IDF soldiers traveling in a military vehicle along the Israel-Gaza border. Photo: Reuters/Amir Cohen

Social media has been buzzing with rumors about journalist and former Hamas Labor Ministry Spokesperson Abdallah Aljamal’s role in holding three of the since-rescued hostages — Almog Meir-Jan, Shlomi Ziv, and Andrey Kozlov — in his family’s apartment in Gaza.

Sure enough, several media outlets have spun this story to fit their narrative — including CNN. It published a piece last week titled “Israel Alleges Journalist Held Hostages in Gaza, Without Providing Evidence.”

Yet when compared to how CNN covers Gaza’s side of the story, the contrast is night and day.

If you look really closely, you’ll notice a difference in how CNN treats claims from Israel and from Hamas.

Can you spot it? pic.twitter.com/wlwXrb919c

— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) June 10, 2024

The article suggests that Israel makes claims with zero accountability: “Three hostages rescued during a deadly Israeli military operation on the Nuseirat camp,” it writes, “were held captive by a journalist …” saying that the IDF “alleged” this information, “without providing evidence to support their claim.”

In the case of Israel, a military must provide “evidence” of its intelligence to the public, whereas the Hamas-run Gazan Health Ministry does not have to provide evidence of their numbers or how their civilians were killed.

Perhaps this discrepancy is driven by the fact that Aljamal was a journalist, or by the fact that he was Palestinian, or maybe it is because the IDF is involved. It could be all three.

However, calling CNN’s work unbiased journalism is incorrect. If the IDF has intelligence about where hostages are located, one could only assume that intelligence would indicate who is holding the hostages.

As it turns out, Aljamal was a past contributor for Al Jazeera, and regularly wrote for the Palestine Chronicle – a US-registered non-profit organization based in Washington State — which has links with both Hamas and the Islamic regime of Iran, according to an investigation done by the Washington Free Beacon.

According to the Palestine Chronicle, Aljamal’s articles were consistently about the Gaza humanitarian situation. Meanwhile, he had been holding Israeli civilian hostages for months in his family home, and barely feeding them.

🚨 WILD: Was a journalist working for the US-based 501(c)(3) organization, The Palestine Chronicle, helping hold Israelis hostage in Gaza? pic.twitter.com/UhZLjsgYf6

— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) June 9, 2024

The Palestine Chronicle acknowledged Aljamal on its website as a regular “contributor,” unlike Al Jazeera, which all but denied any connection to him. However, as can be seen below, there still may have been a diminishing of his role at the paper.

Abdullah Al-Jamal was not a “freelance contributor” for the Palestine Chronicle. As the outlet itself has repeatedly stated, he was in fact its “correspondent in Gaza.”

They clearly changed the bio to try and avoid legal repercussions pic.twitter.com/i6cu22ZXTE

— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) June 10, 2024

Regardless of Aljamal’s journalistic career, the IDF gathered intelligence proving that he was holding Israeli hostages in his home. Does that mean he is untouchable? It is also impossible to ignore the fact that he was linked to Hamas, since he was the former spokesperson for the Hamas-run Gaza Labor Ministry. Whatever their “evidence” may be, the IDF hasn’t shared it. But must they?

If a military, any military, gathers intelligence and carries out an operation based on that intelligence, it is completely legitimate — especially at first — to keep evidence of such intelligence under wraps. This is certainly true for sensitive intelligence such as this. There are still approximately 120 hostages, alive and dead, being held captive by terrorists in the Gaza Strip. If the IDF wishes to conduct more rescue operations, it must be assumed that keeping intelligence secret is necessary.

CNN can maintain that the IDF needs to provide “evidence” to “claims” about secret intelligence. But they are wrong to equate the IDF with a dishonest, savage terror organization, and to portray Hamas as righteous freedom-fighting saints.

The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.