IDF intelligence identified Hossam Shabat as a member of a Hamas sniper unit, while Mohammed Mansour worked for a Palestinian Islamic Jihad network
Fox News reporter Trey Yingst took to the airwaves to accuse Israel of killing “two Palestinian journalists, Mohammed Mansour and Hossam Shabat.” Mansour worked for the terror organization Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s media network, Filastin Al-Youm, while Israeli intelligence released months ago showing that Shabat served as a sniper in a Hamas battalion, none of which Yingst disclosed.
Yingst, Fox’s chief foreign correspondent, leveled the charge during a Monday morning appearance on America’s Newsroom. He referenced “new developments out of Gaza today, where two Palestinian journalists, Mohammed Mansour and Hossam Shabat, were killed by the Israelis.”
“Last year, 124 journalists were killed around the world, two-thirds of them in Gaza,” Yingst concluded. “More to come, unfortunately,” host Bill Hemmer responded.
Palestinian journalists Mohammed Mansour and Hossam Shabat were killed by Israel today in Gaza.
124 journalist were killed around the world in 2024, around two-thirds of them were Palestinian. pic.twitter.com/XHnULzbjAY
— Trey Yingst (@TreyYingst) March 24, 2025
Shabat’s Hamas affiliations have long been known. In September, Egyptian-British researcher Khaled Hassan unearthed Shabat’s social media posts from Oct. 7, 2023. In them, Shabat shared celebratory captions and emojis alongside photos of Hamas terrorists infiltrating Israel and returning to Gaza. “All of Beit Hanon is at the garage, receiving the kidnapped soldiers,” he wrote in one message, referencing the Israeli hostages that included a 9-month-old baby. “The heroes are in Beit Hanon,” he wrote alongside a photo of the returning terrorists.
🚨Today, I want to introduce you to a BBC Arabic Gaza-based source, Hossam Shabat, whom BBC Arabic described as a “journalist”. Hossam was present in person, received and celebrated Hamas terrorists as they brought Israeli hostages into Gaza on October 7th. In the below photos:… pic.twitter.com/NJ3CDxKnDj
— Khaled Hassan (@Khaledhzakariah) September 18, 2024
One month later, Israel released declassified intelligence that originated from documents discovered in the Gaza Strip during military operations. The documents revealed that six Al Jazeera journalists, including Shabat, were actually terrorists affiliated with Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The intelligence included Arab-language documents that show terrorist training courses, salary records, and personnel tables. They listed Shabat as a sniper in Hamas’s Beit Hanoun Battalion.
Fox’s LiveNow network covered the documents under the headline, “Israel-Hamas war: IDF exposes Al Jazeera journalists as Hamas terrorists.”
“I wanted to share this breaking news with you as well, this is from the Israel Defense Forces: ‘Exposed: Six Al Jazeera journalists have been exposed as Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists,'” said host Stephanie Coueignoux.
Mansour, for his part, worked for a news station, Filastin Al-Youm (or Palestine Today), that is part of Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Israeli forces raided the station’s West Bank headquarters in 2016 and arrested its director, Farouk Alian. The station continued to broadcast from Gaza, where it worked to “incite the population, calling for terrorist attacks against the State of Israel and its citizens,” the Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, said in a statement at the time.
Neither Fox nor Yingst responded to requests for comment.
Israel resumed military operations in the Gaza Strip last week after Hamas refused to extend a U.S.-brokered ceasefire agreement. A series of Monday strikes killed Ismail Barhoum, Hamas’s finance chief, as well as Shabat and Mansour. Shabat, who moonlighted as a reporter for the Qatar-funded network Al Jazeera, was killed in his car during a precision attack.
In addition to his Oct. 7 posts and Hamas affiliation, Shabat was known for publishing propaganda that accused Israel’s “occupation army” of shocking atrocities. In one “report,” Shabat accused Israeli soldiers of sexually assaulting an unnamed pregnant Palestinian woman at a Gazan hospital “in front of her family and other men, threatening to shoot her husband and the other men if they closed their eyes.” In another, he cited anonymous “first responders and doctors in northern Gaza,” saying many of them “are reporting that Israeli forces are using new weapons that cause bodies to evaporate on the scene.”
Yingst has reported frequently on Gaza-based journalists killed during Israel’s operation. Earlier this month, he delivered a speech at the Radio Television Digital News Association’s First Amendment Awards, a black-tie affair celebrating those “who practice, promote and defend journalism each year.”
“I would like to give special recognition to the brave Palestinian journalists in Gaza, who have risked and often given their lives to practice our craft,” Yingst said during the event, drawing applause. “We live in a dangerous time of attack on journalists, of misinformation, and efforts to silence those holding truth to power. Our work is more important now than ever.”
