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The ‘Good Doctor’: AP’s Trusted Source Was a Hamas-Aligned Ally of Ismail Haniyeh
Allegations of a cruel massacre and graphic accounts of the reportedly bloody aftermath were published online by global media within hours of what Israel later confirmed to be a precision strike on a Hamas command center situated within a school complex in Gaza on August 10.
The Associated Press led the charge, publishing its first story just an hour later that morning, describing the strike as “one of the deadliest attacks of the 10-month Israel-Hamas war.”
Relying on figures from the Hamas-run health authority, the AP claimed that at least 80 people had been killed, with nearly 50 others wounded.
In a subtle bit of editorializing, the AP suggested that innocent women and children were likely among the casualties, while also highlighting that this was the “latest of what the UN human rights office called ‘systematic attacks on schools’ by Israel,” reportedly leaving hundreds dead, including women and children.
Soon after, a more extensive AP story was prepared for syndication and subsequently repackaged and republished by the news service’s prominent media clients, including The Washington Post, NPR, and Politico.
Among those quoted in the AP’s more detailed report is Dr. Fadel Naim, described as the director of Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza, where many of the reported casualties were taken. Naim is quoted as saying his hospital received 70 bodies with what he claimed were the most severe injuries he had seen since the war began.
Naim’s comments were followed by testimony from “witness Abu Anas,” whom the AP mentions was clutching prayer beads as he recounted how multiple strikes hit people who were praying, washing, and sleeping upstairs, including children, women, and the elderly.
Yet a quick look into the online presence of Dr. Fadel Naim, the man the AP relied on for their Gaza death toll, reveals that in addition to being a medical professional, he is closely aligned with Hamas — so much so that Hamas’ recently-eliminated leader, Ismail Haniyeh, was a guest at his daughter’s wedding.
Deceased Hamas leader Ismael Haniyeh at Naim’s daughter’s wedding
On October 7, 2023, Dr. Naim celebrated the Hamas massacre that initiated the conflict by posting an image of para-gliders over a map of Israel, accompanied by a religious call to arms. The following day, he escalated his rhetoric, urging Gazan civilians to ignore Israeli evacuation warnings for areas targeted by airstrikes — essentially encouraging higher civilian casualties to serve propaganda efforts.
Meet Fadel Naim. He’s a doctor at Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza (yes, the one that Israel was falsely accused of bombing). He’s a regular interviewee in Western media, such as in @guardian & @Reuters below.
But this doctor also openly celebrated the massacre of Jews on October 7. pic.twitter.com/rv2gDKXSo7
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) August 12, 2024
He has also repeatedly expressed his admiration for Ahmed Yassin, the founder of Hamas, through numerous posts on his Facebook page, which resembles a shrine to Hamas and is steeped in antisemitic rhetoric.
In one particularly disturbing 2014 post, he invoked a prayer for Jews to be filled with fire.
Yet this individual — masked by the authority of his title as director of Al-Ahli Hospital — is whom the Associated Press relies on for reporting its death tolls.
This is the person from whom readers globally are receiving information and insight into the Israel-Hamas conflict: a man whose online presence is a testament to his unwavering support for the terrorist organization that initiated it.
More importantly, Naim can now be exposed as a major source of disinformation, having played a pivotal role in significantly inflating the death toll from the October 2023 explosion at the Al-Ahli Hospital and falsely accusing Israel of the strike — a tragedy that, in reality, involved a misfired Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket that hit a car park and caused limited damage.
Naim was a source in AP’s coverage of October 2023 Al-Ahli Hospital explosion
In addition to expressing support for the October 7th massacre and being a purveyor of disinformation, as CAMERA and Honest Reporting demonstrated today, Dr. Naim is, at the very least, a big fan of Hamas. Here is what he wrote about Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin:
“Fourteen years… pic.twitter.com/nu2vAca5Vw
— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) August 12, 2024
While the AP describes Naim as the hospital’s director, other outlets — such as The New York Times — refer to him as the head of orthopedic surgery in recent coverage. Meanwhile, Turkish news agency Anadolu reports that the director of Al-Ahli is Suhaila Tarazi, who has been quoted in numerous stories over the past few months.
In an interesting twist, Dr. Naim also goes by the name “Abu Anas” on his Facebook page — the very same name as an eyewitness quoted by AP in their report, who vividly described the devastation caused by the strikes.
While “Abu Anas” is undoubtedly a common name in Gaza, the coincidence is noteworthy. It’s hard not to find a bit of irony in the fact that both the eyewitness and the AP’s primary medical source share not only a name but also similarly dramatic accounts of destruction — accounts that were later disputed by Israel.
The AP is arguably the most influential news agency in the world, with its news copy read by millions globally. If only those readers knew who AP gets its information from: a man who has glorified violence, advocated for the death of Jews, encouraged innocent Palestinians to remain in harm’s way, and knowingly spread false information.
The Associated Press cites its mission statement to “advance the power of facts.” Its choice of Dr. Fadel Naim as a source certainly undermines that purported objective.
The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.
The post The ‘Good Doctor’: AP’s Trusted Source Was a Hamas-Aligned Ally of Ismail Haniyeh first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Striking Back: Iran Has Been at War with America for 46 Years

Aftermath of the bombing of the US Marine Corps Barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, October 1983. (Photo: Screenshot)
President Donald Trump ran on a platform to end wars, including Ukraine, Gaza, and the Red Sea. He offered Iran multiple opportunities to negotiate a better future.
If people didn’t want to eliminate the Houthi threat that affected our USCENTCOM allies Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt, as well as Israel, that’s OK. If they insisted upfront that American “boots” didn’t belong anywhere in the region, that’s OK. If they didn’t want the US to cooperate with our CENTCOM partner, Israel, OK fine. That’s their opinion.
But if they thought the Iranian regime was not at war with the US, so there was no need to bother them in their pursuit of the destruction of Israel or spread of terrorism — or if they thought Iran’s unbridled nuclear weapons capability only threatened Israel — they are on another planet.
Ilhan Omar, AOC, Rashida Tlaib, Hakeem Jeffries, Ed Markey, Amy Klobuchar, Antonio Guterrez, and more are all out of touch with reality and reason.
Think of it this way: Donald Trump just avenged more than 1,000 American service personnel killed, and thousands wounded and held hostage by Iran since the mullahs declared war on us in 1979.
Don’t forget them.
We are Iran’s “Great Satan” to Israel’s “Little Satan.”
“Student activists” in Tehran occupied the US embassy in 1979 and held Americans hostage for 444 days. The Americans were paraded through the streets blindfolded. Six managed to escape with the help of our Canadian allies — remember Argo?
In 1983, Iran bragged about the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 220 US Marines, 21 other US servicemembers, and 58 French soldiers.
Israel’s pager attack on Hezbollah in September 2024 eliminated the masterminds of the attack – who had been on the FBI Most Wanted list for 41 years.
In 1984, Iran’s proxy Hezbollah kidnapped, tortured, and killed CIA Station Chief William Francis Buckley, whose identity they apparently learned from classified documents seized from the embassy in Tehran. Buckley was transferred to Iran and tortured there, before being returned to Lebanon.
In 1985, US Navy diver Robert Stethem was beaten and kicked to death before his body was dumped on the tarmac by Hezbollah in Beirut. In 1988, Hezbollah kidnapped Colonel William R. Higgins and tortured him for months. Former FBI agent Robert Levinson was presumed kidnapped by Iran in 2007 and killed; his body has not been recovered.
In 1996, an explosion at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia killed 19 American servicemembers.
In 2011, there was an Iranian plot to kill a Saudi diplomat in Washington, D.C., and to attack the Israeli and Saudi embassies. That year, too, Iran began to take steps to mine the Persian Gulf.
US Naval Intelligence shows Iranian warships have been in the Red Sea — where Iran has no border — since 2011. Part of Iran’s support for the Houthi rebellion in Yemen can be explained because it’s near the US Expeditionary Force base in Djibouti, close to the Straits of Hormuz. Iran provides missiles and training to the Houthis.
In 2012, chairman of the Iranian chiefs of staff, Hassan Firuzabadi, said, “We do have the plan to close the Strait of Hormuz, since a member of the military must plan for all scenarios.”
Iranian war games in 2015 were designed against American forces and included passing skills along to proxy forces. Beginning in 2016, swarms of Iranian fast boats harassed American ships and others in the Persian Gulf, engaging in what the commander of the US Central Command called “unsafe maneuvers.”
Iran captured American sailors and released video footage of them — a violation of their rights under the Geneva Convention.
In 2018, US intelligence revealed that Iran was responsible for more than 600 American military deaths in Iraq and thousands wounded by Iranian IEDs in Iraq. In 2024, three military contractors working in Jordan were killed in a drone attack and 40 others were injured. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of Iran-backed militias, claimed responsibility.
If you still think the US is just fine; protected by two oceans and friendly neighbors, and doesn’t have to care about freedom of navigation, trade routes, oil exports, China, Russia, or North Korean missile and nuclear weapons capability, that’s OK, too.
Wait.
No, it isn’t.
Peace is always good; peace is always important. But real peace does not consist of “turning the other cheek” while your enemy gets stronger. It is the outgrowth of strong and measured American cooperation with regional partners — in Europe, in Asia and in the Middle East — to ensure that malevolent actors don’t have an opportunity to ruin the system of international travel and commerce or to impose their vision of “peace” on the unwilling. Or to commit genocide.
Ensuring that Iran does not have nuclear weapons is a crucial step in that direction. And avenging American servicemembers across countries and decades counts as well.
Shoshana Bryen is Senior Director of The Jewish Policy Center and Editor of inFOCUS Quarterly magazine.
The post Striking Back: Iran Has Been at War with America for 46 Years first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Trump Supports Students Through Plan to Dismantle Department of Education

US Secretary of Education Linda McMahon smiles during the signing event for an executive order to shut down the Department of Education next to US President Donald Trump, in the East Room at the White House in Washington, DC, US, March 20, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Barria
My parents were born in the Soviet Union, where antisemitism was not only tolerated — it was enforced.
They grew up in a system that erased Jewish identity, restricted Jewish education, and shut Jews out of opportunities. My father didn’t even know he was Jewish until he was seven years old, because acknowledging that fact could have endangered his family.
When my parents immigrated to the United States, they had no money, spoke no English, and had no connections. What they did have was hope — hope that in America, their children would be free to live as Jews without fear. They believed this country would offer what the USSR never could: freedom of religion, opportunity through education, and protection under the law. That promise now feels under threat.
As a Jewish student preparing for college, I see antisemitism growing in plain sight — particularly on college campuses. And the very institutions that are supposed to keep students safe, inclusive, and informed are failing. Among them is the US Department of Education. With over 4,000 employees and an annual budget exceeding $80 billion, it has proven largely unable — or unwilling — to address the rising hatred directed at Jewish students.
President Trump’s decision to eliminate the Department of Education is not simply justified — it is needed. The Department has become a bloated bureaucracy that fails to serve students, wastes public resources, and actively promotes policies that marginalize people like me.
A major part of the Department’s role under the Biden administration was enforcing and promoting DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) frameworks. While these programs claim to protect vulnerable groups, they have frequently excluded Jews.
A 2023 Anti-Defamation League (ADL) survey found that 55% of Jewish students felt DEI policies ignored or diminished their concerns. Jews are too often viewed as “privileged” and therefore excluded from the very protections afforded to others. This is not inclusion — it is erasure.
Until last year, these DEI-driven admissions policies even worked against Jewish applicants. Colleges, under the disguise of achieving “equity,” could penalize students for their ethnic and religious background. It took a Supreme Court ruling to stop this. The Department of Education, meanwhile, allowed it to happen for years.
President Trump’s current efforts to dismantle DEI programs are necessary, but as long as the Department of Education exists, these policies could be revived under future administrations. Eliminating the Department altogether is the only way to end the cycle and protect Jewish students long-term.
The Department has also failed in one of its most basic responsibilities — protecting students from discrimination. Since the October 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks, antisemitism on college campuses has surged by over 700%, according to the ADL. Jewish students have been harassed, threatened, and physically assaulted. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act prohibits such discrimination in federally funded institutions. Yet the Department of Education has done little more than issue vague statements. No meaningful enforcement and no consequences.
President Trump, in contrast, has acted. His administration withdrew $2.2 billion in Federal funding from Harvard and $400 million from Columbia University due to their failure to protect Jewish students. These measures had immediate impact — protests that had turned hostile and violent were shut down, and schools implemented stronger safety policies.
This is not the first time President Trump has taken meaningful action to protect Jewish students. In his first term, Trump expanded Title VI to include antisemitism as a protected class under Federal civil rights law. That was a historic move — one the Department should have made long ago. Instead, it remained inactive while anti-Jewish hate festered.
Beyond civil rights, the Department has proven ineffective in advancing education itself. A 2024 Government Accountability Office report found that only 10% of its staff contribute to direct classroom support. The remaining 90% are engaged in regulatory compliance and administrative functions — layers of bureaucracy that cost billions and deliver little.
One area where this failure is especially dangerous is Holocaust education. Only 18 states require it in public schools, and even where it is required, the instruction is often shallow or optional. A 2020 Claims Conference survey revealed that 63% of young Americans did not know six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, and over one-third believed the death toll was exaggerated. This ignorance enables dangerous ideas to spread, and the Department of Education has done little to correct it.
Eliminating the Department of Education would free states to design education systems that meet the real needs of their students — systems with meaningful education, fair admissions, and real protections for Jewish students.
Gregory Lyakhov is the youngest nationally syndicated columnist in the United States. He is a columnist for both Townhall Media and Newsmax, where his bold commentary has earned national recognition. His writing regularly appears in major publications, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, and several prominent Jewish outlets.
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The 5 Biggest Miscalculations the Iranian Regime Made

FILE PHOTO: A U.S. Air Force B-2 Spirit bomber takes off from Andersen Air Force Base, Guam January 11, 2018. Picture taken January 11, 2018. U.S. Air Force/Airman 1st Class Gerald Willis/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo
President Donald Trump’s decision to bomb nuclear enrichment facilities in Iran surprised some. Here are the five main miscalculations the Iranian regime made that led to this point. The Iranian regime has seen its miscalculations surface in layers, like the peeling of an onion. Though no one can predict the future and some things remain unclear, it is important to examine five mistakes.
1. Iran’s leaders thought Trump was bluffing and wouldn’t attack directly.
President Trump was not lying when he said he didn’t want to start new wars. Perhaps military action could have been prevented if Iran’s leaders offered inspections, negotiated in good faith, and were ready to seriously constrict uranium enrichment.
Many news reports and podcasts made the regime think the isolationist wing of Trump’s power base had his ear, and the public would fear attacks on US servicemen in the region so much it would be too costly to attack. Trump did kill General Qassem Soleimani in his first term, but he didn’t go further. The stealth B-2 bombers that dropped the huge bombs on Iran’s nuclear facilities cost more than $2 billion each, and the regime may have thought Trump would be risk averse to seeing them shot down. While it is extremely difficult to take down B-2 planes, seeing that no Israeli planes were shot down and Iran’s defenses were weakened likely emboldened Trump.
2. Iran’s leaders thought proxies and “allies” would make them bulletproof.
With the well-armed Hezbollah, the Houthis disrupting shipping routes, Hamas in Gaza, and Iranian proxy forces in Syria, Tehran thought Israel and the US would be too scared to attack it directly.
Iran never imagined Hezbollah’s power would be reduced so quickly, it did not expect the Syrian government to fall in the way that it did, and it did not expect to see Hamas and the Houthis so weakened. The Iranian regime, which assisted Russia in its war against Ukraine with drones, and provides a huge amount of oil to China, also imagined the potential threat of Russia or China coming to its aid might scare off any significant attack. There remains a possibility that China, North Korea, or Russia could get involved militarily — but it is unlikely. More likely the Houthis will resume firing missiles.
3. Iran misunderstood the larger ramifications of the attacks of October 7.
Seeing great schisms in Israel over the judicial reform issue, Iran hoped Israel would implode after October 7 — or at the very least, see the ousting of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Iran likely believed that the information and PR campaign against Israel — falsely calling it a genocidal entity — would weaken it and make Israel too afraid to make bold moves. Instead, it made the Israeli public united on the need to take the threat of Iran seriously and be more proactive.
4. Iran underestimated the Mossad and Shin Bet, Israel’s security services.
It was a huge blow that Israel, said to have the best security services in the world, did not know Hamas was going to attack when it did on October 7, 2023.
But for the Mossad to be able to not only kill numerous Iranian generals at the same time, but deploy drones and other equipment on Iranian soil likely took the regime (and the level of infiltration Israel has achieved) by surprise. Iran not only underestimated the Mossad’s ability, but it likely didn’t understand its brutality against its citizens would allow the Mossad to get Iranian assets so consistently on the ground.
5. Iran though Israel’s muted response in 2024 meant it would not be more aggressive.
In April and October of 2024, Iran launched ballistic missiles at Israel. The Jewish State responded by weakening Iran’s air defenses, but it did not go after any major installations. It is quite possible that the regime felt that since Israel did not become more aggressive, it was a sign that the Jewish State wouldn’t risk a major direct attack. But as we’ve seen, they were very, very wrong.
The author is a writer based in New York.
The post The 5 Biggest Miscalculations the Iranian Regime Made first appeared on Algemeiner.com.