Al Jazeera "reporter" on Hamas payroll eliminated by IAF airstrike

The world knew him as a reporter in the Middle East war between Hamas and Israel, but Hamas files identified him as a sniper in the terror group's Beit Hanoun Battalion.

Al Jazeera 'reporter' Hossam Shabat, who was also a Hamas sniper, was killed in an Israeli airstrike, the Qatari network reported on Monday. There has been no official statement from Israel about this Hamasshole, as is their practice.

So here we are, once again, peering into the grim abyss of Gaza, where the lines between journalism and jihad blur with a disturbing ease. Reports trickling out of that benighted strip tell us that Mohammed Mansour, a scribe for Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s Falstin Al-Yom channel, met his end in an airstrike. One wonders if the distinction even matters in a place so steeped in blood and duplicity.

Consider the case of Shabat, a name that surfaced in October alongside five other Al Jazeera so called reporters—Anas Al-Sharif, Ala’ Salama, Ashraf al Sarraj, Ismail Abu Amr, and Talal al-Arrouqi—all unmasked as card-carrying members of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. 

How do we know this? 

Because Israeli troops, rummaging through the detritus of Gaza, stumbled upon captured personnel tables, terrorist training rosters, phone books, and salary documents—paper trails of scumbaggery. Shabat, it turns out, wasn’t just scribbling notes; he was a sniper in Hamas’s Beit Hanoun Battalion, a detail that lends a certain clarity to his byline.

The rot goes deeper. 

Other files pried from Gaza’s clutches reveal Al Jazeera’s cozy arrangement with Hamas—taking cues on how to spin specific incidents, even setting up a secure hotline so the terror outfit could whisper directly into the network’s ear during emergencies. This isn’t journalism; it’s a megaphone for murderers. 

Israel, quite sensibly, moved to slam the door shut on Al Jazeera’s operations in May—revoking press credentials, seizing transmitters, blocking websites. The ban isn’t eternal, mind you, just a 90-day renewable purge, a flicker of pragmatism in a world gone mad.

The push to muzzle Al Jazeera gained steam back in February when Mohamed Washah, another of their intrepid 'reporters,' was exposed as a Hamas commander. His laptop, fished out of northern Gaza by Israeli soldiers, revealed his starring role in the group’s anti-armor missile systems—a sideline, presumably, to his day job filing dispatches. 

Then, in August, the IDF released files confirming that Al Jazeera’s Ismail al-Ghoul—lovely name, that fits him so well—was a Hamas engineer in the Gaza City Brigade, his credentials etched in a 2021 dossier alongside thousands of other terrorists. The evidence piles up like bodies.

By October, Al Jazeera was openly accused of imperiling Israeli soldiers, broadcasting details of troop assemblies with a savage, deliberate recklessness. The Cabinet, roused at last, green-lit emergency regulations to shutter the network’s operations in Israel. The Tel Aviv District Court, in a rare moment of lucidity, nodded its assent in July, declaring the Qatari outlet’s broadcasts “a real violation of state security.” 

No kidding, Sherlock.

And all this traces back to that dark dawn of October 7, when Hamas unleashed hell on Israeli communities near the Gaza border—1,200 souls slaughtered, 251 Israelis and foreigners dragged off as hostages. Of the 59 still unaccounted for, 36 are presumed dead, their fates a grim footnote to this macabre saga.

The numbers numb, but the reality sears. Al Jazeera, with its pious pretensions, stands complicit—not merely reporting the war, but waging it by proxy. As the poet Auden once wrote, “Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table.” 

In Gaza, it seems, it also files copy for the evening news.

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