Shatha Hammad made jokes about Adolf Hitler and gave praise to Palestinian terrorists for killing innocent Jews. She also denied that Israel has any rights to exist.
Despite his disturbing history in social media, Hammad received a prestigious journalism award from the Kurt Schork Memorial Fund (KSMF) and a cash prize. This fund is funded by the charitable arm at global wire service Reuters.
On October 13, the KSMF announced Hammad, a Ramallah-based reporter, as the recipient of its 2022 Local Reporter Award. They also praised her reporting from the West Bank. The press release exclaimed that Hammad took great personal risks and was once hit with a teargas canister. Hammad’s stories exposed the effects of the conflict on Palestinian civilians.
Hammad will be awarded $5,000 and her work will be highlighted through a multimedia campaign on Thomson Reuters Foundation social media channels. She will also have the rare opportunity to participate in a discussion hosted in London by Christiane Amanpour at Thomson Reuters Foundation’s annual Trust Conference.
HonestReporting discovered dozens of violent and hateful posts on Hammad’s Facebook page. One in which she honored the “martyrs”, who killed five “settlers” in the 2014 Jerusalem synagogue massacre, in which two Palestinian terrorists attacked worshipers using axes and knives, and a gun.
Hammad, currently employed by Middle East Eye and Al Jazeera signed off several of her comments in 2014 using the nickname “Hitler”. She joked that she was “in accord” with the Nazi leader, who oversaw six million Jews’ extermination during the Holocaust.
Another post, originally written in Arabic, but translated by HonestReporting into English, she said that she was “friends” with Hitler and added that they share the same mentality (e.g., extermination of Jews).
This exact translation is better than the version from Google Translate that appears online automatically.
Hitler and I are good friends. We can influence each other and share the exact same ideology, like the extermination or the destruction of the Jews.
Hammad, in a Facebook comment from 2016, suggested that Israel was not a legitimate nation and asked whether Jews have the right of self-determination.
Unfortunately, she is just one of a number of Palestinian journalists HonestReporting exposed as virulently antisemitic during our investigation.
placed a spotlight on August 11th, the horrific social media history Fady Hanona. She was a fixer and freelance producer who was credited in multiple stories by The New York Times during the September conflict between Israel Islamic Jihad and Israel. Hanona had called Jews “sons of dogs” in a previous interview and demanded the execution of all Jews, Israelis, Zionists, or anyone else who speaks Hebrew.
The New York Times and VICE News, The BBC, The Guardian, SBS Australia and ABC News Australia responded to our work by cutting ties with Hanona.
We also shared last month how two other freelancers who were working for the NYT (Soliman Hijjy, and Hosam Salem) had also glorified Hitler and Palestinian terrorists in numerous chilling Facebook posts.
Last year, the revelations about Tala Halawa, a reporter who had tweeted “Hitler was right”, forced the BBC to sever all ties with the journalist.
HonestReporting reached out to the Kurt Schork Memorial Fund and Thomson Reuters Foundation to inquire whether they will take any steps to distance themselves form Hammad, given the violent and antisemitic nature online outbursts.
It is important that these respected organizations do not hold these views.
Global antisemitism has been on the rise. Every day we witness anti-Jewish hateful expressions and ugly incidents on campuses, streets, workplaces, and online. This kind of language encourages violence against Jews worldwide and does not promote peace locally.
There is no more.
