Why Were 6 Journalists from AP & Reuters Present at the Oct 7^th Hamas Attack on Israel?

HonestReporting Tells All in Bombshell Report  

Edited by: Fern Sidman

A new report published on Wednesday by HonestReporting shows that Gaza-based photojournalists from prominent international news agencies were in Israeli territory to document Hamas’ October 7 attack against Israeli towns located near the Gaza border, as was reported on Wednesday by the Israel National News web site.

#Hamas terrorists were not the only ones who documented the war crimes they had committed during their deadly rampage across southern #Israel. Some of their atrocities were captured by #Gaza-based photojournalists… #israelnews #Jewish #JewishVoice#HamasTerrorists #Hamas_is_ISIS pic.twitter.com/FeUgqbzr55

— The Jewish Voice (@JewishVoice) November 9, 2023

HonestReporting noted that “Hamas terrorists were not the only ones who documented the war crimes they had committed during their deadly rampage across southern Israel. Some of their atrocities were captured by Gaza-based photojournalists…whose early morning presence at the breached border area raises serious ethical questions,” according to the INN report.

Video of Hamas attack on Israel on Oct 7th. Pictured here are embedded journalists joining the terror group as one of the photojournalists is seen holding a grenade. Why were they there? Stay tuned as this story develops. #Hamas_is_ISIS #October7massacre #journalists @AP @Reuters… pic.twitter.com/TgOFajt2Zu

— The Jewish Voice (@JewishVoice) November 9, 2023

The watchdog organization wondered what these photojournalists were doing in Israeli territory so early  on what would ordinarily have been a quiet Saturday morning and asks whether their presence was coordinated with the Hamas terrorists. “Judging from the pictures of lynching, kidnapping and storming of an Israeli kibbutz, it seems like the border has been breached not only physically, but also journalistically,” it said.

The Jewish News Syndicate report said that HonestReporting identified six freelance photographers—Hassan Eslaiah, Yousef Masoud, Ali Mahmud, Hatem Ali, Mohammed Fayq Abu Mostafa and Yasser Qudih—who were present during the Hamas attacks that left over 1400 dead in the largest single day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, and whose work the Associated Press and Reuters are selling to other publications.

INN reported that the article on HonestReporting shows the photos from the Israel-Gaza border area on October 7 which included shots of a burning Israeli tank, and of infiltrators entering Kibbutz Kfar Aza.

It also featured now-removed posts on X from freelancers who snapped photos of a burning Israeli tank and of terrorists kidnapping people, including the German-Israeli woman Shani Louk, who has since been found dead, according to a Jewish News Syndicate report.

JNS also reported that HonestReporting published screenshots of since-deleted social-media posts in which Eslaiah stood before the Israeli tank without a press vest or helmet. He captioned the image in Arabic: “Live from inside the Gaza Strip settlements.”

Mostafa photographed a lynch mob “brutalizing the body of an Israeli soldier who was dragged out of the tank” for Reuters, according to HonestReporting, as was reported by JNS. The news agency labeled the image with a graphic warning—and “shamelessly” made it one of its “Images of the Day” in its editorial database.

“Let’s be clear: News agencies may claim that these people were just doing their job. Documenting war crimes, unfortunately, may be part of it. But it’s not that simple,” said HonestReporting.

The watchdog also noted that the AP apparently removed the names of the freelancers from some photos in its database. “Perhaps someone at the agency realized it posed serious questions regarding their journalistic ethics,” HonestReporting wrote.

“It is now obvious that Hamas had planned its October 7 attack on Israel for a very long time: its scale, its brutal aims and its massive documentation have been prepared for months, if not years. Everything was taken into account — the deployments, the timing, as well as the use of bodycams and mobile phone videos for sharing the atrocities,” as was included in the HonestReporting article.

“Is it conceivable to assume that ‘journalists’ just happened to appear early in the morning at the border without prior coordination with the terrorists? Or were they part of the plan?”

HonestReporting pointed out that even if the photojournalists did not know the exact details of what was going to happen, “once it unfolded did they not realize they were breaching a border? And if so, did they notify the news agencies? Some sort of communication was undoubtedly necessary — before, after or during the attack — in order to get the photos published,” the INN report said.

“Either way, when international news agencies decide to pay for material that has been captured under such problematic circumstances, their standards may be questioned, and their audience deserves to know about it,” it added. “And if their people on the ground actively or passively collaborated with Hamas to get the shots, they should be called out to redefine the border between journalism and barbarism,” HonestReporting said.

In the past, there has been extensive discussion about how journalists should operate in war zones and in circumstances where they are in a position to provide aid. JNS reported that Dr. Sanjay Gupta, a CNN reporter, drew on his medical training to assist people and became part of the story while reporting in Haiti.

A Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph that appeared in The New York Times in 1993 of a starving Sudanese child being stalked by a vulture also raised serious questions about the photographer’s ethical responsibilities, as was noted in the JNS report.