Israel Confirms Al Jazeera ‘Journalist’ Killed in Gaza Strike was Hamas Sniper
Israeli military has confirmed that Hossam Shabat, an Al Jazeera ‘journalist’ killed in an airstrike, was a Hamas terrorist. “The IDF confirms that it killed an Al Jazeera reporter in an air strike yesterday,” The Times of Israel reported. “The military has long charged that Hossam Shabat was an active member of Hamas.”
Shabat’s identity as a Hamas terrorist was well known. In October 2024, Legal Insurrection published a post exposing Shabat and five other Al Jazeera journalists as members of Hamas or Palestinian Islami Jihad terrorist groups. The information was based on secret Hamas documents recovered by the IDF during the Gaza military operation.
Israel armed forces “eliminated the terrorist Hossam Basel Abdul Karim Shabat, a sniper terrorist from the Beit Hanoun Battalion of the Hamas terrorist organization, who cynically posed as an Al-Jazeera journalist,” the IDF said in a statement Tuesday.
“In October 2024, the IDF and ISA exposed the terrorist’s direct affiliation with the military wing of the Hamas terrorist organization. Internal Hamas documents were revealed proving that he participated in military training conducted by the Beit Hanoun Battalion of Hamas in 2019,” the IDF noted.
Since October 7, 2023, he had taken part in terrorist operations targeting Israeli soldiers and civilians. “During the war, Hossam carried out terrorist attacks against IDF troops and Israeli civilians. This is additional proof of Hamas terrorists affiliation to the Al-Jazeera network,” the IDF statement added.
Despite irrefutable evidence, the mainstream media decried the killing of a known Hamas terrorist as an attack on ‘free press.’ Even Fox News correspondent Trey Yingst joined the media outrage over the killing of the Hamas sniper who masqueraded as a journalist.
The Jerusalem Post reported Shabat’s dual identity:
The IDF confirmed that Al Jazeera journalist Hossam Shabat, who was killed on Monday by Israeli forces, was a Hamas terrorist, the military announced on Tuesday morning.The IDF and Shin Bet eliminated Shabat on Monday, stating that he was a sniper from Hamas’s Beit Hanoun Battalion and “cynically posed as an Al Jazeera journalist.”The military claimed that in October 2024, the IDF and Shin Bet exposed Shabat’s ties with Hamas and the terror group’s military wing, al-Qassam Brigades, by revealing internal Hamas documents that proved that he had participated in military training in 2019.During the Israel-Hamas war, Shabat carried out terror attacks against IDF troops and Israeli civilians, the military claimed.At the time of writing, Shabat had 580,000 followers on Instagram, where he frequently posted images of himself in a press vest and described himself in Hebrew as a journalist.He also has 171,200 followers on X/Twitter, where his “team” posted a memorial after his death.
The ties between Al Jazeera and Hamas are so deep that Israel in May 2024 had to ban the Qatari state-funded broadcaster from operating in the country.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Al Jazeera a “terror channel.”
“Al Jazeera harmed Israel’s security, actively participated in the Oct. 7 massacre, and incited against Israeli soldiers,” Prime Minister Netanyahu said in March 2024.
According to an official Israeli report published in October 2024, investigators uncovered “close cooperation between Hamas and the network,” which ranged from “prohibiting the channel from criticizing the organization, to concealing incidents of failed rocket launches, and even establishing a secure communication line between Hamas and Al Jazeera.”
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