For the second time in a week, the Israel Defense Forces on Wednesday exposed a Palestinian reporter working for Al Jazeera in the Gaza Strip as a Hamas terrorist operative.
Ismail Abu Omar, an Al Jazeera journalist wounded in an Israeli strike near the southern Gaza city of Rafah on Tuesday, serves as a deputy company commander in Hamas’s Khan Yunis Battalion, according to the IDF.
Qatar-owned Al Jazeera claimed that an IDF drone “targeted two journalists in Muraj, north of Rafah,” including Ismail Abu Omar, who allegedly underwent an amputation and remained in critical condition.
However, Avichay Adraee, head of the Arab media division in the Spokesperson’s Unit of the Israeli military, revealed on Wednesday night that “Ismail Abu Omar holds two roles.”
“How do we know this? Abu Omar is a deputy company commander in Hamas’ Eastern Battalion of Khan Yunis who filmed himself in Kibbutz Nir Oz during the October 7 massacre,” the spokesperson added.
The HonestReporting media watchdog group noted on Wednesday that, in footage that Abu Omar himself posted online on the day of the attacks, he praised the Hamas terrorists carrying out the atrocities, saying: “The friends have progressed, may God bless.”
As the terror group’s Oct. 7 massacre got underway, he also boasted that Palestinian children would “play with their heads” in reference to massacred Israelis, HonestReporting said.
On Sunday, the IDF exposed Al Jazeera employee Mohamed Washah as a Hamas officer, citing documents seized from the Gaza Strip.
Information on a laptop taken by Israeli forces showed that Washah, 37, from central Gaza’s Bureij neighborhood, is a “prominent commander” in Hamas’s anti-tank missile unit. In late 2022, he began working on research and development in the terror group’s air force, according to the IDF.
“Who knows how many details we will reveal about the presence of other terrorists in journalistic garb in the near future,” Adraee wrote on Sunday.
Last month, the IDF presented evidence that two Al Jazeera journalists killed in Gaza were moonlighting as terrorist operatives, and said that they were operating drones that put soldiers at risk.
Israel’s government on Monday morning moved to shutter the Al Jazeera offices in Israel. A draft bill to close the local bureau passed in a telephone vote.
The Qatari network is vehemently anti-Israel, and incites hatred and violence against the Jewish state in the Arab world, the Israeli government has long maintained.
