Illustrative image of CNN logo next to the Palestinian symbol “Handala,” used in the BDS logo. Edited via Canva. (credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0/Free SVG Creative Commons 0 license (public domain))
CNN has demonstrated a pattern of burying or omitting the political nature and terror ties of NGOs it frames as humanitarian and quotes as authoritative.
According to a CAMERA review of the network’s July coverage, CNN repeatedly platformed groups and individuals who were at minimum supportive of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, a campaign aimed at dismantling Israel through economic warfare.
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The July 15, 2026, article quotes a joint statement by Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) and the Taxpayers Alliance Against Genocide (TAAG). CNN described DAWN as promoting “democracy and human rights in the Middle East and North Africa,” quoting executive director Omar Shakir while omitting background on TAAG.
A closer look at DAWN reveals deep contradictions. Though murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi purported to found the group to promote democracy and human rights, even Khashoggi himself expressed support for foundationally undemocratic organizations and terrorist regimes such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.
Like Shakir, DAWN’s previous director, Sarah Leah Whitson, supported BDS. CAMERA has previously pointed out Whitson’s hypocrisy for promoting BDS against Israeli settlements while helping raise money for Armenian settlements in Nagorno-Karabakh. Both had left Human Rights Watch to work at DAWN, however Shakir resigned from his post in protest after the organization blocked a report that deemed Israel’s denial of the Palestinian “right of return” a “crime against humanity.”
DAWN shares significant leadership overlap with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Nihad Awad, who serves as the chair of DAWN’s board of directors, is also the co-founder and National Executive Director of CAIR. Awad has publicly and repeatedly stated his support for Hamas and jihad, while rejecting peace. Notably, the two organizations regularly collaborate in anti-Israel lawfare. In 2007, federal prosecutors from the U.S. Justice Department named CAIR as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial, which found the organization was funneling millions to Hamas.
Information regarding TAAG was similarly omitted. On Mar. 24, 2025, TAAG’s X account reshared a memorial post for Al Jazeera correspondent and Drop Site News contributor Hossam Shabat, an IDF-accused Hamas anti-tank sniper. Shabat has been pictured wearing a Hamas scarf, and his own Facebook posts have glorified Hamas’s activities on Oct. 7, 2023, and celebrated the murder of civilians.
Taxpayers Against Genocide repost eulogy for Hossam Shabat, March 24, 2025. (screenshot)
Furthermore, TAAG co-leader Tarik Kanaana routinely shares pro-terror rhetoric: In protest of the Palestinian crackdown on Jenin Brigades terrorists, he posted “Jenin Rising” on his Instagram on Dec. 21, 2024, reshared a eulogy of slain Hamas spokesperson Abu Obeida, and compared Nazi architect Adolf Eichmann to Israeli leaders.
— Assal Rad (@AssalRad) March 26, 2025
CNN also mentioned three “Palestinian human rights groups,” Al-Haq, Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), mentioning solely that the U.S. State Department sanctioned them after they “had asked the ICC to investigate and arrest Israeli leaders following accusations of war crimes in Gaza.”
This phrasing implies a politicized motive by omitting the documented and extensive links these organizations have to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a designated terrorist organization in Israel, the U.S., the E.U., and Canada that participated in the October 7 attacks.
The leadership of these groups reflects these terror ties. PCHR’s former deputy chairman of the board, Jaber Wishah, was convicted by an Israeli military court in 1985 for attempted murder, bomb-making, and leading the PFLP military wing.
Similarly, an Israeli court also convicted in 1985 Al-Haq’s general director, Shawan Jabrin, for recruiting PFLP members and arranging military training for the group abroad. Between 2007 and 2009, the Israeli High Court of Justice repeatedly identified Jabrin as a senior PFLP activist, with one ruling describing him as a “Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde” who operated as an NGO executive while doubling as a terror operative. By January 2022, Israel’s Defense Ministry designated Al-Haq as a terrorist organization, alleging it acts internationally on behalf of the PFLP.
Finally, founding Hamas member and current leader Khalil al-Hayya spoke at an al-Mezan organized conference in April 2015, with the NGO summarizing his remarks in an Arabic press release.
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The July 6 article relies on Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry without noting that its casualty counts fail to differentiate combatants from civilians.
It then quotes Sally Saleh, identifying her as the Gaza emergency head for the UK-based NGO Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), omitting MAP’s political background. Though MAP claims to be a non-partisan charity receiving British and EU funds, a 2022 internal Hamas memo reveals MAP’s Gaza administrative director is a pledged Hamas loyalist working in “the positive” (the al-Qassam Brigades). Additionally, following a 2018 legal complaint alleging MAP spent £5.4 million on propaganda over aid, the U.K. Charity Commission formally warned MAP to follow regulatory guidelines.
Later in the article, CNN quoted Yahya Alhamarna, a 24-year-old displaced author in Gaza City, who cites Refaat Alareer as a personal inspiration. Alhamarna previously took to X in January 2023 to celebrate the release of Karim Younis, a terrorist who served a 40-year sentence for kidnapping and murdering an Israeli soldier. His inspiration, Alareer, was a known Hamas supporter who defended the October 7 attacks in a BBC interview, calling the massacre “moral” and comparing it to the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Despite extensive documentation, Alareer also accused Israel of fabricating evidence of Hamas’s sexual assault during the attack. While CNN linked Alareer’s name to a previous profile written after his death, these critical details were buried more than 20 paragraphs deep in that linked piece.
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Another July 6 article quoted Muhammad Shehada as “a Gaza expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations.”
Shehada, however, also serves as the chief of communications and programs for the Hamas-affiliated Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor. In 2013, Israel’s Defense Ministry officially listed the organization’s chair Ramy Abdu and the former chair Mazen Kahel as “main operatives” for institutions operating as fronts for Hamas in Europe.
Abdu has repeatedly mourned the deaths of individuals who held hostages and participated in the October 7 attacks, has multiple family members identified as Hamas terrorists, and has been photographed alongside Hamas officials. Abdu once posted an image he falsely claimed was a “map of registered sex offenders living in Israel,” which was actually a map showing the locations of rocket alert sirens.
Shehada himself posted a picture alongside the now-slain Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in November 2014, expressed support for “armed resistance” in February 2021, and wrote a January 2025 op-ed accusing Israel of “weaponizing” the kidnapping and murder of the Bibas family.
A day before these two July 6 reports, CNN reported on the status of Hussam Abu Safiya’s status in Israeli prisons, describing him as a pediatrician and hospital director, while failing to disclose his significant ties to Hamas.
Taken together, these reports reveal a recurring pattern in CNN’s coverage: systematically failing to disclose the political affiliations, terror ties, or extremist records of the sources and individuals it cites as authoritative.
Without this critical context, readers are left unable to accurately gauge the credibility or neutrality of the information presented. In abandoning the unsparing scrutiny that defines the best journalism, CNN operates instead as a clearinghouse for propagandists.