The Israeli army created a special unit, known as the “legitimisation cell” in order to link journalists to Hamas in an effort to justify their killing, +972 Magazine reported on Thursday.

An investigation carried out by +972 Magazine, which cited intelligence sources, said that the unit was formed in the aftermath of 7 October 2023 and was tasked with gathering information that could be used for Israeli propaganda.

The report said that the unit was also tasked with identifying journalists in Gaza that could be presented as undercover members of Hamas. This was done following growing international condemnation over Israel’s killing of journalists across the enclave.

+972’s publication of the report comes just days after Israel’s killing of Al-Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif and five other media workers in Gaza city.

Western media outlets such as the BBC and Reuters have repeated Israeli allegations that Anas al-Sharif was a member of Hamas.

One source said that the main goal of the Israeli army unit was public relations, driven by the fact that journalists reporting on Israel’s continued atrocities in Gaza were “smearing Israel’s name in front of the world”.

The process was simple, the sources explained, stating that whenever condemnation of Israel increased following a particular issue, the legitimisation cell would try to find intelligence that could be used to counter the narrative.

“If the global media is talking about Israel killing innocent journalists, then immediately there’s a push to find one journalist who might not be so innocent — as if that somehow makes killing the other 20 acceptable,” the intelligence source said.

The sources revealed that in at least one case, the cell misrepresented intelligence they found to falsely portray a journalist as a member of Hamas’ military wing.

“They said: during the day he’s a journalist, at night he’s a platoon commander. Everyone was excited. But there was a chain of errors and corner-cutting,” one source said.

“In the end, they realised he really was a journalist,” the source added, confirming the journalist wasn’t targeted.

One of Gaza’s most prominent journalists, killed by Israeli forces, Ismail al-Ghoul, was claimed by the Israeli army as being a “military wing operative” and a “Nukhba terrorist”. The army based the accusation on a 2021 document allegedly found on a “Hamas computer”.

However, the document revealed that al-Ghoul received his military rank in 2007, when he would have been just 10 years old, and seven years before he was allegedly recruited to Hamas.

Another example of the cell’s propaganda efforts was claiming that an Israeli attack in October 2023 targeting the Al-Ahli Al-Arab Hospital was caused by a misfired Islamic Jihad rocket, and that the death toll was far lower than what the ministry of health said it was.

Following the devastating attack, which killed at least 500 Palestinians, the Israeli army published a recording from the Legitimisation Cell, which allegedly was a phone call between two Hamas operatives saying the attack was a result of an Islamic Jihad misfire.

The claim was carried by international media, which the Israeli army praised as a win for the cell.

A Palestinian rights activist told +972 Magazine that he was shocked to hear the recording, because it was his own voice, and the conversation was a benign one with a friend.

“There was this phrase, ‘That’s good for legitimacy,’” one source recalled. “The goal was simply to find as much material as possible to serve hasbara efforts,” the sources revealed.

Helping perpetuate the war on Gaza

The unit was directed by senior Israeli officials and told what to focus on, the sources added. The intelligence found was sometimes passed on to the US.

According to the report, intelligence officers were also regularly told that their work was crucial in allowing Israel to continue the war on Gaza.

Overtime, the information compiled by the team gave Israel “legitimacy to keep fighting,” the sources said.

A source familiar with the cell’s work further stated that they often tried to link Gaza’s police to the 7 October attack, in an effort to target the police and dismantle Hamas’ civilian security force.

Official security sources told +972 that several “research teams” were formed in the Israeli military since the start of the war on Gaza, with their main goal being to “expose Hamas lies”.

Their work also involved “discrediting” journalists ‘reporting.

Anas Al-Sharif was one of several journalists Israel claimed was involved in “propaganda” and “Hamas’ false starvation campaign.”

Al-Sharif was killed along with his entire crew after being targeted by an extended smear campaign for reporting on Israeli crimes and the soaring malnutrition rates as a result of Israel’s blockade.

Prior to his killing, he had informed the Committee to Protect Journalists that he was being threatened, citing the threats of Israeli Arabic-language military spokesperson Avichay Adraee.

“Adraee’s campaign is not only a media threat or an image destruction; it is a real-life threat,” Sharif said.