This column has argued for 15 months that much reporting about Gaza is compromised by reliance on the Qatar-owned, pro-Hamas Al Jazeera network, its Gaza-based journalists – many of whom have been proven to be Hamas fighters – and the social media feeds of paid Palestinian influencers.
After relentless reporting about mass famine, we got a good idea just how Gaza’s civilians really look during the hostage release on January 19. And they were not starving.
Worse than journalists relying on compromised sources, including the Hamas-controlled Gaza Ministry of Health, is the lack of interest shown by Western media in the work of Palestinian and Arab reporters and academics who criticise Hamas and its October 7, 2023 massacre in southern Israel – an atrocity that Hamas praises as the Al Aqsa Flood.
As if it took great courage to enter remote communities on a Saturday morning and murder, rape and behead civilians.
Lots of Western journalists working in Israel have Arabic-speaking minders who can translate criticisms of Hamas for independently minded, balanced reporters. Few have taken the opportunity.
Palestinian Authority daily newspaper Al-Hayat al-Jadida on December 9 published columnist Bassem Barhoum criticising Hamas for launching “its war against Israel entirely on its own initiative”.
“It wasn’t the Palestinian people that made the decision to launch the Al-Aqsa Flood, and neither was it their legitimate leadership. It was a single faction. It was an entirely reckless adventure, and it brought about a national catastrophe,” he wrote.
“Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip by force of arms … Hamas has held the Gaza Strip hostage since then. The Palestinian people do not deserve to be punished for the crimes of Hamas.”
This is the context in which journalists report silly claims by Iran’s leader Ayatollah Khamenei that Hamas has defeated Israel. Or even sillier claims by Hamas political bureau member Khalil al-Hayya on Al-Jazeera on January 15 that the present ceasefire is a great victory for Hamas, despite its own claims that 46,000 Gazans have been killed in the conflict.
Promising Hamas would continue its jihad against Israel, al-Hayya said “the miracle … of October 7 … will remain a source of pride for our people and our resistance and will be passed down from generation to generation”.
This is how Hamas’s leaders think about the murder of 1200 civilians and the taking of 251 hostages.
Responding directly to al-Hayya’s speech, Saudi journalist Yahya Al-Shabraqi posted on X: “Al-Hayya called Hamas’s victories in Gaza ‘miraculous’. Oh Al-Hayya if you see this spilt blood and destruction as victory I’d like to know how you would describe a defeat.”
Another Saudi journalist, Abd al-Aziz, wrote on X: “I have been laughing at the stupidity of the Muslim Brotherhood (Hamas’s parent organisation). They say Hamas has won. Yes it won after seeing 200,000 Gazans killed and wounded, 80 per cent of Gaza destroyed and the Israeli army occupying Gaza. All they care about is that Hamas endured.”
Hitting the nub of the problem in media terms, Moroccan security commentator Abd Al-Hak Snaibi wrote: “The Al Jazeera channel, which competes with Satan, is trying to convince the Arabs and Muslims that the martyrdom of over 70,000 Palestinians, the annihilation of Gaza and the displacement of hundreds of thousands is a great and honourable victory.”
Why don’t we hear these sort of criticisms of Hamas in reports from our Middle East correspondents?
This column on November 7, 2023 quoted Ibrahim Eissa, a prominent Egyptian TV host and editor in chief of the daily newspaper Al Tahrir, criticising Hamas for enriching its leaders and spending billions on tunnels under Gaza but not building a single tunnel to shelter Gaza’s sick, its women and children or to store food and supplies for ordinary Gazans.
MEMRI (the Middle East Media Research Institute) included in its best clips of 2024 Eissa telling his audience during his own show on February 28: “To this very day people are still talking about the victory of Hamas and the resistance. And about Israel’s defeat. Seriously? Such blindness!
“We have been living this lousy story for 75 years – we are defeated, but we tell ourselves we are victorious. We are living a delusion. We relish victimhood. So am I blaming the victims? Yes I am.”
It’s not only the failure to criticise Hamas. If you follow the reporting of the ABC you would never realise lots of Lebanese are thrilled that Israel killed much of Hezbollah’s leadership late last year.
Why wouldn’t they be, given Hezbollah has been terrorising local Lebanese since 1990 under now ousted Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad?
Lebanese journalist and editor of the Newsalist website, Fares Khachan, on December 22 mocked Hezbollah’s claims it had not been beaten by Israel.
“Hezbollah bears sole responsibility for what Israel is doing. Hezbollah started the war.”
Only days after the Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire, former Lebanese diplomat Hisham Hamdan published a searing critique of Hezbollah in the Lebanese daily Al-Nahar, saying Lebanon had always wanted peace with Israel.
He blamed Iran for the latest destruction in Lebanon and urged his government to sue Iran in international courts for war reparations.
Lebanese film maker Youssef El-Khoury, interviewed on MTV on October 24, said he was upset it was not the Lebanese people that had rid his country of the plague of Hezbollah. Lebanon had to rely on Israel to do it.
In November he told Voice of Lebanon: “Israel is not an enemy.”
MEMRI quoted El-Khoury saying that after the previous war with Israel, that country’s occupation of southern Lebanon involved the building of extensive infrastructure while not controlling Lebanese decision-making the way the previous Syrian occupiers had.
Before the Israeli action against Hezbollah, Lebanese academic Makram Rabah, a professor of history at the American University of Beirut, told Spot Shot Online (Lebanon), that Hezbollah had deliberately provoked Israel after the October 7 pogrom. He said the Lebanese people did not want to foot “Iran’s bills” for the damage Hezbollah was doing. Rabah was arrested after the interview.
Lebanese Shi’ite journalist Nancy Lakiss in a YouTube interview on August 3 accused Hezbollah of sending young men to their deaths only to serve Iran’s interests in Lebanon. She said Lebanese Christians wanted their children to become professionals but Shi’ite parents wanted theirs to be martyrs.
Making a similar point about Hamas on YouTube on August 30, Lebanon-based Palestinian researcher Hesham Dibsi said the group did not represent the Palestinian people. It was a “Shi’ite Islamic enterprise” while most Palestinians wanted to build a secular state.
Brussels-based Palestinian activist Amjad AbuKoush wrote on Facebook on March 7 that it seemed “Al Jazeera does not want the bloodshed to stop”.
Qatar was a small country that gained a global role by appropriating Palestinian decision-making, he said.
“As Palestinians we have a right to reject this. We have a right to say: Stop it you bastards,” AbuKoush concluded.
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