The news comes as US, Israeli, and Hamas negotiators are holding talks to finalize Trump’s Gaza peace plan
Qatar, facing pressure from President Donald Trump, has pushed its Hamas-linked news outlet Al Jazeera to reduce “incitement” to terror throughout the Middle East, according to a Monday report.
“What’s going on at Al Jazeera? If you go onto its website, you’ll see relatively mild news items, as opposed to the incitement that is usually prominent on the Qatari propaganda network,” Israel’s Channel 12 journalist Amit Segal reported in an X post. Segal went on to cite his colleague Ehud Yaari, who said Qatar is “carrying out a purge” at Al Jazeera and that the network has started to focus more on the humanitarian situation in Gaza, “instead of praising and boasting about the actions of Hamas’ military wing.”
Al Jazeera’s shift, Yaari noted, is “apparently part of understandings between [Qatar] and the United States, under which Al Jazeera will reduce the amount of incitement it spreads throughout the Middle East.”
The news comes as Israeli, Hamas, and U.S. negotiators are meeting in Egypt to finalize Trump’s peace plan. Shortly after Trump issued an ultimatum on Friday, Hamas agreed to release all Israeli hostages, though the terror group made no mention of disarmament. Trump has urged negotiators to “MOVE FAST” and said that Hamas faces “obliteration” should it refuse to give up power in Gaza.
Hamas and Al Jazeera officials in a recent call agreed that “Trump and Netanyahu forced the Qataris to change direction,” an intelligence official told Segal. “Hamas is very unhappy with the changes at Al Jazeera,” the official noted.
The Qatari state-owned outlet has long faced scrutiny for spreading anti-Israel propaganda and inflaming tensions throughout the Middle East. “Al Jazeera is not a news organization, it is a mouthpiece for terrorists like Hamas,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) told the Washington Free Beacon last month.
In February, American victims of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel sued Al Jazeera and its American affiliate Al Jazeera International for “providing substantial assistance” to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), both of which are U.S.-designated terrorist groups. The lawsuit identifies at least a half-dozen Al Jazeera employees who double as Hamas and PIJ operatives and accuses the outlet of conspiring with these terror groups from the lead-up to Oct. 7 until now.
The intelligence official also noted that Al Jazeera’s homepage “really doesn’t look the same as it did a week ago (back then—dozens of articles about Gaza and against Israel. Now, you can see for yourself—a neutral main headline, another fairly neutral one about the flotilla, and that’s it).”
“If this is a real shift, it’s a huge game changer,” the official told Segal.
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