A journalist previously suspended by Al Jazeera for Holocaust distortion has resurfaced as the presenter of a new documentary on the channel which appears to frame Hamas as the “light after the darkness”.
Palestinian journalist Muna Hawwa hosted Occupation Architecture, an Al Jazeera documentary that aired on the Qatari-backed channel on the first anniversary of the Hamas attacks.
The film featured anti-Zionist Exeter University Professor Ilan Pappé and Forensic Architecture founder Professor Eyal Weizman.
At the documentary’s conclusion, Pappé refers to the “beginning of the end” of Zionism as the “dawn after the darkness”, which is accompanied in the edit by a scream and a montage of Hamas terror footage that features uplifting music.
This sequence of propaganda clips includes militants atop a captured Israeli tank, rockets fired into Israel, and Hamas parachutists descending to dramatic music. It also shows a terrorist entering a home marked with a Magen David and footage shot from Hamas militants’ headsets.
In an interview in the documentary, Professor Ilan Pappé claimed the ‘beginning of the end’ of Zionism was positive
Pappé argues: “The whole project of Zionism is not working, even from a Jewish point of view… There are processes that are imploding the project from within.” He concludes: “The beginning of the end can be a long period, unfortunately a very dangerous one, but there is light at the end of the tunnel, there is a dawn after this darkness,” before the montage of Palestinian terrorism begins.
Weizman, an Israeli-born human rights architect, claims in the film that Israeli forces are “making life unlivable”. His research group at Goldsmiths University earlier this year produced a video wrongly blaming Israel for the Al-Ahli Hospital explosion in Gaza, which was caused by a misfired Islamic Jihad rocket. In Occupation Architecture, Weizman dismissed the viability of a two-state solution, saying: “This land cannot be divided; it cannot support more than one state.”
There is no evidence that Pappé or Weizman knew how their comments would be used in the film. Hawwa’s views on the Israel Hamas war are well-documented.
On the day of the Hamas attacks, she posted on social media that the “Barrier of fear to the path of possibility has become a reality” and celebrated a “spark of hope”. In March 2024, she posted a video in which she dismissed Israeli reports of rape on October 7 as “Zionist propaganda” meant to “justify genocide”.
In a 2022 post, which she re-shared on the day of the Hamas massacre, Hawwa advocated for the expulsion of Jews from Israel, writing: “The equation is simple: the Pole returns to Poland, the Russian returns to Russia, the Ukrainian returns to Ukraine, the Argentine returns to Argentina… and the one from Jaffa, of course he wants to return to Jaffa… Easy? Very easy.”
Hawwa also presented a 2019 Al Jazeera film that led to her suspension by the channel. In the now-deleted clip, she claimed Israel was the “biggest winner” of the Holocaust and accused the Zionist movement of exaggerating the tragedy to justify the establishment of Israel. She suggested the Holocaust’s victim count was a “historical debate” and alleged that Israel uses “the same Nazi justifications” for its treatment of Palestinians.
She said: “Dozens of institutions sponsor large museums in various capitals in the world commemorating the tragedy of the Jews, this provoked great interest in this incident, even though similar crimes, no less heinous, are still being perpetrated against other peoples.
“Israel is the biggest winner from the Holocaust, and it uses the same Nazi justifications as a launching pad for racial cleansing and annihilation of the Palestinians… The ideology behind ‘the State of Israel’ is based on religious, national, and geographic concepts that suckled from the Nazi spirit,” Hawwa said.
2/2 Holocaust Denial on Al-Jazeera Network: Israel Is Biggest Winner from Holocaust; It Uses the Same Justification to Annihilate the Palestinians pic.twitter.com/BMb25DYFTY
— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) May 19, 2019
While Al Jazeera suspended Hawwa and the film’s Syrian producer Amer al-Sayed Omar over the 2019 video, which the network said “downplayed and misrepresented the Holocaust” and “contravened its editorial standards”, Omar returned to Al Jazeera within a year, and Hawwa returned around 2021.
Hawwa defended her comments on the Holocaust after she was suspended, claiming that she did not deny the Holocaust, and reiterating her belief that the Holocaust had been “abused by Zionists”.
A spokesperson from the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (Camera) condemned Hawwa and Al Jazeera, and accused the Qatari network of operating a “revolving door”.
“While Camera does not consider the Qatari regime mouthpiece Al Jazeera to be an accountable media outlet that values basic journalistic standards of accuracy and impartiality, the case of Muna Hawwa further undermines the facade of ‘respectability’ it presents to the West.
“The fact that this Holocaust distorter presented a film portraying the October 7 massacre as ‘light in the end of the tunnel’ should surprise nobody,” Camera said.
The JC contacted Al Jazeera’s press office, Hawwa, Pappé and Weizman for comment.
