@SharonEllis This man was not a regular reporter with AlJazeera. He contributed to a single op ed more than 5 years ago. He was likely a long term part time terrorist writing occasional propaganda pieces for an on-line ( and I suspect, Iran backed), US publication.According to the Times of Israel, he was previously a spokesman for the Gaza labour ministry in the Hamas run administration and his family had strong ties to the organisation at a number of levels, so a single op ed would obviously have a public interest aspect in the sense that if you want to know what’s going on in Gaza you’d ask an Hamas insider.
However, it seems that the piece in question was more of an advocacy/ propaganda piece about maltreatment of Palestinians in Israeli jailsand the stories of his interviewees speak for themselves. Aljamal co- wrote 7 introductory paragraphs- outlining that there were 5000+ Palestinians in prison, 250of them children and almost 500 of them interned without trial (“administrative detention”).The alleged purpose of the piece was to highlight mistreatment of prisoners and the likely deterioration of their treatment if a proposed clampdown on prisoner rights went ahead.The remainder of the piece basically consisted of detailed personal accounts of alleged mistreatment in Israeli jails- written in the first person by a variety of people- male female, young, old. The accounts seem to be pretty consistent with what human rights organisations have reported but obviously it’s not possible to state if they are factual or not from the article.
The co- author of the piece was the editor of the Palestine chronicle- Aljamal’s regular gig. Al Jazeera stated the following disclaimer in relation to the piece:
“The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance”
So make of that what you want but to me it doesn’t particularly discredit Al Jazeera.Also, we don’t know at what stage Aljamal took up terrorism- it might have been after this point that he took that step. Should a news organisation consult an astrologer every time a human interest piece is published , just in case the journalist decides to become a kidnapper