Two incidents came to light over the past week that should be the final nail in Al Jazeera‘s credibility coffin.
The first was the unmasking of one of the network’s journalists as a Hamas commander.
The IDF revealed evidence that was obtained from a laptop found in Gaza and showed Mohammed Wishah held a senior role in the terrorist group’s anti-tank unit, including photographs of him teaching young jihadis how to fire anti-tank missiles and making incendiary devices.
Unsurprisingly, Wishah’s terrorist background did not preclude him from securing a comfortable reporting job at the Qatari-owned network, which has previously been forced to take down fake anti-Israel stories and stands accused of repeatedly promoting Hamas propaganda.
The second incident involved another Al Jazeera journalist, Ismail Abu Omar, whose leg was amputated after being injured in an Israeli air strike in Rafah.
Around the same time that Al Jazeera was describing the injuries Omar sustained as proof of a “full-fledged crime [to be] added to Israel’s crimes against journalists,” it was revealed that Omar accompanied Hamas terrorists into Israel on the day of the October 7 massacre.
In footage that Omar himself posted online on the day of the attacks, he can be seen inside Kibbutz Nir Oz and even praised the Hamas terrorists carrying out the atrocities, saying: “The friends have progressed, may God bless.”
On October 7, he also boasted that Palestinian children would “play with their heads” in reference to massacred Israeli civilians.
Ismail Abu Omar on Oct.7 filming and praising the Hamas attack from inside kibbutz Nir Oz https://t.co/x94QbJCtCS pic.twitter.com/k9tMw50pnM
— Adin – עדין (@AdinHaykin1) February 13, 2024
Despite the trend of Al Jazeera employees moonlighting as either Hamas supporters or seasoned Hamas terrorists, which included another two journalists being revealed as terror operatives after their deaths in January, the media continue to ignore the unpleasant truth about Al Jazeera.
Indeed, the very same outlets that quite rightly balk at the idea of trusting media controlled by authoritarian regimes, such as Russia Today or the New China News Agency, seem worryingly comfortable with uncritically regurgitating Al Jazeera’s lies. Worse, they seem to actively cover for the network.
Take The Guardian, for example, and its repeated criticism of Russian state-owned media, which it has accused of being “Vladimir Putin’s fake news factories” and of promoting the “Kremlin message.”
But apparently, such ethical concerns don’t extend to uncritically reprinting the claims of an outlet that is effectively owned by an Islamic regime that is headed by the all-powerful Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.
The Guardian failed to do a modicum of journalistic due diligence when it came to reporting Al Jazeera’s absurd claim that Omar was “directly targeted by a missile fired by a drone.”
Did the article state that Omar accompanied terrorists who murdered and raped civilians during the October 7 massacre? No. Did it reveal that he expressed a wish to see Palestinian kids play with the severed heads of Israelis? No. Did it mention that Al Jazeera is owned by the Qatari state and closely aligned itself with Hamas? Of course not.
You can’t put lipstick on a pig, and you can’t put a press vest on a terrorist.
Al Jazeera: a progressive, objective media outlet? Or a biased, corrupt, mouthpiece for Hamas, where terrorists masquerade as journalists?@AvichayAdraee @EFischberger @AJEnglish pic.twitter.com/M4doWPSVSq
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) February 14, 2024
The Guardian journalist who wrote the piece, Peter Beaumont, even had the audacity to lament how “Al Jazeera’s Gaza team has paid a particularly heavy price during the war” while referencing the deaths of Hamza Al-Dahdouh and Mustafa Thuraya and omitting the fact that they were terror operatives.
As for Al Jazeera journalist Mohammed Wishah, whose Instagram page includes photos of him with Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar and Ismail Haniyeh, The Guardian failed to cover his exposure as a Hamas commander at all.
Of course, The Guardian wasn’t alone in not reporting the damning revelations about Al Jazeera.
There was silence among mainstream Western news outlets — from CNN to The Washington Post — when the evidence against Mohammed Wishah emerged. It almost defies belief that not a single story was written about a journalist tasked with reporting the facts out of Gaza who was also a Hamas terrorist.
The Knesset has started advancing a bill that would give the government the power to close the offices of foreign media channels that are found to be likely to harm the security of the state, including, potentially Al Jazeera.
But the foreign press attitude toward Al Jazeera remains stubbornly positive.
How much more evidence of the network’s terror ties does the media need for that to change?
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