By Ahmad Sharawi & Natalie Ecanow
Thursday, October 16, 2025
Word on the street is that Al Jazeera is softening its
tone. According to Amit Segal, Al Jazeera’s Qatari owners are supposedly “carrying out a purge” as “part of an understanding” with
Washington to “reduce the amount of incitement” that the channel creates. An
unnamed intelligence official told the Israeli journalist that “Hamas is very
unhappy with the changes at Al Jazeera” and even had “an apology” call with the
network.
The timing of the alleged shift is unlikely coincidence.
Ever since Israel’s strike against Hamas operatives in Doha on September 9, the
Trump administration has worked to defuse tensions between Israel and Qatar and
bring the Gaza war to a close. There was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu’s apology to Qatar’s emir. Then, President Trump’s executive order declaring that the
United States will consider any attack on Qatar “to be a threat to the peace
and security of the United States.” Israel and Qatar also agreed to “a trilateral mechanism”
with the United States to strengthen communication and resolve future
differences. Understood in this context, the supposed “understanding” about Al
Jazeera was likely another piece of choreography to push Trump’s Gaza plan across
the finish line.
A move toward moderation by Al Jazeera would be headline
news for a network that exists mainly to promote Doha’s interests, in
particular by building global support for Hamas. The second anniversary of the
October 7 massacre and subsequent deal to free the remaining hostages provided
the perfect opportunity for Al Jazeera to show it is changing.
Instead, the network continued to broadcast an
upside-down, black-is-white distortion of reality. For Al Jazeera, the story of
October 7 is one of a bold military operation by the Palestinian resistance,
“Al-Aqsa Flood,” in which “settlers” died along with Israeli soldiers. Watching
its coverage, one would never know that Hamas butchered men, women, children,
and the elderly, often as they sought shelter in their own homes. History is
rewritten to cast killers as heroes. Over the past two years, and even today,
Al Jazeera has never condemned Hamas for murdering civilians or denounced its
abductions. Instead, it continues to host pundits who glorify the attacks and
praise the group.
On occasion, Al Jazeera’s English-language website has
put on a moderate face. But on the anniversary of the massacre, its headlines
focused only on defaming Israel and the United States: “Two years of Israel’s genocide in Gaza: By the numbers,” “Israel is fractured, isolated after two years of its war on
Gaza,” “How the U.S. funded Israel’s wars on Gaza, Lebanon, Iran.”
The list goes on.
Al Jazeera — in English and in Arabic — likewise refers
to the Israelis taken on October 7 as “prisoners of war” or “captives” rather
than “hostages” — a choice of words that dehumanizes those kidnapped from their
homes, many of them children and elderly. This framing also serves to
legitimize Hamas’s attack while avoiding any condemnation of the abduction of
innocent civilians. In the run-up to Monday’s hostage release, for example, Al
Jazeera English ran with headlines like “Israel, Hamas set to free captives; Trump says Gaza ‘war is
over.’”
Unfortunately, Al Jazeera Arabic is much worse. It
amplifies Hamas propaganda videos showing attacks on Israeli tanks and soldiers, airing the terrorist group’s
propaganda featuring Israeli hostages, and promoting conspiracy theories that
Israel had killed its own people on October 7 by using “the Hannibal
directive.”
Al Jazeera also features analysts who openly root for
Hamas. One such commentator, Saeed Ziad, openly congratulates Hamas when it releases videos of its fighters firing
projectiles at Israeli tanks. One day before the anniversary, he posted on X a screenshot from an Al Jazeera broadcast bearing the
headline “Channel 13: 600 dead Israelis,” adding the caption, “And remind them
of the days of God.” The post was a celebration of the attacks, a taunting
message to Israelis, glorifying the bloodshed Hamas had inflicted upon them.
On the day of the anniversary, the network released a video timeline depicting the events of the war through a
pro-Hamas lens. The video started by showing Hamas militants paragliding into
Israel. The narrator’s first words were: “On the morning of October 7, 2023,
the Islamic Resistance launched a surprise attack targeting Israeli settlements
near Gaza.” He added, “The attack led to the death of hundreds of soldiers and
settlers, and the capture of dozens.”
The kibbutzim that Hamas targeted on October 7 all lie
inside Israel’s 1949 borders. To call them settlements is to deny that Israel
has any right to exist. It also suggests their bloodshed is licit because they
have stolen Palestinian land.
Throughout the anniversary, the network doubled down. It released another video titled “‘They are not humans, but monsters’: How
has the language of Israel’s leaders turned into a tool for legitimizing the
extermination of Gaza.” In it, the network strips the context from Israeli
leaders’ calls for aggressive action of Hamas to create the illusion that they
are targeting the whole population in Gaza indiscriminately.
The network also strives to present Hamas as the victor
in Gaza. In one segment, the host asked a military analyst, “How has Hamas
managed to remain resilient?” The guest replied, “Hamas has targeted all the
broader strategic defenses of Israel; deterrence is no longer there.” Like
Hamas itself, Al Jazeera presents survival as a triumph, no matter the cost.
Al Jazeera’s Arabic website tells the same story,
especially in a collection of articles titled “Two Years Since the War of
Extermination in Gaza.” One piece, titled “How Did the Resistance Thwart
the ‘Occupation’s’ Goals in Gaza Over the Course of Two Years?” praises Hamas
fighters for continuing to ambush Israeli soldiers.
Another article claims that the movement’s “popularity
and positions are rising around the world.” It concludes by asserting that
Hamas’s “fundamental idea of rejecting and resisting” has achieved
“unprecedented traction and progress.”
The intelligence official who spoke to Segal said that
Hamas and Al Jazeera believe “Trump and Netanyahu forced the Qataris to change
direction.” But the network hasn’t changed, and pressure from the Trump
administration is warranted. After issuing remarkable security commitments to
Qatar, the least America should expect in return is that Doha will put an end
to its pro-Hamas propaganda. To signal it is serious, the administration should
also force AJ+, a subsidiary of the Al Jazeera Media Network based in the
United States, to register as a foreign agent of Qatar. The Department of
Justice ordered AJ+ to register in 2020, but
the network remains noncompliant.
Doha has spent the past two years posing as a moderator
determined to bring peace to Israel and Gaza, while its in-house network served
as a public relations arm of Hamas. If the Qatari royals actually wanted to
bring peace to the region, they should direct Al Jazeera to broadcast the news
instead of propaganda.
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