CBS Producer in Gaza Has History of Antisemitic, Anti-Israel Commentary: ‘Are Jews Really Human Like Us?’

In early October, to mark a year of war in Gaza, CBS News turned its cameras at one of its own: Gaza-based producer Marwan Al Ghoul.

Because foreign journalists are not allowed in Gaza on their own, CBS relies on Al Ghoul to report on what’s happening on the ground there, anchor Norah O’Donnell told viewers.

Over the last year, Al Ghoul has reported from the rubble of bombed-out buildings and chaos of overwhelmed hospitals. He’s interviewed aid workers and displaced families. He’s “very angry” about what’s happened to his homeland, Al Ghoul told foreign correspondent Elizabeth Palmer in the video, adding that “like anybody, we want to be free.”

Palmer called Al Ghoul’s resolve “simply astonishing.” Another correspondent said that Al Ghoul is “much loved here at CBS News.” One CBS editor called Al Ghoul “an incredibly courageous man and a fantastic reporter.”

But CBS News leaders are not answering questions about Al Ghoul’s public views on the war and his often controversial comments about Israel and Jews. In Facebook posts, Al Ghoul has displayed a clear anti-Israel bias and has regularly alleged that Israel is engaged in a genocide. He and his son, a cameraman, appear to have praised terror attacks against civilians and even questioned the humanity of Jews. Al Ghoul’s son identifies himself on social media as a CBS worker. CBS denies that the network employs or pays Al Ghoul’s son.

CBS’s October 7 story featuring Al Ghoul aired while the network’s executives were dealing with the fallout from another episode involving the Israel-Gaza conflict. This month, it was revealed that CBS News leaders reprimanded morning show co-anchor Tony Dokoupil, who is Jewish, for his pointed questioning of Ta-Nehisi Coates, the author of a new anti-Israel book that claims the country was “built on ethnocracy” and “apartheid.” CBS leaders alleged that the “tone” of Dokoupil’s interview didn’t meet “the legacy of neutrality and objectivity that is CBS News,” according to news reports.

Critics say reprimanding Dokoupil for a fair but aggressive interview of an Israel critic while ignoring its own producer’s history of anti-Israel commentary smacks of a double standard.

“It just seems to us that CBS is willing to ignore or excuse antisemitism from its staff while penalizing journalists who challenge anti-Israel narratives,” said Jonah Cohen, a spokesman for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA).

CAMERA, a pro-Israel media-monitoring organization, has been leading the effort to expose Al Ghoul’s commentary and what it sees as CBS’s hypocrisy. National Review has reviewed the Al Ghoul Facebook posts CAMERA flagged, which pre-date the October 7 attack, as well as other seemingly anti-Israel posts he has made over the last year.

In recent years Al Ghoul has made a few posts that seem critical of Hamas and its leaders, but don’t specifically name the terror group.

CAMERA has also flagged several social-media posts made by Al Ghoul’s son, Fares Marwan Alghoul, who has served as his father’s cameraman in Gaza. The son has made several posts over the years cheering terrorist attacks and praising terrorists.

Most of the duo’s posts are in Arabic. National Review relied on translations from a CAMERA interpreter and online translation services for this report.

National Review emailed and called several CBS News communications executives last week asking if the network believes any of Al Ghoul’s or his son’s commentary has crossed the line or violated the company’s journalism standards. When reached on his personal cellphone Friday afternoon, Lance Frank, the network’s communications chief, said he’d “have someone get back to [NR].”

A CBS spokeswoman sent an email to a report’s rarely-used personal email late Monday afternoon asking for a phone conversation. The email wasn’t seen until after publication.

When reached via WhatsApp, Al Ghoul declined to comment for this story.

Al Ghoul, 61, was born in Gaza, according to the CBS profile. It appears that several of his family members, friends, and colleagues have been killed in the war.

In a report last year, CBS said that Al Ghoul has worked “on and off” with the network for two decades, enriching their reporting and “risking his life to get the news out.” He specializes in reporting on the aftermath of Israeli strikes, interviewing Gazans who’ve been injured and affected, with little or no focus on Hamas’s culpability in the war. It’s reporting that Hamas is likely happy to have disseminated in the U.S.

In a report in March about the many Gaza-based journalists who have been killed in the war, CBS correspondent Holly Williams acknowledged that some of the Gaza reporters “are not neutral observers, and they don’t pretend to be.”

That seems to be the case for Al Ghoul.

Al Ghoul’s Facebook posts over the last year indicate that he is a vocal critic of Israel. On several occasions he’s accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, a false but common belief among Palestinians. In a Facebook post on January 12, he thanked South Africa, which was making the case at the United Nations that Israel was committing genocide.

Al Ghoul has alleged that the Israel Defense Forces are committing war crimes against children and accused Israeli president Benjamin Netanyahu of stupidity. In December, he accused Israel of killing innocent people to satisfy its instinct for bloodshed.

In a post on June 8, he expressed disapproval of an Israeli raid that freed four hostages Hamas had captured and held in civilian homes. He accepted Hamas’s contention that more than 200 civilians were killed in the operation — the IDF reported that the casualty numbers were much lower — and failed to note that many of the dead were terrorists.

CAMERA told National Review that Al Ghoul seems to lack “the ability to distinguish between legitimate targets and civilian ones,” making it unclear why his “so-called ‘journalism’ still enjoys CBS’s confidence.”

While Al Ghoul has been a regular critic of Israel and its army over the last year, he does not appear to have expressed any criticism of the October 7 terror attack. Rather than condemn the attack, Al Ghoul took to Facebook on October 7, writing in Arabic that Palestinians were at a crossroads. He asked Allah to provide patience and victory.

Al Ghoul’s criticism of Israel predates the current war in Gaza. In a December 2018 post flagged by CAMERA, Al Ghoul wrote that the United States is the world’s greatest empire, alleged that Israel could not exist without the U.S., and predicted that both would disappear or were about to go down, according to translations.

In addition to criticizing Israel, Al Ghoul has also questioned the humanity of Jews themselves. In a long Facebook post in May 2022, he wrote about a young girl he met at Al-Shifa Hospital who had been injured in an Israeli attack. The girl asked him why she’d been burned and if Jews were human, too, he wrote. Al Ghoul wrote that the girl’s question summarized his 34-year career. “Are Jews really human like us??????” he wrote.

Al Ghoul also “liked” several comments on the post, including one that called Jews “Zionist, Nazi killers,” and another that said Jews were “not human at all” but are instead “monsters in human form,” according to a translation.

CAMERA also highlighted a Facebook post Al Ghoul made on October 7, 2018, the day that a Palestinian terrorist shot and killed two young parents with a submachine gun at a West Bank industrial park. Al Ghoul wrote in Arabic that the West Bank was embracing Gaza, adding “hands down” or “blessed are the hands,” a common expression of approval.

An analyst for CAMERA told National Review the post was clear praise for the West Bank attack. “You cannot interpret it otherwise,” the analyst said.

Al Ghoul’s son, Fares Marwan Alghoul, appears to have even more explicitly praised Palestinian terrorists and terror attacks against civilians over the years.

On November 15, 2012, a day that Palestinian militants fired hundreds of rockets into Israel, targeting Tel Aviv and killing three people in an apartment building in southern Israel, Alghoul praised the attack as God’s promise fulfilled. Eight days later, he appears to have praised a terrorist bus bombing.

More recently, Alghoul appears to have celebrated a 2022 terror attack during which a Palestinian gunman killed five people. Alghoul wrote on Facebook that it was a day for a feast, adding a victory emoji.

Reached by National Review on his cellphone, the younger Alghoul said he is now in Turkey and referred questions to his father.

Cohen, with CAMERA, said the reporting from Al Ghoul and his son can’t be trusted considering their years of anti-Israel commentary and praise for terrorists. But he acknowledged that it is likely “extremely challenging” for outlets like CBS to find objective journalists in Gaza who would hold Hamas accountable for its terrorism.

“Hamas has a stranglehold on that society. Hamas is responsible ultimately for the suffering that is going on in Gaza, including the inability of people to express their genuine points of view,” he said. “I don’t think [news outlets] can find very good journalists at the moment because it’s under an authoritarian, theocratic regime.”

In addition to Al Ghoul’s social-media posts and the Dokoupil controversy, Bari Weiss of the Free Press recently exposed that the day after the October 7 attack, CBS News cautioned its reporters about using the word “terrorist,” writing that, while the U.S. government considers Hamas a terrorist organization, the term may not always be accurate.

“There are some who believe the attack by Hamas is a justified retaliation to Israeli occupation of their lands,” the internal email said, according to Weiss. “Others believe this to be an unprovoked attack on Israel and, as such, Israel has every right to defend itself.”

Cohen said the Al Ghoul commentary paired with the Dokoupil episode calls into question CBS News’s integrity.

“We have a situation here where CBS’s editorial standards appear deeply flawed,” he said. “You would think the way Dokoupil was treated, those high standards would be applied to Al Ghoul. And by their own standards, he would be seen as someone who really couldn’t represent the truth of the situation.”

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to note that CBS News says that Fares Marwan Alghoul is not employed by the network. It also notes that CBS News responded to a reporter’s rarely used personal email late Monday afternoon requesting a phone call. The email wasn’t seen until Tuesday.