The Hamas terror attacks inside Israel on October 7 delivered jarring news of the violence inflicted on the Jewish citizenry. That barbarism was made more horrific when images emerged from the Hamas attackers, who recorded their heinous accomplishments on cameras, phones, and bodycams. This all fed into the global revulsion, as we learned of the scope of their attack and the planning that went into this surge.
Now we are getting some details that add to the level of inhumanity. It has come to light that several photojournalists might have either been given advance word of this plot or could have even been embedded with the Hamas attackers on that fateful Saturday morning. The staff at Honest Reporting combed through the attributed images of the day’s events as reported in Western news media outlets, and they looked into the names of photojournalists from two major news wires, who appear to have had unique access to Hamas activities that morning.
On October 7, Hamas terrorists were not the only ones who documented the war crimes they had committed during their deadly rampage across southern Israel. Some of their atrocities were captured by Gaza-based photojournalists working for the Associated Press and Reuters news agencies whose early morning presence at the breached border area raises serious ethical questions.
Those questions are rather grave. How much did these reporters know about the coming attacks and what notice, if any, did they give? Was any authority notified once they saw the level of the criminal activities? And what about the news outlets as they worked to publish the captured images – how much notice of involvement were they given, and why was there no mention of the amount of coordination between the photojournalists and the terrorists?
Many of the images from the Associated Press on that day represent a unique position by these Gaza-based photographers, as they captured activities by Hamas. In one shot from Hassan Eslaiah, he recorded a moment when Palestinians were breaching the fence into the Kibbutz Kfar Azzar region. This indicates some prior knowledge and might even indicate his own illegal entry into the country. Eslaiah later took images of an Israeli tank, which was attacked inside the Israel border. Honest Reporting's report notes that, curiously, "[Eslaiah] did not wear a press vest or a helmet, and the Arabic caption of his tweet read: 'Live from inside the Gaza Strip settlements.'”
Other journalists happened to be on location to capture images of various citizens being abducted and taken into Gaza. One of those journalists, Hatem Ali, was able to get within inches of one captive in a crowd of militants, and in another shot, Ali showed members of Hamas transporting another kidnapped Israeli in a golf cart. In total, Honest Reporting named at least half a dozen reporters who were able to be in position – and inside of Israel – for this violent incursion.
Underscoring the curious nature of these timely reports are the words from the AP in the captions of their photos.
“Hamas fighters infiltrated the heavily fortified border in several locations by air, land, and sea and catching the country off-guard on a major holiday.”
More images have emerged that appear to show those from the Gaza media who were on site as these crimes were being perpetrated.
By all accounts, this October 7 attack is considered to have been conducted as a stealth mission. As such, it appears more than curious that so many journalists originating inside of Gaza would have been fortuitous enough to be at those specific locales -- at just the proper moment when this surprise attack unfolded. As the Honest Reporting team states:
Either way, when international news agencies decide to pay for material that has been captured under such problematic circumstances, their standards may be questioned and their audience deserves to know about it.
This does call back into question the level of involvement the Western news outlets have with the recognized terror outfit Hamas. In recent weeks, the press has been exposed globally for repeating claims and statistics from Hamas that later were proven wildly incorrect. The errant claims of a hospital bombing, and the false report of hundreds perishing when a part of a church collapsed while a nearby building was under attack, have cast a pall over the press -- and it is all a result of the media swallowing whole the spoon-fed data from Hamas.
Then you have the story from the summer of 2021 when Israel supposedly intentionally bombed an office building housing the Associated Press and Al Jazeera. While they were decrying this as an attack on the media, it was later revealed that not only did the AP share offices with the Qatar-based media outfit but also Hamas – which Israel noted was the reason it hit the building. This establishes further the amount of cohesiveness seen between the terror group and our press complex.
The idea of journalists working alongside a terror group as it commits war crime atrocities on the citizens of a country warrants introspection. The possible level of involvement, coupled with the lack of attribution from the news outlets, needs to be looked into. As more is being learned, the already damaged reputations of our legacy media sources could become even more afflicted.