Journalists Who Are Jihad Terror Supporters

[Order David Horowitz’s new book, America Betrayed, HERE.]

Many of the Arab journalists reporting on Israel and Gaza for the mainstream Western media, as well as for the Qatari propaganda outlet Al Jazeera, turn out to be longtime supporters of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. These are the people on whom many in the gullible West have been relying for information, unaware of these journalists’ long associations with terror groups. Now one of their number, Bisan Owda, who works for Al Jazeera, and who turns out to have been for a long time a PFLP enthusiast, has been nominated for an Emmy in the category of “hard news feature story.” Robert Spencer wrote about this briefly here, and more on this scandalous state of affairs can be found here: “How Terrorist-State Propaganda Became the Norm for U.S. Audiences,” by Seth Mandel, Commentary, August 8, 2024:

It would be unfair to say that all the employees of Al Jazeera who have thus far been investigated for terrorist ties have turned out to be members of Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Some are with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, after all.

It’s a big tent. Al Jazeera, you could say, might be the original tentifada.

And the PFLP corner of that big tent has now been nominated for an Emmy award. It’s hard to find a better single example of the complete abdication of media ethics by mainstream Western culture.

Bisan Owda is the nominee. The category in which she is nominated, believe it or not, is “hard news feature story” for Al Jazeera.

For an actual example of news reporting, one should visit Eitan Fischberger’s compilation of Owda’s work with the PFLP—which remains a designated foreign terrorist organization in America. You can see her leading a PFLP anniversary rally; interviewed in full PFLP regalia; defending Hamas’s October 7 slaughter; and the like. It appears Owda came up as an official with the PFLP’s Progressive Youth Union, so she’s a fully groomed true believer.

Owda is not now, and never has been, an objective journalist. She’s a PFLP collaborator, and has been for decades, ever since she served as an official in that terror group’s Progressive Youth Union.

This kind of nonsense puts actual journalists in profound danger. As does the characterization of Ismail al-Ghoul, an engineer in Hamas’s Gaza City Brigade, as a mere journalist. Ghoul was killed in an Israeli strike in late July, and news organizations and the Committee to Protect Journalists mourned his death as the wrongful killing of a journalist. They did this despite the fact that Ghoul’s Hamas affiliation was known already, at least since he was arrested in a firefight with IDF troops in March.

The killing of Ismail al-Ghoul in an Israeli airstrike in late July has been deplored as the “wrongful killing of a journalist” both by news organizations and by the ill-informed Committee to Protect Journalists, which apparently is indifferent to the evidence that al-Ghoul was not a mere “journalist,” but a Hamas collaborator, which, of course, explains the highly skewed nature of his “journalism.” He had been arrested in March by the IDF, along with Hamas members in whose ranks he had been embedded, yet that revelation of his link to Hamas did not stop the mainstream media from continuing to publish his highly tendentious reports.

There’s a hefty list of terrorists moonlighting for Al Jazeera who have anchored the network’s “coverage” of the conflict. The Qatari propaganda organ figured out quickly that if someone is wearing a vest that says PRESS, the anti-Israel world will happily excuse literally any violent behavior—indeed, Ghoul reportedly took part in the October 7 attacks….

Put on a vest marked “PRESS,” and that is enough for you to be taken as an objective reporter merely plying your trade. In al-Ghoul’s case, that “PRESS” vest accorded him a respect from the Western media that he did not deserve. The IDF has evidence that he accompanied members of Hamas in their attacks on October 7, and may even have taken part in the commission of atrocities. But even that did not stop members of the mainstream media from continuing to publish his reports from Gaza right up until his death, and while he was still embedded with Hamas operatives. He was no more an objective journalist than Lord Haw-Haw or Tokyo Rose.

Many of the Arab journalists covering the Gaza War are providing not objective reports, but rather, what Hamas and the other terror groups choose to feed them, beginning with the exaggerated numbers of civilian casualties, the false reports on “impending famine” in Gaza, and now reports on a nonexistent “polio epidemic.” The mainstream media has continued to publish reports from Arab journalists based in Gaza despite the incontrovertible evidence of their collaboration with, and in some cases membership in, Hamas and other terror groups.

Al Jazeera, the propaganda outlet owned by the Hamas-supporting government of Qatar, is bad enough. But some of Al Jazeera’s journalists then go on to work for the U.S media; apparently their employment at an Arab propaganda outlet does not disqualify them for employment even at the most prestigious papers. At least six members of the Washington Post were previously employed by Al Jazeera. Their number includes Jesse Mesner-Hage, who is the Post’s Middle East editor, and who previously worked for a decade, apparently without any professional qualms, as an editor at the propaganda outlet pretending to be a news-gathering site, Al Jazeera.

In the few outlets where such blatantly pro-Arab anti-Israel “journalism” has not been permitted, such as the Wall Street Journal, there ought to be lengthy reports about the Gaza “journalists” and the history of their collaboration with, or even membership in, Hamas, the PFLP, and other terror groups. Hold up the deplorable example of Bisan Owda, an Al Jazeera reporter, who has just been nominated for an Emmy in the “hard news” category, by informing the world of her long association with the PFLP and holding up for critical inspection examples of her “hard news” reporting. Make clear, too, that the so-called journalist Ismail al-Ghoul, killed by the IDF, was not a simple “journalist” as those deploring his death now claim, but a member of a Hamas engineering brigade. Finally, raise the public’s consciousness about Al Jazeera as a propaganda outlet for the government of Qatar, the country that is Hamas’ biggest supporter, providing comfortable refuges for all of the terror group’s leaders, save for Yahya Sinwar, who remains in Gaza. And ask why so many of those who have worked for Al Jazeera are now working for such prestigious outlets as the Washington Post, when employment with Al Jazeera ought to be not a recommendation, but a disqualification. That’s a start.