The Guardian has been scrutinized frequently over its uneven and, at times, outright partisan reportage on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In the last month alone, HonestReporting has called out and complained about numerous pieces published by the left-wing British newspaper, including an “investigation” that simultaneously sought to downplay Palestinian terrorism and conflated the deaths of terrorists with that of their victims, and a story comprising mostly agency copy that had been carefully edited to twist the facts.
Our latest analysis of The Guardian’s Israel-related output has uncovered another disturbing finding: the outlet has worked with a Palestinian journalist with a history of praising terrorists who were behind several horrific terror attacks that killed dozens of innocent Israeli civilians.
Gaza City-based Aseel Mousa was bylined alongside The Guardian’s Jerusalem correspondent Bethan McKernan on an April 3 piece, “‘I am proud of my work’: the women pushing boundaries in Gaza,” which tells the story of women seeking employment opportunities in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, which is farcically labeled a “highly conservative Palestinian territory” — an interesting way of describing a place where LGBT+ individuals are jailed and where marital rape is legal.
Mousa, whose work has been featured in the Palestine Chronicle and Electronic Intifada, has posted numerous messages of support for terrorists on her personal social media accounts, such as one in which she described the Gilboa prison escapees as “brave heroes,” and another which said that Arabs should be “liberate[d]” from “Jews.”
The Gilboa prisoners, who escaped the maximum-security Israeli penitentiary in September 2021, included five members of the Iranian-backed terror group Islamic Jihad,and a former commander in the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades.
One of the five Islamic Jihad members, Eham Kamamji, was imprisoned for his role in the kidnapping and murder of an 18-year-old Israeli, while Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades’ member Zakaria Zubeidi was jailed for overseeing terror attacks against Israelis during the Second Intifada, including a suicide bombing that killed an Israeli woman, as well as multiple counts of attempting to intentionally cause death, preparing explosives, membership in a terrorist group, and the selling of weapons.
Mousa’s inclusion in The Guardian is somewhat unsurprising given the newspaper’s own unfortunate past of turning a blind eye to antisemitism and anti-Israel bias among staff members. But at what point do we acknowledge the publication has lost any remaining shred of credibility?