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How the Ceasefire Coverage Exculpates Hardcore Terrorists and Murderers
Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square on Jan. 19, 2025, as three Israeli hostages were set to be released from Hamas captivity as part of a Gaza ceasefire deal. Photo: Taken by author
Why are legacy news outlets assisting released Palestinian terrorists in getting away with actual murder?
Using the current Israel-Hamas ceasefire as their cue to place Palestinian terrorists on equal footing as innocent Israeli hostages, some underperforming journalists are sanitizing the bloody records of hardcore terrorists.
“This is not about politics or strategy. It’s about humanity and the shared belief that no one should be left behind in darkness,” Moran Stella Yanai, an Israeli hostage released in the November 2023 ceasefire deal, told the Associated Press in anticipation of the release of more hostages (“Hamas OKs draft agreement of a Gaza ceasefire and the release of some hostages, officials say,” Jan. 15).
The leading wire service boasts to have “done more than any organization in the world to expand the reach of factual reporting.” But recent ceasefire coverage indicates that the news service’s prowess in advancing the faux humanity of terrorists, while obscuring terror victims in darkness.
Thus, after quoting Stella Yanai’s appeal to humanity on behalf of innocent hostages, the AP draws a tidy and unfounded hostage-prisoner parallel:
In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, families of Palestinian prisoners gathered as well. “I tell the mothers of the prisoners to put their trust in the almighty and that relief is near, God willing,” said the mother of one prisoner, Intisar Bayoud.
However, there are salient facts that the AP glaringly chose not to advance in its coverage of the Bayouds: Intisar’s son, Habbes Bayoud, is serving a double life sentence for his role in the brutal murders of Yosef Avrahami and Vadim Norzhich, two Israeli reservists who took a wrong turn into Ramallah in September 2000. Presumably, for the victims’ families, Bayoud’s release heralds torment, not relief. But AP neither humanizes their mothers nor notes the unspeakably brutal murders.
And Bayoud is not the only murderer to benefit from the AP’s exculpatory coverage in recent days.
The AP’s stated commitment to the advancement of the power of facts is again on retreat in the Jan. 15 article, “Hamas frees 4 female Israeli soldiers in exchange for 200 Palestinian prisoners as ceasefire holds”:
Rana Raef al-Farra, the daughter of one released prisoner, said she was 7 when her father was sentenced 21 years ago.”I am afraid that I will not know him when he gets out, or that he will not know me,” she said.
The AP neglects to mention that Rana’s father, Ra’if Ramez Helmi Al-Farra, was convicted for his role in killing six soldiers – Roy Nissim, Araf Azbarga, Sa’id Jahaja, Hussein Abu Leil, Adham Shehada, and Tarek al-Ziadne. In the AP’s warped calculation of which facts to advance, the media outlet prioritizes Rana’s concern that her father will not know her over the fundamental journalistic imperative that readers know her father for what he is – a killer.
CBS, too, deploys the dual strategy of expunging the terrorists’ violent crimes while extending sympathetic coverage to the murderers’ loved ones.
“These are not just people. These are our brothers and sisters,” an Israeli woman at a Tel Aviv gathering on behalf of the hostages says in a CBS Weekend News interview.
CBS correspondent Ramy Inocencio then says: “Many might say similar for the nearly 200 Palestinians that Israel released from prison in exchange.”
He proceeds to generously wipe away multiple convictions from a would-be murderer’s record: “Forty-seven-year-old Wael Abu Rida reunited with his family after a dozen years. He was half-way through a 25-year prison term for joining Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a US-listed terror group.”
But Abu Rida was not sentenced to 25 years only for belonging to Islamic Jihad. He was also convicted of attempted murder, arms possession, spying, liaising with an enemy agent, among other crimes.
The pardons parade continued at NBC. About “the dean of prisoners,” aka Muhammad Al-Tous, NBC cited the laundered rap sheet recounted in a statement from the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club: “Tous, 67, was arrested in October 1985 and sentenced to lifetime imprisonment ‘on the grounds of his resistance to the occupation’ and his affiliation with the Palestinian faction Fatah.”
NBC fails to decode “resistance to the occupation,” which in this case means leading attacks on five civilian buses, in which 16 were wounded, ordering the murder of three people, and taking part in two additional murders.
“57-year-old prisoner Raed Al-Saadi was also among those to be released,” NBC’s elliptical coverage continues. “Al Saeedi [differing spellings in the original] was detained in 1989 at the beginning of the 1978 Intifada, it said, and ‘sentenced to two life sentences and 20 years,’ the statement said.”
The Palestinian Prisoners’ Club doesn’t bother noting Al-Saadi’s crimes – the killing of civilians and soldiers – and neither does NBC.
While the lopsided ceasefire stipulates the freeing of killers in exchange for innocent hostages, there is no journalistic dispensation to manufacture pretend parity between terrorists and terror victims.
Tamar Sternthal is the director of CAMERA’s Israel Office.
The post How the Ceasefire Coverage Exculpates Hardcore Terrorists and Murderers first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Hamas Says No Interim Hostage Deal Possible Without Work Toward Permanent Ceasefire
Explosions send smoke into the air in Gaza, as seen from the Israeli side of the border, July 17, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
The spokesperson for Hamas’s armed wing said on Friday that while the Palestinian terrorist group favors reaching an interim truce in the Gaza war, if such an agreement is not reached in current negotiations it could revert to insisting on a full package deal to end the conflict.
Hamas has previously offered to release all the hostages held in Gaza and conclude a permanent ceasefire agreement, and Israel has refused, Abu Ubaida added in a televised speech.
Arab mediators Qatar and Egypt, backed by the United States, have hosted more than 10 days of talks on a US-backed proposal for a 60-day truce in the war.
Israeli officials were not immediately available for comment on the eve of the Jewish Sabbath.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement on a call he had with Pope Leo on Friday that Israel‘s efforts to secure a hostage release deal and 60-day ceasefire “have so far not been reciprocated by Hamas.”
As part of the potential deal, 10 hostages held in Gaza would be returned along with the bodies of 18 others, spread out over 60 days. In exchange, Israel would release a number of detained Palestinians.
“If the enemy remains obstinate and evades this round as it has done every time before, we cannot guarantee a return to partial deals or the proposal of the 10 captives,” said Abu Ubaida.
Disputes remain over maps of Israeli army withdrawals, aid delivery mechanisms into Gaza, and guarantees that any eventual truce would lead to ending the war, said two Hamas officials who spoke to Reuters on Friday.
The officials said the talks have not reached a breakthrough on the issues under discussion.
Hamas says any agreement must lead to ending the war, while Netanyahu says the war will only end once Hamas is disarmed and its leaders expelled from Gaza.
Almost 1,650 Israelis and foreign nationals have been killed as a result of the conflict, including 1,200 killed in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on southern Israel, according to Israeli tallies. Over 250 hostages were kidnapped during Hamas’s Oct. 7 onslaught.
Israel responded with an ongoing military campaign aimed at freeing the hostages and dismantling Hamas’s military and governing capabilities in neighboring Gaza.
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Iran Marks 31st Anniversary of AMIA Bombing by Slamming Argentina’s ‘Baseless’ Accusations, Blaming Israel
People hold images of the victims of the 1994 bombing attack on the Argentine Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA) community center, marking the 30th anniversary of the attack, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, July 18, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Irina Dambrauskas
Iran on Friday marked the 31st anniversary of the 1994 bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) Jewish community center in Buenos Aires by slamming Argentina for what it called “baseless” accusations over Tehran’s alleged role in the terrorist attack and accusing Israel of politicizing the atrocity to influence the investigation and judicial process.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry issued a statement on the anniversary of Argentina’s deadliest terrorist attack, which killed 85 people and wounded more than 300.
“While completely rejecting the accusations against Iranian citizens, the Islamic Republic of Iran condemns attempts by certain Argentine factions to pressure the judiciary into issuing baseless charges and politically motivated rulings,” the statement read.
“Reaffirming that the charges against its citizens are unfounded, the Islamic Republic of Iran insists on restoring their reputation and calls for an end to this staged legal proceeding,” it continued.
Last month, a federal judge in Argentina ordered the trial in absentia of 10 Iranian and Lebanese nationals suspected of orchestrating the attack in Buenos Aires.
The ten suspects set to stand trial include former Iranian and Lebanese ministers and diplomats, all of whom are subject to international arrest warrants issued by Argentina for their alleged roles in the terrorist attack.
In its statement on Friday, Iran also accused Israel of influencing the investigation to advance a political campaign against the Islamist regime in Tehran, claiming the case has been used to serve Israeli interests and hinder efforts to uncover the truth.
“From the outset, elements and entities linked to the Zionist regime [Israel] exploited this suspicious explosion, pushing the investigation down a false and misleading path, among whose consequences was to disrupt the long‑standing relations between the people of Iran and Argentina,” the Iranian Foreign Ministry said.
“Clear, undeniable evidence now shows the Zionist regime and its affiliates exerting influence on the Argentine judiciary to frame Iranian nationals,” the statement continued.
In April, lead prosecutor Sebastián Basso — who took over the case after the 2015 murder of his predecessor, Alberto Nisman — requested that federal Judge Daniel Rafecas issue national and international arrest warrants for Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei over his alleged involvement in the attack.
Since 2006, Argentine authorities have sought the arrest of eight Iranians — including former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who died in 2017 — yet more than three decades after the deadly bombing, all suspects remain still at large.
In a post on X, the Delegation of Argentine Israelite Associations (DAIA), the country’s Jewish umbrella organization, released a statement commemorating the 31st anniversary of the bombing.
“It was a brutal attack on Argentina, its democracy, and its rule of law,” the group said. “At DAIA, we continue to demand truth and justice — because impunity is painful, and memory is a commitment to both the present and the future.”
31 años del atentado a la AMIA – DAIA. 31 años sin justicia.
El 18 de julio de 1994, un atentado terrorista dejó 85 personas muertas y más de 300 heridas. Fue un ataque brutal contra la Argentina, su democracia y su Estado de derecho.
Desde la DAIA, seguimos exigiendo verdad y… pic.twitter.com/kV2ReGNTIk
— DAIA (@DAIAArgentina) July 18, 2025
Despite Argentina’s longstanding belief that Lebanon’s Shiite Hezbollah terrorist group carried out the devastating attack at Iran’s request, the 1994 bombing has never been claimed or officially solved.
Meanwhile, Tehran has consistently denied any involvement and refused to arrest or extradite any suspects.
To this day, the decades-long investigation into the terrorist attack has been plagued by allegations of witness tampering, evidence manipulation, cover-ups, and annulled trials.
In 2006, former prosecutor Nisman formally charged Iran for orchestrating the attack and Hezbollah for carrying it out.
Nine years later, he accused former Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner — currently under house arrest on corruption charges — of attempting to cover up the crime and block efforts to extradite the suspects behind the AMIA atrocity in return for Iranian oil.
Nisman was killed later that year, and to this day, both his case and murder remain unresolved and under ongoing investigation.
The alleged cover-up was reportedly formalized through the memorandum of understanding signed in 2013 between Kirchner’s government and Iranian authorities, with the stated goal of cooperating to investigate the AMIA bombing.
The post Iran Marks 31st Anniversary of AMIA Bombing by Slamming Argentina’s ‘Baseless’ Accusations, Blaming Israel first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Jordan Reveals Muslim Brotherhood Operating Vast Illegal Funding Network Tied to Gaza Donations, Political Campaigns
Murad Adailah, the head of Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood, attends an interview with Reuters in Amman, Jordan, Sept. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Jehad Shelbak
The Muslim Brotherhood, one of the Arab world’s oldest and most influential Islamist movements, has been implicated in a wide-ranging network of illegal financial activities in Jordan and abroad, according to a new investigative report.
Investigations conducted by Jordanian authorities — along with evidence gathered from seized materials — revealed that the Muslim Brotherhood raised tens of millions of Jordanian dinars through various illegal activities, the Jordan news agency (Petra) reported this week.
With operations intensifying over the past eight years, the report showed that the group’s complex financial network was funded through various sources, including illegal donations, profits from investments in Jordan and abroad, and monthly fees paid by members inside and outside the country.
The report also indicated that the Muslim Brotherhood has taken advantage of the war in Gaza to raise donations illegally.
Out of all donations meant for Gaza, the group provided no information on where the funds came from, how much was collected, or how they were distributed, and failed to work with any international or relief organizations to manage the transfers properly.
Rather, the investigations revealed that the Islamist network used illicit financial mechanisms to transfer funds abroad.
According to Jordanian authorities, the group gathered more than JD 30 million (around $42 million) over recent years.
With funds transferred to several Arab, regional, and foreign countries, part of the money was allegedly used to finance domestic political campaigns in 2024, as well as illegal activities and cells.
In April, Jordan outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood, the country’s most vocal opposition group, and confiscated its assets after members of the Islamist movement were found to be linked to a sabotage plot.
The movement’s political arm in Jordan, the Islamic Action Front, became the largest political grouping in parliament after elections last September, although most seats are still held by supporters of the government.
Opponents of the group, which is banned in most Arab countries, label it a terrorist organization. However, the movement claims it renounced violence decades ago and now promotes its Islamist agenda through peaceful means.
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