CNN Allows NGO Guest to Erase Hamas From Gaza

By: Darcie Grunblatt August 26, 2026

Screenshot of Norwegian Refugee Council Communications Adviser Shaina Low on CNN’s Zain Asher’s show on August 10, 2026.

Zain Asher’s Aug. 10, 2026, interview on CNN with Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) Communications Adviser Shaina Low demonstrated a total failure of journalistic scrutiny.

Throughout the segment, both anchor and guest completely erased Hamas’s ironclad rule over the Gaza Strip, producing a one-sided narrative more at home on the Qatari state-run outlet Al Jazeera than on an independent news network.

Crossing the line from journalism to non-profit advocacy, CNN actively platformed and promoted the NRC’s fundraising efforts, with Asher explicitly thanking Low for all “the work” NRC is “doing on the ground there in Gaza.” The NRC, according to its website, provides humanitarian assistance to displaced around the world.

Considering NRC’s spot within the top ten most well-funded international NGOs with a nearly billion-dollar annual income, Asher should have held power accountable rather than help line the organization’s pockets.

Low’s refusal to acknowledge Hamas’s role in the crisis raises serious doubts about whether the NRC is upholding its own stated pledge to impartiality, independence, and neutrality.

Gaza’s Children

The erasure of Gaza’s terror infrastructure began with the first question when Asher brought up the suffering of children in Gaza. Low, the NRC representative, blamed Israel exclusively for all children killed in Gaza since the war began while lamenting their lack of sufficient aid or education.

CNN allowed this framing to stand without any cross-examination. The slain children claimed as Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and Hamas child soldiers were entirely absent from the conversation. As were the weapons the IDF found in schools, the antisemitic and pro-terror indoctrination documented in school textbooks, and the Hamas and PIJ summer training camps that teach Gaza’s youth how to fight from as early as age 14. Hamas-linked social media accounts published a video in mid-August 2026 glorifying a child soldier. Israeli reservist Michael Starr described in a Dec. 5, 2024, article seeing a boy as young as 14 serving as a Hamas military lookout.

Recruiting children under the age of 15 as soldiers is a war crime according to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Furthermore, The Israeli military itself has documented Palestinian terrorist organizations’ use of children for intelligence gathering and transporting munitions.

Humanitarian Aid Entry

This pattern of asymmetric scrutiny continued when Low lamented Israel’s refusal to allow cement, concrete, rebar, and lubricant oil into Gaza. CNN permitted Low to deliver this complaint without mentioning the well-documented dual-use nature of these materials, leaving viewers unaware that Hamas routinely redirects rebar and concrete to build underground military tunnels and uses industrial lubricants to service weapons and machinery.

Low’s grievances extended to Israel barring the NRC from bringing aid into Gaza starting March 2, 2025, and barring NRC staff from entering the Strip as of Dec. 31, 2025. CNN permitted Low to present these restrictions in a complete contextual vacuum. Both Asher and Low omitted that Israel’s March 2025 registration requirements for NGOs operating in the West Bank and East Jerusalem were designed to prevent aid groups from terrorist infiltration. Israel barred all NGOs that failed to comply with these new requirements from serving in Gaza.

Crucially, the anchor failed to inform viewers that when 19 NGOs challenged these regulations, Israel’s High Court ruled in May 2026 that state agencies are legally entitled to conduct strict security checks to prevent foreign organizations from harboring terror links.

Despite Israel’s ban on NRC and the 36 other NGOs in January 2026, the volume of food aid slightly increased from December 2025 to January, and food prices continued to decline through February, suggesting that their contribution was not as significant as these organizations claimed.

In February 2025, an E.U. aid delivery containing tents and shelter items for Gaza arrived in Amman, Jordan. (credit: European Union via Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

The editorial failure to supply crucial political and security context extended to the collapse of humanitarian access. Israel’s March 2025 aid restrictions coincided with the breakdown of a 42-day ceasefire after Hamas rejected a U.S.-backed proposal to extend the truce, which required releasing additional hostages. Israeli leadership subsequently made aid entry contingent on hostage releases. Hamas refused to release the hostages it had illegally captured.  

No Accountability for Hamas

Throughout the interview, CNN adopted the NRC’s foundational posture. In the organization’s view, Hamas bears absolutely no blame for any lack of humanitarian supplies. The anchor never challenged the NRC’s history of defending Hamas forces, such as its November 2024 statement, in which the NRC, along with 29 other NGOs, condemned the IDF for targeting the Hamas police force in Gaza, which the NGOs claimed was stopping looting by separate armed groups.

Asher also failed to note that the NRC’s routine denials of Hamas participation in looting aid directly contradict public assessments from the U.N., the IDF, the Shin Bet, U.S. Central Command, Gazan civilians, and Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas.

This pattern of one-sided blame culminated when Asher raised the issue of Gaza’s lack of clean water. Both Asher and Low blamed Israel, with Asher stating, “You have the issues with a lot of the water infrastructure and desalination plants having been damaged in the war.”

This framing allowed Low to attribute the crisis entirely to Israel without addressing Hamas’s use of water pipelines for building rockets well before the war began. She also ignored the terror organization’s systematic neglect of water infrastructure, its over-drilling of unregulated wells immediately after Israel’s withdrawal in 2005, and its complete failure to maintain the Israel-built water and sewage facilities left behind.

NRC’s Controversial Positions

CNN’s willingness to platform the NRC as an unassailable moral authority is especially troubling given the NGO’s controversial policy positions. Not only does the NRC oppose any regulation designed to prevent terror groups from stealing aid, including the vetting of aid recipients, but the organization has actively advocated for the ability to work alongside Hamas in Gaza.

The NRC also condemned the 2021 U.S. designation of the Houthis in Yemen as a foreign terrorist organization, lobbied for its reversal, and denounced the 2024 U.S. decision to apply the Specially Designated Global Terrorist label to the group, arguing that they should still be allowed to engage with them. This is despite the Houthi’s longstanding practice of targeting and imprisoning aid workers and its slogan being: “God is the greatest, death to America, death to Israel, a curse upon the Jews, victory to Islam!”

The danger of this stance becomes clear when looking at how the NRC delivers humanitarian aid: by sending unique digital codes to verified mobile phones, allowing recipients to redeem them for cash or goods. While automated vetting blocks individuals listed on international terror watchlists from receiving codes directly, unsanctioned spouses, relatives, or acquaintances can still clear the screening. Once the cash or goods are in hand, standard vetting cannot track whether the recipient voluntarily, or under coercion, hands those resources over to a terrorist group. This indirect transfer loophole is a documented vulnerability in cash assistance programs, one that ISIS in Syria, Hamas in Gaza, and Al-Shabaab in Somalia have all exploited.

Since the NRC opposes vetting aid recipients, the organization creates an unavoidable oversight gap that increases the risk of finances ending up in the pockets of terrorists.

Ultimately, this entire interview served as a masterclass in propaganda from one of the most well-financed organizations in the world. Asher entirely failed in her responsibility to hold this organization accountable, choosing instead to aid in the organization’s fundraising.

CNN should have made its well-intentioned viewers, who might be persuaded to donate to the NRC, aware of the reality of the organization and the reality on the ground. Gaza, in its modern state, did not come to be without Hamas. It is reprehensible that Asher permitted Low to entirely erase the terrorist organization from the picture.

Comments are closed.