Israeli minister shares report on ‘so-called’ journalists’ alleged terror ties

On the background of accusations that Israel is purposely targeting journalists in Gaza, Israeli Minister of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Amichai Chikli on Wednesday shared a report documenting many of the purported journalists’ terror ties.

“We took a close look at who those so-called ‘journalists’ killed in Gaza really were. Results below,” tweeted Chikli. He included a link to Media Watch, a website which claims to uncover hidden ties between journalists and corporations, terrorists and political groups “so the public can see who is truly independent and who serves an agenda.”

The site, the domain of which was first registered in August and the ownership of which is unclear, lists 48 journalists it claims were directly affiliated with a terrorist group or had some connection to a terror group.

According to the site, the research was conducted after the publication by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) of a list of Palestinian journalists killed at the hands of Israelis.

Media Watch looked into the journalists’ backgrounds using their Facebook profiles and cross-analyzing them to identify connections to “recognized Hamas affiliates.”

Reporters without Borders relied in part on CPJ data in its recent anti-Israel media campaign.

Research conducted by U.K.-based investigative journalist David Collier last year had already shown that the CPJ list was by and large a whitewashed Hamas list.

“Over the past 22 months far too many people wearing press jackets have been exposed as terrorists to take any claim about the targeting of journalists seriously. Which means those who still try to argue for their innocence are choosing to be deliberately blind to the truth,” Collier told JNS on Sunday.

At the time of Collier’s report in January 2024, the Hamas list of journalists killed numbered 107 people—a remarkable figure, surpassing the number of journalists killed in World War II and the Vietnam War.

Collier was able to identify 93% of the 107 people listed through their social media accounts. He found that 35 of the 70 (50%) on the CPJ list worked for proscribed terrorist groups. About 19 (27%) weren’t journalists at all.

“Messages such as these sent 100s of armed ‘civilians’ across into Israel to help Hamas rape and murder,” Collier’s report noted.

Others celebrated terrorist attacks against Israelis over a period of years. Duaa Sharaf, who worked for Hamas-affiliated Radio Al-Aqsa, posted to social media on April 7, 2022, after a mass shooting in Tel Aviv, “Kill them. May Allah punish them with your hands, and humiliate them, and help you against them, and heal the hearts of a believing nation.”

“Hit Tel Aviv. Hit it,” wrote Assem Kamal Moussa, a journalist with news site Palestine Now, of the same attack. On May 2, 2023, he posted a picture of Hamas rockets launched at Israel: “And you are on your way to transfer the occupier’s life to the sanctuaries of hell.”

Collier described CPJ’s research as “sloppy,” “consistently amateurish” and “significantly compromised,” noting that all the information he worked from was publicly available. “This was the real letdown with the CPJ,” he said. “Why the hell didn’t they do that work? How could they not bother to check anybody on social media?”

In Oct. 2024, the IDF released intelligence documents found in Gaza confirming the terrorist affiliation of six Al Jazeera journalists.

Al Jazeera has itself been accused of inciting to violence and spreading Islamist propaganda. It has been banned in several Middle Eastern countries, including Israel, Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.