Journalists quietly admit that you cannot trust what reporters in Gaza say because of Hamas threats ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Sunday, May 18, 2025

Journalists quietly admit that you cannot trust what reporters in Gaza say because of Hamas threats

Reports from Gaza are not credible. Journalists know this - but don't want to tell it to you.

Nineteen months too late, the Committee to Protect Journalists reports that journalists in Gaza are routinely threatened, harassed, arrested or even beaten by Hamas if the terror group feels that their reporting is not fulfilling Hamas' propaganda efforts. Here are extensive excerpts from their article but it is terrifically important:

When Gazan journalist Tawfiq Abu Jarad received a phone call from a Hamas security agent warning him not to cover a protest, he readily complied, having been assaulted by Hamas-affiliated forces once before.

“They even told me that I would be responsible if my wife participated in the demonstration,” said Abu Jarad, a 44-year-old correspondent for Ramallah-based privately owned Sawt al-Hurriya radio station. “I have not covered any recent demonstrations,” he concluded, recalling how he was beaten and interrogated for hours by Hamas-affiliated masked assailants in the southern city of Rafah in November 2023, accusing him of “covering events in the Gaza Strip calling for a coup.”

He only secured his freedom with a promise to stop reporting.

Another journalist told The Washington Post they feared covering highly unusual demonstrations in March 2025 would lead Hamas to accuse them of spying for Israel. A third said Hamas’ internal security agents sometimes followed journalists as they reported. Both spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Their fears of reporting on opposition to Hamas seem well-founded. A statement by Palestinian Resistance Factions and Tribes in Gaza, which includes Hamas, condemned the protesters as “collaborators with Israel,” a charge historically used to justify executions. Israeli outlets said that Hamas had killed Palestinians who participated in the March anti-war protests.

Abu Jarad reported Hamas’ threat against himself and his wife to the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate (PJS), the official union for Palestinian journalists, and PJS publicly condemned Hamas for violating press freedom.

Prior to this, PJS had only published one other incident involving Hamas during the war — the brutal assault of Ibrahim Muhareb, who was beaten unconscious by armed men in plainclothes who said they were from the police investigations department. He sustained deep head wounds.

Muharab’s experience is not unusual — it’s his decision to go public that marks him out.

“There are major violations committed by the Hamas government and group against journalists,” PJS’ head Nasser Abu Bakr told CPJ. “The violations range from summonses, interrogations, phone calls, threats, sometimes beatings and arrests, to harassment, publication bans, interference with content, and surveillance.”

Press freedom violations by Hamas during the war have been vastly underreported.

PJS often documents Hamas attacks on the media internally, without publicizing them, for fear of reprisals, the group told CPJ. In other cases, PJS staff hear about events secondhand as journalists are too scared to report them.

CPJ’s experience echoes that of PJS.

In separate incidents this year, two Gaza-based journalists told CPJ that they were intimidated by Hamas security agents who blocked them from reporting in certain areas. The journalists did not consent to CPJ going public about their experiences for fear of retaliation. To them, the priority was to be able to continue reporting from the field.

More recently, a TV crew told CPJ they were assaulted by Hamas security forces while trying to film. But, again, the journalists did not want CPJ to publicize the incident as it was later resolved between the powerful clans that wield influence over most of Gaza’s population.

PJS’ deputy head Tahseen al-Astal told CPJ that Palestinian journalists are reluctant to spotlight their own problems, driven by a collective desire not to “pivot eyes from the war in Gaza,” which they felt was a more pressing story.

“Most journalists have begun to practice self-censorship in their writing to avoid any problems with security,” he added.

We've known this for years - I have stories as early as 2008 of Hamas attacking journalists who are covering stories Hamas doesn't want reported on. Matti Friedman wrote in 2014 that "Hamas fighters would burst into the AP’s Gaza bureau and threaten the staff—and the AP wouldn’t report it."

A Spanish journalist, off the record, said during the 2014 war "It's very simple, we did see Hamas people there launching rockets, they were close to our hotel, but if ever we dared pointing our camera on them they would simply shoot at us and kill us." And he was far from the only one.

In short, every journalist in Gaza has known this for years. The CPJ has known this for years. The wire services, the New York Times, CNN - they all know that their stringers and reporters in Gaza self-censor and will not fact-check Hamas' lies. They will only publish stories that are anti-Israel, real or imagined, and any intimidation or attacks by Hamas on Gazans or Gaza journalists are simply left unsaid.

The corollary is that the successful journalists in Gaza are the ones who are themselves members of Hamas, work for Hamas-linked media outlets or are otherwise cozy with Hamas, They are the ones that have the most access to places that Hamas wants them to see, and they won't ever take pictures that could show that Hamas rockets fell short and killed people, or that Hamas IEDs killed Gaza civilians, or that Gazans want to leave Gaza, or that Gaza residents are protesting Hamas.

Even the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, when they do report in Arabic on Hamas attacks on journalists, frame the attacks as hurting their own major journalistic goal of demonizing Israel. Really:

The Syndicate also affirms that the direct and indirect threats to which Palestinian journalists are exposed reflect a real challenge to the occupation's criminality and the war of genocide it is waging against our people. Were it not for the Palestinian journalist's insistence on continuing his work, defending his cause, and conveying his ongoing suffering as a result of the occupation's aggression, the world would not have known or witnessed these crimes.

The PJS is no less a propaganda organization than Hamas is, just they want to occasionally say what Hamas is doing, too.

The media’s job is to report the truth - even when it’s inconvenient, and especially when it’s dangerous. In Gaza, that truth is systematically suppressed, with Western outlets complicit in the silence. If news organizations won’t admit the pressure and intimidation their journalists face, their coverage is propaganda by omission.

As long as this continues, audiences must treat every “fact” from Gaza not as reporting, but as an unvetted press release from Hamas. Until the media comes clean, the world should withhold judgment—and demand honesty.