Should “Hell” For Hamas Include Its Media Propaganda Arms?

When President-elect Donald Trump announced that “hell will break out” if Hamas doesn’t return the hostages that it brutally seized from Israel, this site pondered whether the Hamas-dominated Palestinian Authority and Hamas-affiliated-UNRWA will be targets of the United States. It stands to reason that the media companies and sites of Qatar-owned Al Jazeera and Palestinian run-Wafa should be shut down in the United States under the same principle.

Al Jazeera has long been a mouthpiece of Hamas. Saudi Arabia shut down the media operations in 2017 stating that “the move comes after Al Jazeera promoted the plots of terrorist groups, supported the Houthi militias in Yemen, and tried to break internal ranks with Saudi Arabia by and harming its sovereignty.” Israel decided to shutter AJ’s operations in May 2024, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying “the incitement channel Al Jazeera will be closed in Israel.” Even the Palestinian Authority, perhaps looking to curry favor from the incoming Trump administration, decided last week to shut down Al Jazeera in the West Bank.

Yet Al Jazeera continues to have access to the White House, attending briefing sessions and questioning government officials publicly. The Biden administration even came to the defense of Al Jazeera and questioned why Israel closed the Hamas mouthpiece:

This activity came from the same administration that shut down dozens of Iranian press sites in 2021. Pure hypocrisy.

Al Jazeera has been fanning the flames of antisemitism in the Muslim world for years, claiming that Jews are “storming” the Al Aqsa Mosque in the Old City of Jerusalem. This is an echo of the Palestinian news site Wafa which continues to attempt to enlist the Muslim world to demand a Jew-free Temple Mount. The New York Times picks up on the propaganda and spreads it to its global liberal readers, cementing the socialist-jihadi alliance.

Even today, Wafa calls all Jews who are in Israel “colonists” who “storm the courtyards of Al-Aqsa Mosque”, just by visiting Judaism’s holiest site, insisting that the only worshipers be Muslim.

It is highly probable that Trump will reverse course of the Biden administration, and ban Al Jazeera from the White House briefings. It will be interesting to see if the ban will cover all U.S. operations, and extend to Palestinian media as well.