Al Jazeera's Gaza coverage directed by Hamas, Israeli research center finds
Documents uncovered in Gaza have revealed that Hamas has been issuing instructions to the Qatari state-run media outlet Al Jazeera and is stomping out any signs of insurgency among the enclave’s population, according to the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center.
Based on the documents, the research center has determined that Hamas’s information officers have been coordinating with Al Jazeera regarding its rhetoric to formulate coverage that avoids damaging “the image of the resistance.”
One of the documents discovered in 2022 instructed Al Jazeera to avoid using terminology such as “massacre” to describe a Palestinian Islamic Jihad missile strike in Jabalya. In that document, Hamas acknowledged that these attacks were not he result of “the occupation’s” maneuvers.
Further, the same text confirmed that the terrorist organization’s request to Al Jazeera was met with a positive response “by the network’s newsroom management.”
Another document revealed that Hamas attempted to establish a secure communication line with Al Jazeera, allowing direct coordination between the media giant’s offices in Doha and the terrorist group.
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from Hamas’ military wing to Al Jazeera, December 4, 2022 (credit: IDF SPOKESPERSON'S UNIT)
This line was allegedly intended to promote coverage in emergency situations and allow Hamas’s military wing to send real-time instructions on what to broadcast and what to embargo.
According to the research center, this is rare proof of the existence of systemic coordination between a terrorist organization and an international news network.
The rhetoric used in Al Jazeera’s coverage of the war has also mirrored Hamas’s own descriptions, with the news source describing its members as mujahideen or muqawimin (jihad fighters or resistance fighters). After their deaths, Hamas terrorists were then called shaheeds (martyrs who died for the sake of Allah).
Alternatively, the network refers to the IDF as the “occupation army,” naming its troops as “the occupation’s soldiers.” Throughout Al Jazeera’s coverage of the hostage crisis, moreover, it repeatedly called the hostages “the prisoners.”
As part of this tight connection between Hamas and Al Jazeera, reporters were also granted unprecedented access to much of the terrorist group’s complex underground tunnel system.
Case in point, Al Jazeera reporter Wael al-Dahdouh showed Hamas tunnels, conducting interviews with military wing operatives who told him that building a tunnel took years, in a documentary that aired in January 2024.
In another report on Hamas’s tunnels, Al Jazeera was allowed to record operatives rigging one tunnel with a booby trap, the study noted.
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An Al Jazeera April 2024 report then claimed that this ambush set for the IDF had been a success. To prove this to be true, the network broadcast imagery of weapons and IDF military equipment allegedly taken from the field by Hamas operatives afterward.
Journalists doubling as terrorists
Beyond directly dictating Al Jazeera’s coverage and terminology, it was found that many of the outlet’s journalists working in the Palestinian organization were doubling as operatives in Hamas’s military wing, and some had even participated in the October 7 massacre.The IDF has long recorded the issue of journalists doubling as terrorists. Among those the military has named and targeted was reporter Anas al-Sharif.
Sharif, the Al Jazeera reporter in Gaza who was killed in an IDF attack on August 10, 2025, was named in discovered documents as a member of Hamas’s military wing, associated with the east Jabalya Battalion in the northern Gaza Brigade.
According to the lists, Sharif served as a militant and squad leader in the Talul-Melag firing unit, as a fighter in the Nukhba Force, and as the head of his battalion’s information department.
The documents also named Ismail Abu Ammar, an Al Jazeera correspondent from Khan Yunis who was wounded in February 2024, as a member of Hamas’s Izzadin al-Qassam Brigades and as a commander in the terror group’s east Khan Yunis Battalion.
He was one of the first to cover the October 7 invasion live. The research center said it was likely that Ammar had prior knowledge of the attack, allowing him to document it as he did in real time.
Another reporter for Al Jazeera named in the documents was Talal Mahmoud Abdel Rahman Al-Arouki, who was seriously wounded while covering an Israeli attack in Nuseirat on November 28, 2024.
Arouki’s name appeared on a Hamas list of its operatives from 2023, in which he was identified as a group commander with the rank of captain in the Jerusalem Brigade. In a separate Hamas document, Arouki was listed as being among the wounded of Hamas’s Izzadin al-Qassam Brigades.
Furthermore, Palestinian journalist Hossam Shabat, who collaborated with Al Jazeera and was killed in a targeted strike in March 2025, was named in the documents as a member of the anti-tank company of Hamas’s Beit Hanun Battalion and identified as a sniper operative.
In another Hamas record, Shabat’s name appeared among terrorists missing from the group battalion’s military training.
Abdallah Aljamal, a reporter and editor for the Palestine Chronicle who collaborated with Al Jazeera, was killed with his family during Operation Arnon. He was holding three Israelis hostage. They were rescued from his home in Nuseirat in June 2024.
Silencing Palestinian dissent
Per the research center, Al Jazeera has also been responsible for projecting an image that depicts Hamas as being popular among the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza.The network has been seen cutting off Palestinians mid-interview when they say something that contradicts that narrative, the study found.
For example, on November 5, 2023, during a live Al Jazeera broadcast from the Shuhada al-Aqsa Hospital, an Al Jazeera reporter cut off an interview with a wounded Palestinian man when the interviewee began criticizing Hamas over having its operatives hide among civilians.
In December of that same year, an Al Jazeera journalist was filmed shoving a Palestinian interviewee aside when he answered, “Allah will hold Qatar and Turkey accountable,” after being asked by that reporter "to describe the massacre being committed by Israel.”
https://disqus.com/home/forum/the-coconut-whisperer/
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