Hamas-Linked Freelancer For CNN Will ‘No Longer Be Used’

CNN has a long and shameful history of hiring Arab employees who turn out to be linked to terror groups. The latest example is Abdel Qader Sabbah, a freelancer in Gaza employed by CNN until the investigators at Honest Reporting delivered a scathing report on him and his connections to Hamas. As a consequence, as of July 3, according to CNN, he is no longer working for CNN, though no doubt he will be snapped up soon enough by Al Jazeera, where anti-Israel animus is a sine qua non for staff members. More on Sabbah, his Hamas links, and CNN’s cutting the cord with this terrorist sympathizer, can be found here: “SUCCESS: CNN Fires Hamas-linked Gaza Freelancer Exposed by HonestReporting,” HonestReporting, July 2, 2024:

CNN announced Wednesday that it would no longer use a Gaza freelancer whose ties to Hamas were exposed by HonestReporting.

Abdel Qader Sabbah photographed himself with a senior Hamas leader, served in a Hamas-run body to which he also provided work, praised terrorists, and shared anti-Israeli propaganda online, an HonestReporting investigation revealed.

Throughout the Israel-Hamas war, CNN has given a prominent platform to news reports by Sabbah, who has also worked for the Associated Press, and the exposure of his links to the terror group casts a long shadow over the network’s vetting procedures and journalistic standards.

“This freelance journalist has provided material used in stories for us and other outlets over the past nine months, during which time our own journalists have been barred from entering Gaza independently,” a CNN spokesman told HonestReporting. “We have reviewed this material carefully and are comfortable that it meets our standards. However, we were not aware of this individual’s historical social posts and recognize that they are highly offensive. In light of this, we will no longer be using his material going forward.”

Sabbah is the 11th journalist reassigned, suspended or fired due to HonestReporting since August 2022.

The following details are based on a survey of Sabbah’s social media activity, predominantly on Facebook, where his connections and bias have been hidden in plain sight.

Abdel Qader Sabbah’s Links to Hamas

Sabbah, who describes himself on Facebook as a freelance journalist, director and photographer, has proudly shared posts showing he had connections to Hamas figures and institutions run by the terror group.

In 2018, he posted a selfie taken with none other than senior Hamas leader Mahmoud A-Zahar, who had called for world domination with “no Zionists” and was sanctioned by the US Treasury Department.

In the photo, the two men are seen smiling, and the post caption reads in Arabic: “This morning, with commander Abu Khaled Al-Zahar, literature teacher…”

Abu Khaled Al-Zahar (aka Mahmoud Al-Zahar) was far more than a “literature teacher.” He was a co-founder of Hamas and is now a senior Hamas leader, thus up to his elbows in Jewish blood. And this was the man whom A. Q. Sabbah stood smilingly beside in a photograph that Sabbah then posted on social media for all the world to see. How proud he was to be standing beside a co-founder of the terrorist group Hamas, Abu Khaled Al-Zaher, not despite, but because of the atrocities Al-Zahar was responsible for.

Sabbah — whose Facebook bio mentions “military service” in 2013 — also posted a photo of himself wearing the uniform of the “General Training Directorate,” a body that’s officially under the Palestinian Authority’s police and Interior Ministry. In Gaza, however, these government agencies are de facto run by Hamas.

In 2013, Sabbah was proud to tell the world, through his Facebook bio, about what he called his military service, even posting a photograph of himself wearing the uniform of the “General Training Directorate,” which, while nominally under the control of the Palestinian Authority’s police and Interior Ministry in Gaza, is actually run by Hamas. In other words, Sabbah wants to present himself as a Hamas fighter. A dream of glory that says a lot about his moral makeup.

In 2013, then Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh paid an official visit to the training directorate, where he scrutinized an honor guard and “praised the role of the General Directorate…in developing and qualifying the cadres of the Ministry of Interior and National Security.”

It appears that Sabbah also provided work to the Hamas-run body. In March 2023, he boasted online about making a promotional video for the Directorate’s academy, which according to MEMRI, trains members of Hamas’ security apparatuses. His video was shared on the official page of the Hamas-run interior ministry….

Just last year, Sabbah made a promotional video for the academy which trains members of Hamas’ various security services. This video was so well-received that Hamas posted it on the official page of its Interior Mnistry. It would have been hard for anyone looking into A. Q. Sabbah’s links to Hamas to miss. But CNN, it seems, never bothered to check the online official site of the Hamas-run Interior Ministry in Gaza. Had it done so, it would have realized that Sabbah was no neutral journalist, but a deep-dyed Hamas supporter.

And in April 2023, six months before Hamas’ deadly October 7 massacre in southern Israel, he posted — with green and black heart emojis — a propaganda video by the group’s armed wing, titled “Ready.”…

In other words, Abdel Qader Sabbah has been making promotional and propaganda videos for Hamas, and posting similar videos made by others at his own site. He has proudly posted photographs of himself with Hamas’ cofounder and arch-terrorist Mahmoud Al-Khader, and repeatedly praised the “heroic deeds” of Hamas terrorists. This was all easy to discover. All CNN had to do was conduct a ten-minute search of Sabbah’s posts on social media to discover his longstanding links to Hamas. But CNN did no such thing. Instead, it was perfectly content to hire Sabbah as a freelance contributor, without, it seems, having made any attempt to examine his past statements about Hamas.

CNN has finally stopped taking the material on Gaza provided by this Hamas supporter, promoter, and wannabe fighter, but did so only after an outside group, HonestReporting, came to it with all the damning evidence about Abdel Qader Sabbah it had accumulated. But think of all the damage CNN has already done by providing a worldwide platform for A.Q. Sabbah, with his anti-Israel animus and pro-Hamas enthusiasm, that have helped mold the minds of tens of millions — CNN has a vast worldwide audience — to believe the worst of the Jewish state.