Militants stand during the funeral of two Palestinian Islamic Jihad gunmen who were killed in an Israeli raid, in Jenin refugee camp, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank May 10, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Raneen Sawafta

In Al Jazeera’s latest anti-Israel hit piece, the Qatar-funded news organization both whitewashed Palestinian terrorism and effectively gaslit Israelis over their concerns regarding West Bank-based violence.

In its report on the latest Israeli counter-terror raid in the northern West Bank city of Jenin, Al Jazeera’s “The Listening Post” program sought to discredit Israeli claims about Palestinian terrorism by diminishing the role that terror groups play in such volatile cities as Jenin and Nablus, while also dismissing the threat posed by these same groups.

However, as will be seen below, Al Jazeera’s assertions are based on the twisting of facts, the manipulation of reality, and other deceptive practices.

Al Jazeera’s Faulty Guide to Palestinian Terrorism

Throughout this report, Al Jazeera seeks to idealize the burgeoning terror groups that have popped up in volatile Palestinian urban centers like Jenin and Nablus, by portraying them as grassroots organizations that are composed of young fighters whose desperation forces them to take up arms in a futile fight against the Israeli army.

This narrative is best exemplified by interviewee Tariq Kenney-Shawa’s claim that the members of these groups “are basically children and teenagers,” who have “gotten to a point in their lives where they have no other option than to take up a gun, take up a rock, take up a Molotov cocktail and use it against an invading military.”

While it is true that groups like the Jenin Battalion and Lions’ Den are more decentralized than traditional Palestinian terror organizations like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), they are not the ragtag fighting forces comprised of desperate freedom-loving Palestinian youth that Al Jazeera seeks to portray.

The Jenin Battalion was initially founded by PIJ, and includes members of Hamas and the Fatah-affiliated Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades.

Most Battalion fighters are between the ages of 20 and 30, and they are reportedly the recipients of millions of shekels’ worth of arms and other military-grade equipment from PIJ, Hamas, and Iran.

The Nablus-based Lions’ Den terror group similarly features a diverse membership composed of fighters from PIJ, Hamas, and Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, as well as those who are unaffiliated. The Lions’ Den was also reportedly initially funded and armed by Hamas.

Another erroneous claim made by Al Jazeera is that these localized terror groups have taken up arms to protect themselves and their families from “invading” Israeli soldiers.

However, in truth, both the Jenin Battalion and the Lions’ Den have attacked Israeli civilians in the West Bank and pre-1967 Israel.

These attacks include:

• An attempted large-scale attack with a rifle and explosives in Tel Aviv (Lions’ Den).
• Indiscriminately firing at the Har Bracha settlement (Lions’ Den).
• The wounding of an Israeli taxi driver during a shooting attack in the West Bank (Lions’ Den).
• Indiscriminately firing at the Meirav kibbutz in northern Israel (Jenin Battalion).
• The kidnapping and murder of an Israeli-Druze teenager while being treated in a Jenin hospital following a car accident (Jenin Battalion).

Aside from its skewed impression of the Jenin Battalion and Lions’ Den, Al Jazeera is also not telling its viewers the whole story about the terror threat emanating from Jenin, Nablus, and the northern West Bank.

While the Jenin Battalion and Lions’ Den have made inroads in their specific locales, both cities are also heavily controlled by more established terrorist organizations like Islamic Jihad, Hamas and Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades.

These groups all have connections to Iran, which is seeking to destabilize the West Bank by funneling arms and money to them, propping up their expansion into the northern West Bank, and coordinating deadly attacks against Israeli civilians and security personnel.

Islamic Jihad has a particularly close relationship with the Islamic Republic and analysts have noted that following a meeting between Islamic Jihad, Hamas, and Iranian representatives in June 2023, the number of anti-Israel attacks in the West Bank quickly rose.

Thus, when Al Jazeera portrays the Palestinian terror groups in Jenin and Nablus as small grassroots organizations comprised of desperate teenagers taking up arms against the might of the Israeli military, it is diminishing the threat posed by these organizations to innocent Israeli civilians; it is ignoring the role played by larger Palestinian terror organizations in destabilizing the West Bank; and it is turning a blind eye to the subversive influence of Iran within the region.

Al Jazeera Gaslights Israelis on Jenin’s Terrorism Threat

In lockstep with its diminishment of the threat posed by Palestinian terror groups, Al Jazeera took it one step further by calling into question the nature of Israel’s counter-terror operation in Jenin itself.

According to Al Jazeera and its anti-Israel interviewees, Israel’s claim to be fighting Palestinian terrorism in Jenin is the “occupier’s version of this story,” and is essentially a false narrative.

Al Jazeera even went so far as to try and connect the raid to a recent rise in settler violence, saying, “The raid on Jenin followed a steady spiraling of violence against Palestinians, much of it driven by Jewish settlers.”

While one interviewee, HonestReporting’s Executive Director Gil Hoffman, did point out that the Jenin operation had nothing to do with settler violence, it was clear that his opinion was included in this piece only so that it could be dismissed.

By asserting that the IDF’s activities in Jenin were not truly about counter-terrorism but were primarily about inflicting violence against Palestinians and “keeping Palestinians in their place,” Al Jazeera is essentially gaslighting Israelis over their fears of the terrorist threat emanating from the Jenin area.

For Al Jazeera to claim that the Jenin raid was not about counter-terrorism, it has to willfully ignore the following facts about Jenin, terrorism ,and Israeli counter-terror operations:

• Since early 2022, there has been a sharp rise in Palestinian terror attacks against Israelis, both in the West Bank and pre-1967 Israel.
• Since the beginning of 2023, 50 shooting attacks have been committed against Israelis by Palestinians from the Jenin area.
• Since September 2022, 19 Palestinians have found refuge in the Jenin area after committing terror attacks.
• Almost 50% of Jenin’s residents identify with either Hamas or Islamic Jihad.
• The recent use of IEDs by armed Palestinian groups in Jenin shows that their methods and weapons are becoming more sophisticated.
• The recent attempts at firing rockets from the Jenin area show that local Palestinian terrorists are becoming more brazen in their targeting of Israelis.
• Between 2005 and 2021, Jenin was subject to very few Israeli counter-terror raids as the region underwent a period of relative calm and economic growth.

When Al Jazeera diminishes the impact of Jenin-based Palestinian terror groups and attempts to spin Israel’s counter-terrorism activities as wanton anti-Palestinian violence, it is not only deceiving its audience and exchanging journalistic integrity for propaganda tactics, but it is also emboldening Palestinian terrorism and endangering the day-to-day lives of innocent Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank and throughout Israel.