Al Jazeera Challenged by the Gaza Street

A political earthquake shook Gaza this week. Its tremors continue to reverberate. Protests demanding the end of Hamas’s governance of Gaza and holding it responsible for the destruction of the enclave began in Beit Lahiya and have expanded to Khan Younis, where former head of Hamas Yahya Sinwar lived, and beyond.

While Hamas, which Gaza’s protestors called terrorists, was the primary target of the protests, those who took to the streets did not hold back on their ire at what they see as Hamas’s media mouthpiece: Al Jazeera.

“No no to Al Jazeera. The people are the truth,” protesters called out in Gaza City.

Hamza Howidy, a Palestinian human rights advocate, proclaimed in a tweet, “Not only did Al Jazeera not report our people’s demands, protests, and how they risked their lives for it, but they are now attempting to shift the narrative and the protestors’ demands, just like they did with the ‘We Want to Live’ protests in 2019, desperately trying to hide the reality about Gaza, that we’re done with Hamas and we no longer want them to rule us or for this war to continue.”

The protesters, who chanted “down with the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood,” see Al Jazeera as a promoter of the Brotherhood, a standard-bearer for Islamist groups around the world.

The State of Qatar launched the state-backed media network in 1996 when regional players had hoped it would become a truly independent news outlet. Those hopes have been dashed, even while the channel seeks to portray itself as the “BBC of the Middle East.”

Critics underscore that Al Jazeera is beholden to the Gulf emirate’s journalistic wishes by pointing to Qatari law that expressly prohibits the network from criticizing the emir, Qatar’s head of state. Al Jazeera is widely seen as the soft power tool the wealthy emirate uses to boost and empower Islamists — namely, the global Muslim Brotherhood, including its Gazan branch, Hamas.

Al Jazeera has previously faced protests and bans for its support for the Muslim Brotherhood. In Egypt, protests against Al Jazeera occurred after the 2013 coup as it was accused of backing the ousted Brotherhood government, leading to office closures and journalist arrests.

In 2017, when Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt had a diplomatic fallout with Qatar, they presented 13 demands to Qatar, including a major shift in Al Jazeera’s pro-Islamist editorial line. The countries banned Al Jazeera.

Today, Al Jazeera is not merely a television channel but also a well-funded communications empire funded and directed by the Qatari state’s messaging apparatus. Academic institutions, media companies, and human rights organizations that have formal or informal ties with the Al Jazeera Media Network’s many platforms, or the slew of centers and institutes it houses and funds, will be challenged to evaluate these relationships as Palestinians themselves pull back the veil and expose what they see as Al Jazeera’s motives.

Ahmad Fouad Alkhatib, a Gaza-born Palestinian who has lost 33 family members in the Gaza war, and today is a scholar at the Atlantic Council, put it this way in a tweet as the protests rage on: “Aljazeera’s fake ‘journalists’ & mercenaries are working overtime trying to serve their Islamist overlords & save Hamas from collapse! Never forget that Aljazeera is the media arm of Hamas; Aljazeera=Hamas. But the people of Gaza finally see through both. There’s no going back.”

Howidy, who was also born in the Gaza Strip, zeroed in for a rebuke of Anas al Sherif, one of Al Jazeera’s main reporters in Gaza. He posted on X: “Al Jazeera’s journalist, who hid while the protestors were looking for anyone to cover the anti-war & anti-Hamas protests, is working to change the narrative and the demands of the protestors: We want to end the war and Hamas to step down from ruling Gaza.”

Al Jazeera nominally reported on the protests but did not reflect their dominant theme in its coverage, which was captured by the protestors in their chant “Barra, barra, barra, Hamas,” or “Out, out, out, Hamas.”

The angry sentiment being expressed in the streets of Gaza is not about biased reporting or disputes over any one particular incident. Rather, the protestors are reflecting the view that for years, Al Jazeera’s goal was to prop up Hamas.

One Gaza-born Palestinian told me he saw Al Jazeera as responsible for falsely representing a domestic and global image of Hamas as the protector of Palestinians when Hamas, he said, is responsible for initiating the 2023 war and for the ensuing devastation. Reflecting the sentiment of the protestors, he holds Al Jazeera responsible for Hamas “squandering billions of donated humanitarian aid dollars over the two decades since it began its rule over Gaza, money that was supposed to help Gazans build decent lives but instead resulted in destroying their future.”

Many had feared saying the quiet part out loud until now because doing so put them at risk of being the victim of Hamas’s brutal historic response to those who cross it. Videos surfaced of Hamas attacking protestors on the first day of the protests.

While the hours witnessed hundreds protesting, the numbers increased into the thousands.

Some believe that the anti-Hamas protests are coordinated with Hamas’s leadership as a ploy to get aid flowing into the strip once again. This seems reasonable given how Hamas deceived Israel’s leadership into believing the terrorist group was not interested in another war prior to the October 7, 2023, massacre in Israel.

Aid, which flowed into Gaza during the recent ceasefire, halted after Hamas, which is designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union, and a dozen or so other countries, rejected extending the ceasefire with Israel, which, in turn, has led Israel to pause aid going into Gaza. Nearly 60 hostages remain in Gaza with about half believed to have been killed in captivity. The other hostages are being kept in inhumane conditions in airless tunnels, while others are being kept in civilian quarters, according to hostages now back in Israel.

Will Al Jazeera continue to be a target of the Gaza street? Nuseir Yassin, an online influencer with 145,000 followers on X — born in Israel to a Palestinian Muslim family — who has openly expressed his views that are now being echoed by the protesters, envisions a time when the Qatari network is brought down: Using lowercase letters in his post on X, he wrote this week: “last year, thousands of people sent me death threats because i said ‘yes to peace.’ now the people of Gaza are screaming it too. what happened? our message last year was not popular. everyone was poisoned by aljazeera. and the online mob has no independent thought. times are changing. 2025 is our year to take back the narrative. i can’t wait to see aljazeera, its financiers, the online mob, and hamas be thrown away to the dustbins of history.”

Those who have a stake in peace in Gaza should take note of the voices of those protesting on the dusty streets of Gaza and those who are speaking out on social media, where the story is largely unfolding. While traditional media may fail to adequately cover their story, the view that Al Jazeera is Qatar’s tool to prop up Hamas’s nefarious role in and beyond Gaza has been made unmistakably clear.

Toby Dershowitz is managing director of FDD Action, a non-partisan organization established to advocate for effective policies to promote U.S. national security interests. Follow her on X @tobydersh.