Gaza journalist who wrote for Al Jazeera was holding 3 Hamas hostages in home

Israeli troops during their recent rescue operation discovered that a Gaza journalist who wrote for Al Jazeera was holding three Hamas hostages in his home with his family. Abdallah Aljamal was killed by Israeli commandos during the mission on Saturday, June 8, which led to the rescue of four hostages.

Aljamal also worked as a spokesman for the Hamas-run labour ministry. Special forces soldiers killed him while storming his home in central Gaza, and rescued the three hostages he was holding – Almog Meir Jan, 21, Andri Kozlov, 27, and Shlomi Ziv, 41. The other hostage who was rescued during the operation was Noa Argamani.

Rami Abdu, the head of the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, first reported on Aljamal’s death. Abdu alleged that IDF soldiers killed him and many of his family members while raiding his home.

The IDF later revealed that the journalist was indeed keeping hostages captive in his home. However, it is unclear what happened to his family members. “This is further proof that the Hamas terrorist organization uses the civilian population as a human shield,” the IDF said in a statement, according to New York Post.

Who was Abdallah Aljamal and what stories did he write?

In 2019, Aljamal had written a column for Al Jazeera, but the Qatar-based outlet said he was not an employee. He was recently contributing to the Palestine Chronicle. For this outlet, he had written several stories on the deaths of Palestinians in Gaza. Aljamal recently wrote various stories focusing on the ongoing IDF operation in Nuseirat, where his home, in which he was holding the hostages, was located.

The Palestine Chronicle, which is a non-profit organisation based in Washington State providing daily news on Gaza, said that its team “consists of professional journalists and respected writers and authors who don’t speak on behalf of any political party or champion any specific political agenda.” On Sunday, June 9, the outlet confirmed that Aljamal contributed stories to them and reported on the ground in Gaza.