of helping Israel maintain a so-called “genocide economy.” She called on the companies to cut off economic ties with Israel and warned that they might be guilty of “complicity” in the so-called “genocide” in Gaza.
Critics of Albanese have long accused her of exhibiting an excessive anti-Israel bias, calling into question her fairness and neutrality.
Albanese has an extensive history of using her role at the UN to denigrate Israel and seemingly rationalize Hamas’ attacks on the Jewish state.
In the months following the Palestinian terrorist group’s atrocities across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Albanese accused the Jewish state of perpetrating a “genocide” against the Palestinian people in revenge for the attacks and circulated a widely derided and heavily disputed report alleging that 186,000 people had been killed in the Gaza war as a result of Israeli actions.
The action comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits Washington, where he has received a warm reception from the Trump administration. Netanyahu has been meeting with US officials to discuss next steps in the ongoing Gaza military operation.
Gideon Sa’ar, Minister of Foreign Affairs for Israel, commended the Rubio announcement with his own post on X/Twitter, exclaiming: “A clear message. Time for the UN to pay attention!”
The post US Clamps Sanctions on Israel-bashing UN Rights Monitor Albanese first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Hardball: Trump Administration Reports Harvard to Accreditor Over Antisemitism Allegations
US President Donald Trump speaks during a Cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, DC, July 8, 2025. Photo: Kevin Lamarque via Reuters Connect.
The Trump administration escalated its showdown against Harvard University on Wednesday, reporting the institution to its accreditor for alleged civil rights violations resulting from its weak response to reports of antisemitic bullying, discrimination, and harassment following Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 massacre across southern Israel.
The US Department of Education (DOE) announced the action on Wednesday. Citing Harvard’s admitted failure to treat antisemitism as seriously as it treated others forms of hatred in the past, the DOE called on the New England Commission of Higher Education to review and, potentially, revoke its accreditation — a designation which qualifies Harvard for federal funding and attests to the quality of the educational services its provides.
“Accrediting bodies play a significant role in preserving academic integrity and a campus culture conducive to truth seeking and learning,” said Secretary of Education Linda McMahon. “Part of that is ensuring students are safe on campus and abiding by federal laws that guarantee educational opportunities to all students. By allowing anti-Semitic harassment and discrimination to persist unchecked on its campus, Harvard University has failed in its obligation to students, educators, and American taxpayers.”
The DOE, McMahon added, “expects the New England Commission of Higher Education to enforce its policies and practices, and to keep the Department fully informed of its efforts to ensure that Harvard is in compliance with federal law and accreditor standards.”
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, Harvard’s Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism has acknowledged that the university administration’s handling of campus antisemitism fell well below its obligations under both Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and its own nondiscrimination policies.
In a 300-plus-page report, the task force compiled a comprehensive record of antisemitic incidents on Harvard’s campus in recent years — from the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee’s endorsement of the Oct. 7 terrorist atrocities to an anti-Zionist faculty group’s sharing an antisemitic cartoon depicting Jews as murderers of people of color. The report identified Harvard’s past refusal to afford Jews the same protections against discrimination enjoyed by other minority groups as a key source of its problem.
Coming several weeks after President Donald Trump ordered the freeze of $2.26 billion in federal research grants and contracts for Harvard, the task force report found it was “clear” that antisemitism and anti-Israel bias have been fomented, practiced, and tolerated not only at Harvard but also within academia more widely.”
The university is now suing the federal government over the funding halt.
President Trump has spoken scathingly of Harvard, calling it, for example, an “Anti-Semitic, Far Left Institute … with students being accepted from all over the world that want to rip our Country apart” in an April post to his Truth Social platform.
In recent weeks, however, both Trump and McMahon had commended Harvard’s constructive response in negotiations over reforms the administration has asked it to implement as a precondition for restoring federal funds. The requested reforms include hiring more conservative faculty, shuttering diversity, equity, and inclusion [DEI] programs, and slashing the size of administrative offices tangential to the university’s central educational mission.
The administration has since changed its tone in the wake of a report by The Harvard Crimson that interim Harvard President Alan Garber has said “behind closed doors” that he has no intention of doing anything that would make Harvard more palatable to conservatives.
Earlier this month, the Trump administration’s Joint Task Force to Combat Antisemitism issued Harvard a formal “notice of violation” of civil rights law. Charging that Harvard willfully exposed Jewish students to a flood of racist and antisemitic abuse both in and outside of the classroom, it threatened to strip whatever remains of Harvard’s federal funding.
“Failure to institute adequate changes immediately will result in the loss of all federal financial resources and continue to affect Harvard’s relationship with the federal government,” wrote the federal officials comprising the multiagency Task Force. “Harvard may of course continue to operate free of federal privileges, and perhaps such an opportunity will spur a commitment to excellence that will help Harvard thrive once again.”
In Wednesday’s announcement, US Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Harvard’s conduct “forfeits the legitimacy that accreditation is designed to uphold.”
“HHS and Department of Education will actively hold Harvard accountable through sustained oversight until it restores public trust and ensures a campus free of discrimination,” he said.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Hardball: Trump Administration Reports Harvard to Accreditor Over Antisemitism Allegations first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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IDF Strikes Hezbollah Sites in South Lebanon as Terror Group Pushes to Rebuild Amid US Disarmament Talks
IDF operating in southern Lebanon. Photo: IDF Spokesperson
Israeli forces uncovered and destroyed Hezbollah weapons caches in southern Lebanon on Wednesday, as a new report indicated that despite ongoing U.S.-led efforts to secure a disarmament deal, the Iran-backed group is making repeated, largely concealed attempts to rebuild its military presence in the area.
Troops carried out several operations targeting Hezbollah infrastructure in southern Lebanon on Wednesday morning, destroying weapons depots, explosives and multibarrel launchers concealed in forested terrain, the IDF said, in violation of the November ceasefire, which requires Hezbollah to withdraw its forces 20 miles from the Israeli border.
A new report released this week by the Alma Research and Education Center found that Hezbollah is focused on rebuilding in three areas: operational deployment, weapons acquisition, and financial recovery.
“Hezbollah didn’t give up its resistance narrative and motivation,” Alma’s director, Lt. Col. (Res.) Sarit Zehavi, told The Algemeiner.
“It wants to rebuild its capabilities and infrastructures, whether it’s the villages that will be used as human shields or the military infrastructure in South Lebanon and in Lebanon in general.”
According to Zehavi, Hezbollah is attempting to return Radwan fighters to positions south of the Litani River as part of a wider plan to restore its elite forces to operational readiness. The IDF on Monday killed Radwan commander Ali Abd al-Hassan Haidar in a targeted strike. The action came hours after US Special Envoy for Syria Thomas Barrack met with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri in Beirut to discuss a long-term deal that would include an Israeli withdrawal and complete disarmament of Hezbollah.
Barrack described the Lebanese response to the proposal as positive. Later, he issued a blunt warning to Hezbollah in response to a vow by the terror group’s leader, Naim Qassem, not to lay down its arms. “If they mess with us anywhere in the world, they will have a serious problem with us,” Barrack said in an interview with Lebanese news network LBCI. “They don’t want that.”
Zehavi said it was premature to predict the outcome of the diplomatic efforts. She warned that the challenge of disarming Hezbollah remains enormous and emphasized that the Lebanese Armed Forces have not demonstrated the capability or willingness to confront the group.
“It’s too soon to be optimistic or pessimistic,” she said, noting that no firm commitments have emerged from the Beirut talks.
Hezbollah’s efforts to smuggle and manufacture weapons have been complicated by both Israeli strikes and the regional realignment over recent months. While Israeli strikes have disrupted many supply routes, according to Zehavi, Syrian authorities have intercepted far more Hezbollah-bound weapons than the Lebanese Army, which claims to have uncovered 500 arms caches but has provided no evidence.
The financial front marks the third aspect of Hezbollah’s rebuilding effort. Last week, the group halted cash payments to Shiite civilians whose homes were damaged in the war, citing liquidity problems. Zehavi attributed the shortfall to disruptions in Iran’s funding networks — an outcome of the 12-day war against the regime in Tehran — and said the constraints would likely hamper Hezbollah’s ability to compensate its base and sustain operations.
“I hope they will continue to have problems with the cash flow, that way it will be very difficult for them to recover,” she said.
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