Philadelphia: ABC affiliate WPVI gives legitimacy to son of ‘Palestinian’ jihadi

This newscast from the Philadelphia ABC affiliate WPVI is one of many that discusses the war between Israel and Hamas by contrasting a normal Jewish person with a high-ranking official of the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). It ends with the ornamental phrase “Two sides seeking peace.”

In this broadcast, Osama Al-Qasem is put on an equal footing with Dafna Ofer. Dafna Ofer is a medical doctor at Penn Medicine. Osama Al-Qasem is a pedigreed scion of a jihad terrorist.

Al-Qasem is identified as the Vice President and Fundraising Co-Chair of the CAIR-Philadelphia Executive Committee. And indeed, that’s what he is. From CAIR’s website:

Osama is a tri-lingual Arab American of Palestinian descent. He was born in North Africa and was educated in England. He graduated with a degree in Economics from the University of Nottingham and took post-graduate studies in marketing.

Osama worked in the Middle-East for five years preparing feasibility studies for investment projects. Since 1995 he has been the Marketing Manager for a growing manufacturing firm located in Pennsylvania.”

If that does not sound very “Palestinian” to you, consider the following, also from CAIR’s website:

Dr. Al-Qasem, [Osama’s father] a Barrister-at-Law, was a co-founder of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) at the original Palestine National Congress in 1964, and a member of the first Palestinian National Council (PNC), Palestine’s parliament in exile. He co-authored the original constitution of the PNC, and as chair of the legal High Commission in the National Council, he co-authored Palestine’s basic law and by-laws of the National Council. He also drafted the Palestinian Constitution hoping to have it go into effect when Palestine became an independent state.”

To do a side-by-side of this man with Dafna Ofer is insulting. So who is responsible for this negligent, misleading, and lazy report?

TaRhonda Thomas joined the Action News team as a reporter in February 2019 and was named Action News’s first Race and Culture Reporter in March 2021. The Emmy-award-winning journalist has earned national and regional recognition including an Edward R. Murrow Award and awards from the Associated Press, and the National Association of Black Journalists.

TaRhonda is a member of the National Association of Black Journalists, who are advocates in the country’s newsrooms. Many of them, including TaRhonda, favor CAIR.

And the result is news segments such as this one, which give legitimacy and cover to the American branch of Hamas, aka the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations.