As Israel’s targeted killing of a senior Al Jazeera journalist, Anas al-Sharif, draws international condemnation, pro-Israel advocates are working to set the record straight on the Gaza correspondent’s ties to Hamas.

“CNN: Al Jazeera’s Anas Al-Sharif was ‘a prominent journalist,’” the director, Hillel Neuer, of a United Nations watchdog group, UN Watch, wrote on Monday morning.  “TRUTH: Anas Al-Sharif was a terrorist who headed a Hamas cell guiding rocket attacks at Israeli civilians, given journalistic cover by Qatari-funded Al Jazeera.”

An investigative journalist who first highlighted al-Sharif’s alleged terror connections in October 2024, Eitan Fischberger, expressed similar frustration with press coverage portraying al-Sharif as merely another journalist.

“Not one single media outlet has mentioned the ample open-source evidence, including some that I’ve outlined below, showing Anas al-Sharif is anything but a journalist,” he wrote on X. “Pictured with Hamas leaders? Showering praise on the murderers and rap*sts of October 7th? Nah, not relevant.” 

Mr. Fischberger attached screenshots from al-Sharif’s Telegram page that put on display his full-fledged support for Hamas’s terror attacks and his personal relationships with Hamas members. 

One post from October 7 reads: “Soon, the Qassam Air Force will spread happy surprises to our people and our Arab and Islamic nation.” Another reads: “9 hours and the heroes are still roaming the country killing and capturing. … God, God, how great you are.” 

The posts were deleted in 2024, though were screenshotted and archived by Mr. Fischberger. The Sun could not verify the authenticity of the posts. 

However, not all incriminating posts have been wiped from al-Sharif’s Telegram account. Photographs remain on his page showing him grinning alongside various Hamas officials, including Fathi Hamad, whom al-Sharif appeared to host in his home. 

In others, al-Sharif can be seen praising deadly attacks on Israelis. In a post from April 2022, he lauded as “heroic” a 28-year-old Palestinian who killed three Israelis in a terror attack at Tel Aviv. A year later, he celebrated the killing of seven Israelis outside of a synagogue at Jerusalem as a “special operation.” 

Al-Sharif, who had become one of Gaza’s most prominent media figures and Al Jazeera’s most senior correspondent in the territory, was killed Sunday night in an airstrike near al-Shifa Hospital at Gaza City. Al Jazeera confirmed the deaths of al-Sharif and several other employees, including journalist Mohammed Qreiqeh and videographers Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal, and Moamen Aliwa.

The Israel Defense Forces claimed responsibility for al-Sharif’s killing, justifying the attack as a legitimate military operation. The IDF stated Sunday that al-Sharif was a “terrorist” who “served as a cell leader in the Hamas terror organization and advanced plans for rocket fire against Israeli civilians and IDF forces.”

The IDF pointed to documents that the military published in October that they say “prove he was a Hamas operative integrated into Al Jazeera.” The documents include rosters, terrorist training lists, and salary records. The IDF identifies al-Sharif as a member of Hamas’s East Jabaliya Battalion who enlisted in 2013. 

Most major media outlets ran headlines on Monday morning that omitted the IDF’s claims, describing the incident instead as an Israeli strike on “Al Jazeera journalists.” The BBC updated its coverage on Monday to note, “The BBC understands Sharif worked for a Hamas media team in Gaza before the current conflict.” 

International condemnations of Israel soon followed. Prime Minister Keir Starmer stated that he was “gravely concerned” about Israel’s “repeated targeting of journalists.” The UN Human Rights Council called the killings a “grave breach of international humanitarian law.” The Foreign Press Association said that it was “outraged” by Israel’s attack, claiming that the Al Jazeera employees “were carrying out their duty as journalists and reporting on events as they occurred.”

Al-Sharif is not the first journalist in Gaza to be accused of working for Hamas. The Israeli military has targeted and killed several other individuals they claim served as “journalist-terrorists” during the war. Notably, a Gazan journalist who worked for the Palestinian Chronicle — an outlet led by a former Al Jazeera official, Ramzi Baroud — was holding three Israeli hostages in his home when he was killed by Israeli forces in June 2024.

One of those hostages, Shlomi Ziv, referenced his experience to criticize those who rejected the IDF’s claims about al-Sharif’s terror ties. “I was held by a journalist in captivity and his father was a Doctor,” Ziv posted Monday, responding to a Sky News article headlined “Al Jazeera condemns ‘assassination’ of its journalists in Gaza.”

An Arabic spokesman from the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis told The New York Sun: “Western media outlets often treat a blue helmet and a ‘PRESS’ vest as sufficient proof of someone’s status as a journalist — particularly in Gaza. However, some of these individuals, like al-Sharif, have openly and repeatedly supported attacks on Israeli civilians.”

“A basic background check — which is rarely conducted — would have revealed that their work is propaganda, not journalism. Therefore, even without the IDF’s evidence that he is a Hamas member, al-Sharif should not be elevated above other fatalities simply because Al Jazeera says so,” the statement concluded.