Amnesty Australia awarded its Human Rights Defender Award on Wednesday to three self-proclaimed “journalists” from the Gaza Strip, two of whom are members of recognized terror groups proscribed by Canberra.
Anas Al-Sharif, Bisan Owda and Plestia Alaqad were honored alongside “all the journalists in Gaza” for their “extraordinary resilience, bravery and courage,” Amnesty Australia said in a statement on social media.
In October, the Israel Defense Forces identified an Al Jazeera reporter by the name of Anas Al-Sharif as a Hamas terrorist operative. According to the military, al-Sharif was the head of a rocket-launching squad and a member of the Nukhba Force, which led the Hamas terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
During the attacks, in which 1,200 people were murdered, he wrote on his Telegram account, “Nine hours and the heroes are still roaming the country, killing and capturing. Allah, how great you are.”
Al-Sharif has been pictured with Mahmoud al-Zahar, a founder of the Hamas terrorist organization; Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind behind the Oct. 7 assault, who was eliminated by the Israel Defense Forces in October; and senior “political” official Fathi Hammad, who in 2021 urged Arabs to “cut off the heads of the Jews.”
Spreading misinformation and propaganda
Bisan Owda, described by Amnesty as a “Palestinian journalist, activist and filmmaker,” is reportedly an active member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which participated in the Oct. 7 atrocities, and which Australia designated a terror group some two decades ago.
In 2015 and 2016, Owda is said to have led celebrations in the Strip for the group’s founding anniversary, appearing in full PFLP military garb.
In the aftermath of Oct. 7, Owda reportedly wrote on her social-media accounts, “For every action, there is a reaction. This means: What was expected after 75 years of occupation and 17 years of siege?”
Alaqad, an “aspiring journalist” who has been featured in various outlets since Oct. 7, including The Washington Post and The Guardian, has been known to spread pro-Hamas propaganda and anti-Israel libels.
According to the HonestReporting watchdog group, Alaqad on Oct. 17, 2023, claimed the IDF committed a “massacre” of 1,000 Palestinians at Gaza’s Al-Ahli Hospital. In reality, the explosion in the hospital’s parking lot was found to have been caused by an errant rocket from Gaza. A European official told AFP that 10 to 50 people had died in the blast.
JNS sought comment from the Australian National Security about whether support for Hamas and PFLP operatives violates local law.
On Dec. 5, Amnesty International released a report titled “You Feel Like You Are Subhuman': Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza.”
The 296-page file accused Israel of “prohibited acts under the Genocide Convention—namely killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm and deliberately inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction in whole or in part.”
The Israeli branch of Amnesty immediately and publicly rejected the claims that the Jewish state is perpetrating genocide in the Gaza Strip.
“Our careful analysis does not find that the findings meet the definition of genocide, as carefully formulated in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,” wrote the Israeli NGO, which is legally independent of Amnesty London headquarters.
In 2022, Amnesty called Jerusalem’s treatment of Palestinian Arabs “apartheid,” a conclusion that staff members of Amnesty Israel called “problematic,” “flawed” and at risk of producing “an adverse effect.”
