A Gazan "doctor" who launched a blistering attack on Israel in two New York Times (NYT) op-eds has been revealed as a Hamas colonel, according to an Israeli watchdog organisation and the IDF.
NGO Monitor, a Jerusalem-based watchdog group, has said that Hussam Abu Safiya was pictured sporting the terror group's military uniform alongside high-ranking Hamas members in 2016.
The image of Mr Safiya was posted by Gaza Medical Services, an organisation overseen by the Hamas-run health ministry, on its social media.
The Hamas officials pictured alongside him were celebrating the completion of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza.
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According to Gaza Medical Services' post, the high-ranking members present included Director of Military Medical Services Saeed Saoudi, National Security Forces commander Naeem Al-Ghoul and General Abu Obaida Al-Jarrah.
Just weeks after the October 7 attacks, which left more than 1,200 Israelis dead, Mr Safiya penned a op-ed in the NYT, with another written in December 2024.
In one piece, the so-called "doctor" wrote: “We are suffering and paying the price of the genocide that is happening to our people here in the northern Gaza Strip."
NGO Monitor senior researcher Vincent Chebat launched a scathing attack on the US outlet.
The image of Mr Safiya was posted by Gaza Medical Services, overseen by the Hamas-run health ministry
|FACEBOOK/GAZA MEDICAL SERVICES
He fumed: “Those who platformed Abu Safiya must do some serious soul-searching, and figure out how they ended up promoting the propaganda of a literal Hamas terrorist."
In each op-ed, the newspaper referred to him as a "paediatrician and the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza”.
Neither the NYT nor Mr Safiya mentioned his links to the terror group in either piece.
However, the Gaza Strip Medical Services labelled him a colonel in a social media post in 2020.
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Mr Safiya penned a co-ep in the NYT just weeks after the October 7 massacre
|X/HASSAMABUSAFIYA
A spokesman for the IDF affirmed that the Gazan was a Hamas member and accused the hospital of being a hotbed of activity for the terror group and Palestinian Islamic Jihad militants.
However, neither the Israeli watchdog nor the IDF have claimed Mr Safiya has been involved in any acts of terror.
Throughout the conflict, Israeli authorities have accused Hamas-linked Palestinians of masquerading as doctors and journalists for propaganda purposes.
At the beginning of the war, the NYT said a "deluge of online propaganda and disinformation" had released "larger than anything seen before".
Israeli authorities have accused Hamas-linked Palestinians of masquerading as doctors for propaganda
|GETTY
The US outlet accused China, Russia and Iran of deploying covert influence campaigns to negatively portray Israel and manufacture support for Hamas.
James Rubin, from the US State Department's Global Engagement Centre, characterised coverage of the conflict as "an undeclared information war with authoritarian countries".
In December 2023, BBC Verify journalist Shayan Sardarizadeh said he had never seen a conflict "where so much disinformation is posted with the direct intent of dehumanising real victims of war on both sides".
And Muhammad Idrees Ahmad, the director of journalism at the University of Essex, slammed "cynical actors" for falsely posting clips from the Syrian civil war and claiming it was footage from inside Gaza.
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