Al Jazeera Center for Studies: Academic Veneer Normalizing Terrorism

Is Al Jazeera using its “academic” arm, the Al Jazeera Center for Studies (AJCS), to normalize Hamas’s atrocities, while hiding behind the veneer of a purportedly rigorous research institution? From Feb. 7 to 9, an AJCS-sponsored forum in Doha, Qatar, gave pride of place to figures such as Hamas leader Khaled Meshal under the banner of academic discourse.

AJCS is one of at least a dozen parts of the Al Jazeera Media Network’s ecosystem, funded and run by the Qatari ruling family, and used as soft power tools to amplify anti-Western and pro-Islamist narratives. Established to provide research support to Al Jazeera’s news channels, AJCS also serves to integrate the network into academic spheres. Those connections allow AJCS to enjoy a patina of academic credibility to launder and legitimize the violent ideas espoused by figures like Meshal and Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.

When Meshal spoke in Doha, he justified Hamas’s October 7, 2023, massacre in Israel by calling it legitimate “resistance.” Hamas has ruled Gaza since 2007. The US Justice Department announced terrorism and murder conspiracy charges against Meshal for his central role in the Oct. 7 atrocities in 2024.

Araghchi had a different agenda: deflecting attention away from the thousands of Iranians slaughtered by his regime in recent weeks in the deadliest massacre since the country’s 1979 revolution. Araghchi used his remarks to call “Palestine … a test of whether international law has meaning, whether human rights have universal value.” There was no pushback from the moderator about this ironic call for justice.

Past speakers at the conference include Hamas officials Osama Hamdan and Basem Naim. Hamdan was placed on the Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) list by the US Treasury after a Hamas suicide attack in Jerusalem killed 23 people and injured 130 others in 2003. Hamdan facilitated training for a key planner of the 1996 Jaffa Road bus suicide bombings that killed 45 commuters.

Naim’s Treasury designation noted that he “holds a leadership role on Hamas’s Council on International Relations.”

The Doha forum also gave voice to some of Al Jazeera’s co-opted correspondents, including Gaza-based Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent Ismail Abu Omar. Besides being a reporter for Al Jazeera, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), based on documents found in Gaza, identified him as a company commander in the East Khan Younis Battalion. If true, this raises additional concerns about its reporters serving as Hamas operatives while on Al Jazeera’s payroll. Not surprisingly, the network denied the allegations.

Abu Omar filmed himself with Hamas operatives breaching Israeli kibbutzim on Oct. 7. His published accounts on Al Jazeera expressed joy at the atrocities unfolding against Israelis, telling the network that he “was filled with tears” and “experiencing the scenes that we have always heard about, live and directly.”

Abu Omar amplified Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif’s words that “everyone who has a gun should take it out, because today is the day.”

Abu Omar is a former reporter for Al-Aqsa TV, which is sanctioned by the US Treasury Department as “a television station financed and controlled by Hamas” that airs content “designed to recruit children to become Hamas suicide bombers.” When AJCS chooses its speakers, it signals what it values.

AJCS is about more than sketchy forums, of course. Its partnerships deserve scrutiny too. In May 2025, AJCS co-hosted a conference with the obscure but influential Strategic Council on Foreign Relations in Iran (SCFR). SCFR is the advisory board to the supreme leader of Iran, helping to shape the ayatollah’s policies around the world.

It should raise eyebrows that an ostensibly independent research arm of a media entity partners with a murderous office of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. By partnering with the SCFR, AJCS signals solidarity with Iran’s oppressors, not its victims.

Technically, Araghchi is a diplomat. But he gave the lie to that title at the 2024 Al Jazeera Forum when, as secretary general of SCFR, he cautioned Arab nations against diplomacy with Israel and normalizing relations with the Jewish state.

At the 2024 forum, Araghchi also said nuclear weapons “have no place” in Iran’s religious doctrine but proclaimed that Iran has the right to enrich uranium for civilian purposes. In fact, the regime has stymied international monitoring of its enrichment, sought to expand its nuclear program, and has no civilian use for its production of 60 percent enriched uranium. But there was no refutation or questioning of Araghchi’s statement when he appeared at the Al Jazeera Forum.

In 2025, AJCS co-organized a conference with Qatar’s Hamad Bin Khalifa University in order to “deconstruct Western narratives.” Reflecting Qatar’s foreign policy, Al Jazeera’s organizers charged Western media with “justifying” Israel’s right to self-defense in the face of Hamas’s atrocities. Moreover, they attacked media outlets for “false reports” about Hamas terrorists raping Israeli women, notwithstanding the evidence to the contrary.

Arafat Madi Shoukri, a senior researcher at AJCS, organized the conference. Israel designated Shoukri as a Hamas operative for his work with the Hamas-aligned Council for European Palestinian Relations (CEPR).

Shoukri has been photographed with Ismail Haniyeh, an architect of the Oct. 7 massacre. He also directed the London-based Palestinian Return Center (PRC), which former Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak declared an illegal Hamas-affiliated organization that engages in terror-affiliated activities.

That conference featured as its keynote speaker Wadah Khanfar, a former director general of Al Jazeera. According to the Palestinian outlet Raya Media Network, Khanfar was “active in the Hamas movement” and a “leader in the movement’s office in Sudan.”

In May 2024, Khanfar praised Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack, proclaiming it “came at the ideal moment for a radical and real shift in the path of struggle and liberation.”

Mutaz al-Khatib, from Hamad Bin Khalifa University’s College of Islamic Studies, spoke at the conference on “professional ethics” in war coverage. On October 7, 2023, he posted on Facebook that “what happened was merely a rehearsal that shows that liberating Jerusalem is possible.”

Fatima Alsmadi, a researcher at the Al Jazeera Center for Studies, lectured that Israel has somehow “benefited” from Nazism in the aftermath of its extermination of European Jewry. She praised Al Qassam Brigade spokesperson Abu Obaida’s propaganda techniques that had “a specific goal to link Israel to the Nazis” and were “not arbitrary,” “done in stages,” and “well thought out.” Weaponizing Nazi imagery against Israel legitimizes Hamas terrorism and inverts historical truth.

AJCS’s Journal for Communication and Media Studies adheres to the same editorial approach as its conferences. A January 2026 journal article relies on quotes from the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS), a discredited group that requires no expertise to have voting rights, as evidenced by Emperor Palpatine, the villain of the Star Wars franchise, and similar non-experts joining as members. This is important because IAGS touted a resolution it represented as “a definitive statement from experts in the field of genocide studies” that what is happening on the ground in Gaza is genocide.

Al Jazeera and AJCS have two personas. One is radical and platforms Hamas and Islamists like the late Yusuf Qaradawi, the most influential cleric aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood, whose show “Shariah and Life” was on the news channel for 17 years. The other is slick and partners with big tech to leverage modern technology throughout the newsroom, in the field, and online that, in turn, amplifies Islamists and Qatari foreign policy.

AJCS operates under strict Qatari media laws that prohibit criticism of the tiny Persian Gulf nation’s emir and Doha’s policies. Freedom House has rated Qatar “Not Free” for 27 years. Al Jazeera as a whole seeks to appeal to Western sensibilities by crafting a public-facing image of an independent institution that it says “aims to present a balanced understanding” of the Middle East and the Arab world. AJCS has not lived up to any standard of scholarship.

The glitz of Al Jazeera’s flashy conference and global reach should not distract from the perils of treating the Al Jazeera ecosystem like a neutral entity, untethered to a foreign authoritarian state’s policies.

US government agencies should investigate whether Al Jazeera or its center, or others on its behalf, have paid any expenses or provided material support associated with Hamas officials’ participation in any of its programming. If investigators discover such connections, appropriate sanctions, fines, or other measures should be taken.

Likewise, the US Department of Education should assess whether any American educational institutions have partnerships with AJCS.

Congress and the Justice Department should assess if the center’s actions should be disclosed under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The Justice Department has already determined that other parts of AJMN must register as Qatari foreign agents.

Until Doha stops using any part of the Al Jazeera Media Network to whitewash terrorism, American institutions and companies need to reconsider their relationship with all platforms in its vast ecosystem. Continued collaboration from Western organizations only emboldens the next denials and justifications for violence.

Toby Dershowitz is a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), on whose website this article first appeared. Eitan Fischberger is an independent OSINT investigator. Follow Toby on X @tobydersh. Follow Eitan on X @EFischberger. Follow FDD on X @FDD. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.