Damage Done: How Al Jazeera’s Fake Rape Story Harmed Israel’s Reputation in Less than 24 Hours

A popular adage states that “a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.”

In this day and age of social media and up-to-the-minute news, it has never been faster for a lie to travel around the world — and it’s been even harder for the truth to try and catch up.

That was the case last week, when Al Jazeera spread a malicious libel about Israeli soldiers raping Palestinian women in Al-Shifa Hospital during the IDF’s ongoing campaign against entrenched Hamas forces there, before quietly removing the story and trying to silently bury it.

Former managing editor of Al Jazeera: allegations of rape at Shifa were all made up, designed to whip up public anger. pic.twitter.com/WjupfO8l1E

— Eylon Levy (@EylonALevy) March 25, 2024

On the morning of March 24, Al Jazeera Arabic’s principal news presenter, Elsy Abi Assi (who is no stranger to antisemitism and denial of Hamas atrocities), interviewed a Gazan woman by the name of Jamila Al-Hessi on live TV. She claimed that Israeli soldiers operating in Al-Shifa Hospital were raping Palestinian women and brutally murdering other Palestinians sheltering in the medical complex.

These allegations soon spread like wildfire on social media, with popular anti-Israel accounts picking up the story and disseminating it to their large English-speaking audiences.

Then, that night, Yasser Abuhilalah, an Al Jazeera columnist and former director, tweeted that a Hamas investigation into these allegations had concluded that they were not true, and that Jamila Al-Hessi had justified her on-air deception by claiming that she had exaggerated her claims in order to “arouse the nation’s fervor and brotherhood.”

According to some analysts, Hamas had decided to issue a rare public denial of these claims since its dissemination among Palestinians in northern Gaza was having the opposite effect than was intended: Instead of producing enmity against Israel, these allegations had caused Palestinians to flee the area in fear for their safety.

Hamas admits: Reports of IDF raping Palestinian women at Shifa hospital are fake; Gaza woman interviewed by Al-Jazeera made it up; why is Hamas admitting it? fake rape story backfired, prompted many families to flee northern Gaza to protect their daughters; this is not what Hamas…

— Israel Radar (@IsraelRadar_com) March 25, 2024

By the next day, Al Jazeera had removed references to Al-Hessi’s claims from its online platforms, but never formally retracted these libels, even though it had uncritically aired them in the first place.

However, by that point, it was too late. The damage to Israel’s reputation had already been done.

In less than 24 hours, millions of people had already viewed Jamila Al-Hessi’s lies on social media and, despite the denial by Hamas itself, continue to do so through a variety of anti-Israel accounts.

As of this last Thursday alone, the story had been viewed 2.3 million times on the X (formerly Twitter) account of Middle East Eye, 918,000 times on the X account of “investigative journalist” Sulaiman Ahmed, 405,000 times on the X account of “human rights activist”/Hamas supporter Ramy Abdu, and over 305,000 times on the X account of alternative media outlet The Cradle.

Some (including Sana Saeed, a journalist affiliated with Al Jazeera) have even gone so far as to voice skepticism of Hamas’ discrediting of Al-Hessi’s story.

BREAKING: ISRAELIS RAPED WOMEN AT AL-SHIFA CONFIRMED BY EYEWITNESS

Palestinian woman Jamila Al-Hisi:

“Israeli Occupation forces have raped and killed women in the vicinity of the hospital” pic.twitter.com/jganqfY5sc

— Sulaiman Ahmed (@ShaykhSulaiman) March 23, 2024

A horrific testimony from a Palestinian woman upon her exit from Shifa Hospital.
Women have been subjected to rape, starvation, torture, and extrajudicial execution, and the @ICRC is doing nothing.

شهادة مروعة لفلسطينية لحظة خروجها من مستشفى الشفاء.
تعرضت النساء للاغتصاب وتعرضنا… pic.twitter.com/NYAgUDKb1w

— Ramy Abdu| رامي عبده (@RamAbdu) March 23, 2024

The allegation of rape by IDF soldiers in Al-Shifa Hospital is not the first lie about Israel and the IDF that has been spread since Hamas’ October 7 terror attack and the subsequent Israeli invasion of Gaza.

However, in this case, it was not spread by a lone social media activist or a fringe news source, but by a news organization that enjoys a veneer of respectability among both news consumers and media outlets around the world.

Despite it serving as an official mouthpiece of the authoritarian Qatari regime, and being accused of echoing Hamas talking points, Al Jazeera is viewed as a trusted source of information about Israel and the Palestinians during the current conflict, as well as over the past several years.

In 2022, HonestReporting uncovered that Al Jazeera had been cited by 16 “top-tier news outlets” 116 times in Israel-related news stories, with most never mentioning the Qatari media organization’s inherent bias.

Also, if not for Hamas deciding that the libel about rapes in Al-Shifa Hospital was not in its best interest and issuing a denial of the allegations, it is highly likely that Al Jazeera would have continued to run with this fabrication as a trusted news story.

It’s now been exactly 24 hours since the “Shifa rape” hoax was exposed, and @AlJazeera has yet to publish an official retraction https://t.co/yGcAQGctx9 pic.twitter.com/DLarOym20c

— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) March 25, 2024

In this age of the 24-hour news cycle and instant access to news from around the world, Al Jazeera is serving as a valuable tool in Hamas’ propaganda war, spreading misinformation and sullying Israel’s image around the world at record speeds.

Al Jazeera’s malign influence on the views of social media users is concerning. For mainstream media outlets to rely on it as a source for Israel-related stories is downright journalistic malpractice.

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.

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