The Israeli government on Thursday accused freelance photographers from several major news organizations, including The New York Times, of being “complicit” in the killing and kidnapping of Israeli soldiers and civilians by Hamas fighters – an accusation that The Times vehemently denied about its freelancer.
The administration seized on a report from a pro-Israel media watchdog group, Honest Reporting, which long criticized The Times and other news organizations for their anti-Israel bias in their coverage of the conflict with the Palestinians.
“These journalists were complicit in crimes against humanity,” the Prime Minister’s Office’s public diplomacy department said in a terse statement. “Their actions were contrary to professional ethics.”
In its report, the watchdog group questioned why six Gaza-based photographers, all working for The Associated Press and Reuters, were so early in documenting Hamas’s Oct. 7 incursion into Israel. The journalists photographed an Israeli tank that was destroyed on the Gaza Strip border shortly after the militants broke through a fence and swarmed into Israeli territory.
It said one of the photographers, Hassan Eslaiah, took pictures of a burning house in Kibbutz Kfar Azza, a target of the deadly militant attack, while two others documented Hamas fighters transporting kidnapped Israelis back to Gaza. These harrowing images were all published by The Associated Press, as was a Reuters photo of a crowd carrying the body of an Israeli soldier.
While a fourth AP photographer named in the report, Yousef Masoud, has worked as a freelancer for The Times since shortly after the start of the war, he was not on assignment for the newspaper on the morning of Oct. 7, according to a statement of the times. The Times rejected suggestions that it had given advance warning of the attacks or that it had accompanied Hamas terrorists, calling the claims “false and outrageous.” It also said there was “no evidence to support Honest Reporting’s insinuations” about Mr Masoud.
“It is reckless to make these accusations, which endangers our journalists in Israel and Gaza,” the statement said. “The Times has reported extensively on the October 7 attacks and the war with fairness, impartiality and an enduring understanding of the complexities of the conflict.”
The Times said it reviewed Mr. Masoud’s work for The Associated Press on Oct. 7 and found that “he did what photojournalists always do during major news events: document the tragedy as it unfolded.”
In their review of Mr. Masoud’s work, The Times editors noted that the first photo he sent to the AP — of the destroyed Israeli tank — was taken more than 90 minutes after the attack began, an editor said of The Times who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss an internal matter. Mr. Masoud told his editors, this person said, that he was awakened by the sound of rocket fire at his home in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, shortly after 5:30 a.m. on Saturday morning.
Mr Masoud said he later went to the border, where he saw that the fence had been breached and an Israeli tank had been destroyed. He told Times editors that he did not linger in Israel or photograph abductees or brutal acts of Hamas fighters.
The furor over the Gaza photographers is part of a broader information war that has raged alongside the actual war. Claims and counterclaims, often based on doctored images or disinformation, emerge daily on social media sites, aiming to tilt the public narrative in one direction or another.
A claim by Hamas last month that an Israeli military strike hit the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City, killing 500 people, was reported by The Times, BBC, CNN and other news organizations. Israeli and US intelligence agencies later claimed that the explosion was caused by a wayward Palestinian missile.
An additional challenge for Western news organizations in covering the war is that their staff correspondents and photographers have very limited access to Gaza. Israel has barred journalists from entering the area unless accompanied by the military, and Egypt has also blocked access. Hamas, which controls Gaza, imposes sweeping restrictions on what reporters can report. As a result, most media outlets rely on local reporters and photographers living in the enclave.
Honest Reporting said it stood by its reporting. “If The New York Times can defend the right of photojournalists to document the atrocities of October 7,” the statement said, “we as a media watchdog have a responsibility to question the role of photographers that day.”
The Associated Press also said it had no prior knowledge of the attack. But a statement said it was no longer cooperating with Mr Eslaiah, who submitted the first and most extensive photographs of the attack.
There were other warning signs about Mr. Eslaiah. He posed for a photo while being kissed by Yahya Sinwar, a Hamas leader who masterminded the attack. Amit Segal, an Israeli journalist, posted a video on X, formerly known as Twitter, claiming that Mr Eslaiah was riding a motorcycle in Israel while holding a hand grenade.
Mr Eslaiah confirmed in an interview that he had been given a ride back to Gaza from Israel, but said he was not the person carrying the grenade. He said he had no prior knowledge of the attack and had no ties to Hamas, despite the photo with Mr. Sinwar. “I’m very worried and scared,” he said.
Mr Eslaiah suggested there was a double standard, noting that Israeli journalists had accompanied the Israeli army to Gaza to report on their ground operation. “Why are we not allowed, but they are?” he said.
In a statement, CNN, which also employs Mr Eslaiah, said: “While we have found no reason at this time to doubt the journalistic accuracy of the work he has done for us, we have decided to remove all ties from him. to suspend. ”
Similarly, Reuters said it “categorically denies that it had prior knowledge of the attack or that we hired journalists from Hamas on October 7.”
The news agency said it obtained the photos from two Gaza-based photographers, with whom it had no previous relationship, and that they were taken “two hours after Hamas fired rockets over southern Israel and more than 45 minutes after Israel said Armed Forces men had crossed the border.”
It is not the first time that Honest Reporting has asked questions about a freelance employee of The Times from Gaza. Soliman Hijjy, a freelance filmmaker who recently made a video report on the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital bombing, was criticized for a Facebook post in 2012 in which he shared a meme that appeared to praise Adolf Hitler.
The Times declined to discuss his case, citing several issues, including security concerns. In a statement to Honest Reporting last month, the newspaper said it had discussed these and other “problematic” social media posts with Mr Hijjy in 2022 and that he had committed to adhering to the newspaper’s standards. The Times said he had done this, “doing important and impartial work at great personal risk in Gaza during this conflict.”
She is Abuheweila contributed reporting from Cairo.