Israeli military, Jenin area, West Bank, August 31, 2024. Photo: Israeli Army/Handout via REUTERS

ABC News wanted a good story on Israel’s anti-terror operation in Jenin last week.

But as usual, instead of doing some independent digging, foreign media rely on fixers to hook them up with the “best” interviewees — those who can speak about their suffering and displacement, while painting Israel as an aggressor.

And so the network’s Britt Clennett found herself talking to members of only one family in town — the Zubeidis. Did she know they were linked to various terrorists, including a very infamous one recently released as part of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal? Did she try to get other voices or challenge the choice of sources? If she did, she didn’t disclose it.

The result was that ABC News’s consumers were served Palestinian propaganda under the guise of authentic reporting.

The most ridiculous part of the multimedia piece is when Clennett interviews Jamal Zubeidi as “a displaced Palestinian,” without telling her viewers he is a close relative of none other than arch-terrorist Zakaria Zubeidi — a mass murderer who Israel recently released in return for Hamas hostages.

And despite the interviewee’s own admission of having ties to jailed relatives, ABC News just couldn’t — or wouldn’t — put two and two together.

So the network’s consumers are left with naive news-writing like this:

This war is disrupting almost every aspect of daily life, and there seems to be no end in sight. Jamal Al-Zubaidi has lost two sons in the fighting, another son is injured, and a fourth is in jail.

Did it not occur to anyone at ABC News that these might be terrorists? That the network is giving an exclusive platform to terror supporters masked as innocent victims? Especially when the truth is hiding in plain sight, readily available to any professional journalist who doesn’t want to sound like a pro-Palestinian outlet:

And here, with a complete lack of transparency, ABC News presents this terror-linked family as sheep that fell prey to violence:

Just days ago, the Al Zubeidi family, comprised of a grandfather, grandmother, and 10 grandchildren, was forced to flee their town of Jenin in the occupied West Bank. Jenin is known as a militant stronghold, a place that has witnessed little to no peace.

And ABC’s dramatic narration presented a false narrative while omitting key facts about who the Zubeidis are.

While language and culture gaps may explain why foreign media in the region must rely on local fixers, they don’t absolve the reporters and editors who need to cast doubt and check every piece of information.

Why did ABC News fail to ask their interviewees some difficult questions, about supporting the murder of Israelis and about terrorists embedding themselves in their homes? Why didn’t the name Zubeidi ring any alarm bells on the news desk?

ABC News could have selected many other interviewees in Jenin. It could have spoken to Israeli terror victims. It could have reported on a complex reality in a balanced way.

Instead, it reduced reality to a one-sided, terror-tainted narrative.

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.