Jonathan Whittall, a former senior U.N. official from South Africa, recently began contributing articles to Drop Site News, an online outlet widely viewed as a mouthpiece for the Hamas terrorist organization in the Gaza Strip.
Whittall led the Palestinian branch of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) from 2022 until the summer of 2025, when Israeli authorities declined to renew his visa, accusing him of “biased and hostile conduct.”
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar stated at the time that Whittall “distorted reality, presented falsified reports, slandered Israel and even violated the U.N.’s own rules of neutrality.”
OCHA regularly disseminates casualty and humanitarian data from the Gaza Health Ministry, which is administered by Hamas. The agency does not consistently identify the ministry as being run by the U.S.-designated terrorist organization.
The former envoy has long been critical of Jerusalem, including during his tenure with Doctors Without Borders. He often describes Israel as a settler-colonial state and accuses it of practicing apartheid.
Whittall has written at least three reports for the independent news startup, which debuted in July 2024, and has promoted exclusive interviews with Hamas officials and published Hamas statements in full. Its critics have said the outlet, which has described Hamas as a “resistance” movement, does not challenge claims made by the group.
On Jan. 29, Drop Site News accused Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker of repeating a “racist lie” after he said that Hamas raped civilians during its terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
In a separate article last month, Murtaza Hussain, a national security and foreign affairs reporter at Drop Site News, wrote that Iran “should have fired every single missile on Oct. 8 while Israel was in disarray.”
The outlet has also claimed that it helped Gazan journalist Abubaker Abed leave Gaza for Europe. After his relocation, Abed criticized the Irish government that accepted him and publicly expressed support for Hamas. The U.S. State Department denied Abed a visa last year to attend a conference in Detroit because of that stated support.
The Washington Free Beacon reported in November that Open Society Foundations, a philanthropy funded by George Soros, donated $250,000 to the outlet in its first months of operation to help support its Middle East coverage.
