A Hamas document Israel recovered from the Gaza Strip indicates that a freelance “journalist” who worked with two major corporate media outlets was also a propagandist for the Palestinian terror group.
The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) published a 2019 Hamas document on Sunday that shows former CNN and Associated Press (AP) freelance photographer Hassan Aslih was a Hamas member tasked with creating “media” in support of the terrorist group. The IDF killed Aslih in a Tuesday airstrike and released the recovered Hamas document to demonstrate Aslih was no mere “journalist,” as he has been described in some media coverage of his death.
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“Aslih was a Hamas operative who posed as a journalist,” IDF spokesperson Nadav Shoshani posted to X on Sunday. “On October 7, (2023,) he infiltrated Israeli territory alongside armed terrorists, filming scenes of murder, arson, and looting. His footage wasn’t news coverage but it was part of the attack itself, intended to glorify terror.”
The recovered records from Hamas’ military wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades, show Aslih — whose name appears to have different spellings — belonging to a “platoon” for the terror group focused on “media.” The record describes little about his role beyond “training.”
The AP did not respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation. Notably, Israel accused the AP in 2021 of sharing office space with Hamas in Gaza, though the organization denied having any knowledge of Hamas’ connection to the building.
The AP also faces a lawsuit from Oct. 7 victims and their families for using Aslih’s photographs, according to The Times of Israel. Documents from the case showed that the pro-Israel group Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA) warned the AP of Aslih’s ties to Hamas as early as 2018.
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The AP and CNN announced they would no longer work with Aslih in November 2023 after allegations surfaced that he and other freelance journalists who covered the Oct. 7 attacks were linked to Hamas. Aslih was seen posing in a photo with now-deceased Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar kissing him on the cheek.
“No AP staff were at the border at the time of the attacks, nor did any AP staffer cross the border at any time,” the AP said at the time. The publication said Aslih was “an occasional freelancer for AP and other international news organizations in Gaza.”
CNN declined to comment, but a representative for the outlet told the DCNF that Aslih was not working with CNN during the Oct. 7 attacks when Hamas killed more than 1,100 Israelis, raped women and took hundreds of hostages. The representative said CNN and other international and Israeli publications occasionally used Aslih’s photos.
“Shortly after Oct. 7, 2023, we called out those media that employed Hassan Eslaiah as a freelance photojournalist despite his infiltration into Israel during the Hamas massacre and his obvious links to terrorism,” reads a Monday post to X from HonestReporting, a watchdog group that originally reported the photo of Aslih and Sinwar.
“We received an enormous amount of pushback,” the group said. But we were right.”
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First published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
