People hold Hamas flags as Palestinians gather after performing the last Friday of Ramadan, May 7, 2021. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad

In the early hours of Sunday, September 24, 2023, Israeli forces conducted a counter-terrorism raid in the Nour Shams refugee camp near Tulkarem.

During the operation, which focused on dismantling a terror command center and bomb warehouse, a gunfight erupted between Israeli forces and Palestinian gunmen.

Two Palestinians were subsequently killed during this clash.

However, in reporting on this raid, several mainstream media outlets either buried the fact that one of those killed, Osaid Abu Ali, was a member of the internationally recognized terror group Hamas, or ignored it altogether.

In its coverage of recent violence in both the West Bank and Gaza, the Associated Press described the Nur Shams operation in its first paragraph as “an Israeli military raid in the northern West Bank that Palestinian health officials said killed two Palestinians.”

However, the fact that one of those killed was claimed as a member by Hamas is buried in the article’s 11th paragraph. Until that point, it appears as if he was an innocent bystander, not a combatant belonging to a terror organization.

Why does @AP only mention in the story’s 11th paragraph that Abu Ali was claimed by Hamas?

Stop burying the facts!https://t.co/Yx3bXQLV4l pic.twitter.com/1tBjUQM6Se

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) September 26, 2023

For its part, the AFP wire service’s report was headlined “Israeli Forces Kill 2 Palestinians in West Bank Raid: Ministry.”

It is six paragraphs into the piece before the reader is informed that one of those killed was affiliated with Hamas.

In an article headlined “Two Palestinian men killed during Israeli incursion in camp near Tulkarem,” CNN never once mentioned that one of those killed during the counter-terrorism operation was a Hamas member.

Hey @cnn, how about revealing the fact that one of those killed was a militant?

Hamas, a proscribed terror group, claimed him as a member.

Don’t you think it’s important your audience knows that?https://t.co/QnmFgMyOPg pic.twitter.com/lF21baxwIQ

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) September 26, 2023

Similarly, in a video on both its website and YouTube channel, NBC News gave its audience absolutely zero context and merely captioned it “Palestinians hold funeral for two killed by Israeli forces in West Bank.”

One would have to be knowledgeable in internal Palestinian politics to discern the Hamas flags within the footage and draw the proper conclusion.

Unsurprisingly, the anti-Israel news outlet Al Jazeera was also silent on Abu Ali’s Hamas affiliation.

Instead, the Qatar-backed media organization spun the counter-terror operation as “the latest in a stepped-up campaign of violence targeting Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.”

The identity of one of the Palestinians killed as a member of Hamas is not the only terror-related news story from Israel that mainstream media organizations either downplayed or ignored entirely.

On the same day as the raid in Nour Shams, the Israeli military announced that it had arrested eight Palestinian students at Birzeit University in the West Bank who are suspected of being members of a Hamas terror cell that was planning an imminent attack on Israeli civilians.

This story was only carried briefly by the Associated Press and Reuters, and was relegated to the last lines of reports on the Nour Shams camp operation and increasing violence along the Gaza border.

8 students arrested as Israeli security forces bust Hamas terror cell at West Bank university https://t.co/QkiDMPm0BW

— i24NEWS English (@i24NEWS_EN) September 24, 2023

Another story that received scant media attention was a declaration by three Palestinian terror groups, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, on the eve of the holiest day on the Jewish calendar that they were going to increase coordination in the escalation of violence and terrorism against Israeli targets.

As of this writing, not one mainstream media organization outside of Israel has reported on this development.

Israeli counter-terrorism operations do not exist within a vacuum. When media outlets downplay or ignore the growing terrorist threat to the Jewish state but focus extensively on the Israeli response, they are not only failing to provide readers with a proper understanding of the region, but they are aiding in the manipulation of the narrative by those who seek to negatively portray Israel on the international stage.

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.