[News] A New Low: Western Media Promotes ISIS-Linked Gangsters In Gaza

[Anti-Imperialist News]

palestinechronicle.com 
<https://www.palestinechronicle.com/a-new-low-western-media-promotes-isis-linked-gangsters-in-gaza/> 



  A New Low: Western Media Promotes ISIS-Linked Gangsters In Gaza

October 29, 2025
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Moumen Al-Natour is a member of a Gaza militia that opposes Hamas. 
(Photo: screen grab, via social media)

*By Robert Inlakesh 
<https://www.palestinechronicle.com/writers/robert-inlakesh>*


          Al-Natour is the embodiment of the archetypal Palestinian
          collaborator. A man who portrays himself as a victim uses his
          own experience as a Palestinian to whitewash Israeli genocide.

On October 27, the Washington Post published an article entitled “The 
ceasefire created two Gazas. One will consume the other.” The author 
argues that “My Gaza is ready for peace” and that “Hamas is trying to 
destroy it”, promoting the fictitious Israeli narrative that a utopian 
Gaza is being made possible inside the portion of the enclave where the 
occupation forces remain, behind the so-called “Yellow Line”.

The article works to promote the Israeli scheme in Gaza, which has been 
openly endorsed by US officials, and argues in favor of only allowing 
reconstruction in the territory operated by Israel, alongside four 
primary ISIS-linked militias.

Evidently, the article makes no mention of the Israeli armed and 
controlled Palestinian death squads – composed of convicted drug 
traffickers, rapists, murderers, ISIS-linked Salafists and aid looters.

The piece is purportedly written by one Moumen al-Natour, which makes 
even more sense out of why there is no mention of the ISIS-linked death 
squads, because he himself is an armed member of one such death squad.

Al-Natour is the embodiment of the archetypal Palestinian collaborator. 
A man who portrays himself as a victim uses his own experience as a 
Palestinian to whitewash Israeli genocide and lies about every detail to 
turn himself into a “peace activist” opposed to armed resistance, while 
simultaneously partaking in activities designed to further the 
extermination of his own people.

Take, for example, the following excerpt from the ISIS-linked death 
squad collaborator’s alleged opinion piece:

    “My Gaza, where I wish to live, exists between Israel and the yellow
    line. There, the war is over and change buzzes in the air. People
    have access to food, medicine and electricity. And other signs of
    normality are beginning to return, such as some children going back
    to school. This is the Gaza that is waiting with anticipation to
    work with a new civil administration and an international protection
    force that will keep the peace as Israel withdraws. Few there speak
    of Hamas with any warmth or positivity. For once they no longer have
    to.”

The territory spoken of here is the area of Gaza where Israel and four 
ISIS-linked collaborator gangs operate; the only civilians there are the 
families of the death squads. Any other Palestinians attempting to reach 
their homes inside this area are bombed or gunned down by Israeli forces.

This territory, on the other side of Israel’s “Yellow Line,” is supposed 
to be 53% of Gaza, yet in reality is anywhere between 54-58% of the 
territory, due to Israel violating the ceasefire agreement and operating 
deeper than agreed upon inside the supposed withdrawal zone.

In addition to this, Israel continues its daily demolition operations 
against the remaining Palestinian civilian infrastructure inside the 
territory, again in violation of the ceasefire agreement. The proof of 
this has been openly published by Israeli soldiers who post videos of 
their demolition work on social media.

As for access to food, medicine, and electricity, these are provided to 
the collaborator gangs by Israel and are something they have not lacked 
during the war. While the people of Gaza were being starved for three 
months straight earlier this year, al-Natour’s militia friends were 
living lives of relative luxury.

Not only were al-Natour’s collaborator gang not starved, the so-called 
“Popular Forces” that he is part of, led by ISIS-linked convicted drug 
trafficker Yasser Abu Shabab, were living off of the supplies they stole 
from humanitarian aid trucks and looted from Gaza’s civilian population.

That is what these militant organizations began receiving Israeli 
backing to do – before being repurposed, armed and given direct combat 
missions by the IDF and Shin Bet – to rob humanitarian aid trucks and 
help enforce Israel’s starvation policy in Gaza. All of these 
collaborator gangs were tasked with involvement in such activities, and 
many of their militants continue to loot.

Meanwhile, in the Western corporate media and its allied Arab 
publications, al-Natour and his ilk are portrayed as the peace activists 
opposed to Hamas tyranny. For al-Natour’s part, he was one of the 
founders of the “We Want To Live” movement, which claimed its mission 
was to improve living conditions inside the besieged coastal enclave, 
described by UN experts as “unlivable” back in 2020.

As an activist, he was accused of working on behalf of Israel and 
spreading a message critical of Hamas, leading to his arrest. Whether he 
was a collaborator back then is under dispute, yet, during the genocide, 
he and his anti-Hamas message were picked up by a media outlet called 
Jasoor News.

This media outlet’s editor-in-chief is a Washington based journalist, 
named Hadeel Oueis, who routinely shares anti-Hamas content, including 
from the Center for Peace Communications (CPC). Oueis also expresses 
support for the current Syrian leadership of Ahmed al-Shara’a.

The CPC has received considerable donations from the Adelson Family 
Foundation of Israel’s richest billionaire and top Trump campaign donor, 
Miriam Adelson. For Jasoor News’ part, it is explicitly anti-Hamas, 
anti-Hezbollah, anti-Ansarallah, while publishing pieces in favor of the 
United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.


        *Western Media Support For ISIS-linked Groups*

The recent propaganda opinion piece published by the Washington Post 
comes as little surprise, as it was the first Western publication to 
publish an interview with ISIS-linked militia leader Yasser Abu Shabab 
in November of 2024, when Israel began to give the aid looting gang a 
facelift and begin promoting them as a “grassroots” anti-Hamas 
resistance force.

In that WP piece, Abu Shabab claims victim status and that he looted aid 
out of necessity, expressing that “Hamas has left us with nothing”, 
despite his gang of collaborators clearly being the only group of Gazans 
who actually did have something during the genocide. Abu Shabab was used 
to do Israel’s bidding, blocking the flow of aid to civilians and lived 
under the protection of the Israeli military while doing so.

Back in July, the Wall Street Journal then published an opinion piece 
entitled “Gazans are finished with Hamas”, which it claimed was written 
by Yasser Abu Shabab himself. This was despite the fact that local 
sources in Gaza attest to Abu Shabab not only being unable to write in 
English, but also being illiterate and incapable of writing such a piece 
in Arabic too.

According to anonymous sources belonging to Palestinian journalist 
Muhammad Shehada, the latest Washington Post piece was published as 
explicit Israeli propaganda. “Journalists told me a pro-Israeli PR firm 
in DC is the one that pushed for this propaganda article to be 
published,” he wrote on X [formerly Twitter], adding that “my sources 
said there’s a chance the firm is the one that even wrote the op-ed”.

All of this works as part of an Israeli propaganda campaign aimed at 
legitimizing the agenda to create two separate systems of rule in Gaza, 
through spreading lies about Hamas and egregiously exaggerating the 
brutality of its Security Force crackdown on collaborators.

Israel is currently violating the Gaza ceasefire, not only through its 
daily bombings and sniping of civilians, but also through its refusal to 
allow sufficient aid to reach the civilian population. The Israelis had 
committed to allowing 400 aid trucks into Gaza for the first five days 
of the ceasefire before an unlimited amount afterward, later committing 
to permit 600 a day to enter, yet have allowed in a daily average of 
less than 90.

The idea, endorsed by the United States, is to deploy an international 
invasion force in the Gaza Strip, which will work alongside the 
ISIS-linked death squads to disarm Hamas. Once the Israelis withhold 
construction materials and equipment from entering the populated areas 
of the territory, where Hamas remains in power, they will then offer the 
civilian population a choice between entering their version of Gaza 
under occupation, or remaining where they are to starve and rot.

Hamas, along with all the other Palestinian factions, has agreed to hand 
Gaza over to an interim administration of technocratic governance, but 
will not disarm until the creation of a Palestinian State. Israel will 
not allow for this and instead uses its collaborators to fight for its 
own agenda, depending on its propaganda that is being prominently spread 
by its Palestinian media allies as a means of justifying this approach.

Inside Gaza, these ISIS-linked gangsters have no popular support. In 
fact, the vast preponderance of the population supports the Security 
Forces campaign to stamp out these groups. Despite the propagandists and 
militia members claiming that they are fighting a tyrannical regime that 
is killing its own people, the population of Gaza do not believe this 
narrative and hence will not support such a scheme.

The current round of propaganda against Hamas mirrors the regime change 
rhetoric used to overthrow countless governments in the region, 
beginning with Iraq. For example, during the campaign to justify the 
overthrow of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, Western governments 
and Washington-based think-tanks paid Iraqi “experts” and “peace 
activists” to justify the invasion of their own country.

Every time, the regime change script is the same. Except in this case, 
it is unlikely to succeed due to the grievances of Gazans with Hamas not 
matching those of their regional neighbors. This, however, will not stop 
the constant chorus of lies, exaggerations, and distortions from 
Washington and Tel Aviv’s “peace activists” who turn out to be armed 
members of ISIS-linked gangs and “Palestinian analysts” who just so 
happen to work for Zionist think-tanks.

These individuals speak with the language of “peace”, “reconciliation,” 
and “forgiving Israel”, but are ultimately soulless propagandists who 
weaponize their identity to serve an agenda aimed at destroying their 
own people. They value nothing more than status, power, and financial gain.

In the pro-genocide Western corporate media, these voices will continue 
to be elevated and their claims will never be fact-checked, because 
these outlets function as stenographers for the US and Israeli governments.

/(The Palestine Chronicle)/


/– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. 
He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine. He contributed 
this article to The Palestine Chronicle. /

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