News of Al Jazeera “journalist” Anas Al-Sharif’s death in a targeted Israeli strike prompted a wave of mournful mainstream media coverage. CNN’s Brian Stelter led his “Reliable Sources” newsletter with the story on Monday—subject line “Al Jazeera in mourning”—quoting a colleague who described Al-Sharif as “a household name for many in the Arabic-speaking world” who had documented “the horrors that we are seeing in the Gaza Strip.”
Declassified Israeli intelligence, however, shows that Hamas terrorists in the strip knew Al-Sharif for different reasons. Documents discovered by the IDF in Gaza identify Al-Sharif as a leader in a Hamas rocket-launching squad and member of the Nukhba forces, the commando unit behind the Oct. 7 massacre. Stelter referenced the documents before noting that Al Jazeera, which is financed by the Qatari government, “strongly denies the claim.”
Months before his death, Al-Sharif’s name surfaced in a lawsuit from American victims of Oct. 7 alleging that Al Jazeera provides “substantial assistance” to Hamas. The suit quotes messages Al-Sharif posted to Telegram lauding the Oct. 7 attack as it unfolded.
“9 hours later and the heroes are still roaming the country, killing and capturing… God, God, how great you are,” he wrote in one message, hours after Hamas terrorists slaughtered more than 1,000 Jews and took dozens of civilians hostage. “It is a jihad, a jihad of victory and martyrdom,” he said in another. “Allahu akbar and thank God.”
Al-Sharif went on to post photos of dead Israeli soldiers being stepped on; one included the caption, “The army wants to exterminate people under their rugs 
” Before the attack, Sharif posted photos of himself smiling alongside Hamas leaders, including slain Oct. 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar.
None of those messages or photos were mentioned in CBS News, New York Times, Washington Post, and Time reports that vilified Israel for targeting a “journalist.”
The Post piece, headlined, “Palestinians mourn Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif, crew in Gaza,” said the strike on Al-Sharif “underscored the perils faced by Palestinian journalists in Gaza, where they have reported through hunger, displacement, fierce bombardment and the loss of family members.” It was written by London correspondent Louisa Loveluck, an Al Jazeera veteran who was part of the Post team named as a 2025 Pulitzer Prize finalist for international reporting on Gaza. Loveluck recently penned a piece that accused Israel of killing scores of Gazans near a humanitarian aid site without making clear that the claim came from Hamas. The Post later acknowledged that the piece did not meet its standards.
Hamas maintains a tight grip on Gazan “journalists” operating in the strip, including those affiliated with Al Jazeera. Israel banned Al Jazeera from operating within its borders last year, accusing it of “broadcasting propaganda in the service of Hamas, in Arabic and English, to viewers around the world.”
The overlap between Al Jazeera and Hamas has been well documented. Al Jazeera reporter Tamer Almisshal, for example, reportedly produced elaborate Hamas propaganda ceremonies in which the terrorist outfit paraded Israeli hostages through the Gazan streets as onlookers celebrated. A Hamas operative who held hostages in his home, Abdallah Aljamal, also moonlit as a “journalist” for a little-known U.S. publication called the Palestine Chronicle. The publication’s founder and editor in chief, Ramzy Baroud, formerly served as an Al Jazeera editor and executive.
Over the decades, Al Jazeera has published a number of false reports accusing Israel of atrocities. A 2013 story charged Israel with opening dams to intentionally flood Gaza. Al Jazeera retracted that reporting two years later, issuing an embarrassing editor’s note that acknowledged there “are no dams of the type which can be opened.” Years later, Al Jazeera corrected a report that referred to the Israeli coastal city of Haifa as “northern occupied Palestine.”
Al-Sharif was not the only Al Jazeera “journalist” mentioned in the declassified Israeli documents that revealed Al-Sharif’s Hamas affiliation. Also referenced were Alaa Salama, Hossam Shabat, Ashraf Al-Saraj, Ismail Abu Omar, and Talal Aruki, all of whom are affiliated with either Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad, according to the documents.
Shabat, who moonlit as a sniper in Hamas’s Beit Hanoun Battalion, according to the documents, was also killed in a targeted Israeli strike in March. Prior to his death, he contributed to Drop Site News, an anti-Israel site founded by U.S. journalist Ryan Grim, formerly of HuffPost and the Intercept. Grim eulogized Al-Sharif in a Sunday post on X, calling him “one of the greatest journalists of all time.”
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