Written by David Litman
In life, Saleh al-Jafarawi, better known by his online nickname “Mr. Fafo,” pretended on social media to be many things, ranging from a journalist to a doctor and even a severely injured patient. Of course, it was all a lie – or at least almost all of it. In death, al-Jafarawi provided evidence that one of his acts may not have been simply for pretend: that of a Palestinian terrorist.
The circumstances of his life and death raise questions as to why multiple mainstream media outlets – including CNN, ABC News, NBC News, and The Guardian – treated al-Jafarawi as a legitimate journalist, even citing his claims in their own reports. After all, it was hardly a secret that “Mr. Fafo” was anything but reliable.
Mr. Fafo and His Death
Many may remember al-Jafarawi’s face, if not his name. His videos from Gaza have been viewed millions of times. His nickname, an acronym for “F*** around, find out,” reflected his progression from videos celebrating as Hamas launched the Oct. 7, 2023 massacre to those portraying himself suffering once Israeli forces began responding to Hamas’s attack.
Al-Jafarawi’s lack of credibility was immediately evident. From his over-the-top acting to his miraculous recoveries to his play-acting as a medical professional, the propagandistic nature of his output was plain to see.
But there was more. Using his online fame, by June 2024 al-Jafarawi had swindled $10 million from gullible denizens of the Internet under the pretense that the money was to rebuild a children’s hospital. Only, the money never went to a hospital, according to Palestinian sources.
There’s yet another major reason to doubt any claim made by al-Jafarawi: he was openly pro-Hamas. There was, for example, his video glorifying himself as a “freedom fighter,” while dressed like a Palestinian terrorist. There was also his Jan. 2025 social media post declaring: “I am proud that I had the honor of sitting on the same couch on which Al-Sinwar was martyred.” Al-Sinwar, of course, is Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader killed by Israeli forces months earlier. He was considered the mastermind of the Oct. 7, 2023 murder, rape, torture, and kidnapping of over 1,400 Israelis.
But perhaps most damning is how Mr. Fafo died. He was killed just last week in the Sabra neighborhood of Gaza City while accompanying Hamas’s infamous Sahm Unit, notorious for its recent massacres of Gazans opposed to Hamas, during an attack on the Palestinian Doghmush clan. Reports indicate he was accompanying the unit as a videographer, notable given Hamas had been proudly publishing video footage of al-Sahm Unit’s torture and execution of Palestinian dissidents, including over 50 members of the Doghmush clan. The son of senior Hamas leader Bassem Naim, Naim Bassem Naim, was also reportedly killed by the Doghmush clan during the attack.
Al-Jafarawi’s will also reportedly evidences his pro-Hamas stance, allegedly reading in part: “I urge you to hold fast to the resistance,” a euphemism for terrorism.
The Media’s Reliance on Mr. Fafo
Given all this public information about al-Jafarawi, one would expect credible news outlets to steer far away from him when reporting on events in Gaza. Instead, several major outlets, describing him as a “journalist,” cited al-Jafarawi’s claims, videos, and images.
CNN’s Fafo Video: In perhaps the most egregious case, CNN’s Christina MacFarlane, on Connect the World, aired a video of al-Jafarawi stating: “I’ll be honest with you. Their smear campaigns against us does frighten us. We fear for our lives. Our families, our loved ones and our friends. In the end what comforts us is that this is our job and we are doing it right.” MacFarlane then states: “That was one of many Palestinian journalists in Gaza, talking about the risks of covering the Israel-Hamas war from inside the enclave. Those risks were thrust into a harsh spotlight this week by a targeted Israeli airstrike, which killed six journalists in Gaza City.” MacFarlane’s report aired on Aug. 12, 2025, more than a year after al-Jafarawi’s embezzlement of $10 million was discovered and eight months after his glorification of Yahya Sinwar.
ABC & NBC’s Lackluster “Verification”: ABC and NBC’s reports also aired long after al-Jafarawi’s fraud came to light. On Aug. 1, 2024, ABC News’s Victoria Beaule credited Saleh al-Jafarawi for two photos, describing him as a “local journalist,” in a story titled “Israel continues strikes on humanitarian area in Gaza despite official designation.” The photos, supposedly stills from a video taken by al-Jafarawi, depict wounded Palestinians “after an Israeli strike in the humanitarian area in Gaza.” The article claims ABC “verified” the video without elaborating. Elsewhere, ABC News has explained that its “verification” efforts amount to simply verifying the location and date of a photo. While important, this “verification” is insufficient for establishing credibility or reliability. Given al-Jafarawi’s track record including staged propaganda, one wonders what details may have been kept off-screen and off the record as al-Jafarawi curated material for Western audiences. After all, Hamas was known to be using these humanitarian areas to launch rockets. In fact, Hamas’s military chief Mohammed Deif was killed while hiding in that exact humanitarian zone. Still, the network omitted al-Jafarawi’s propagandistic record in its coverage, leaving its audience members ignorant that they should be skeptical.
Similarly, on Oct. 7, 2024, NBC News’s Freddie Clayton and Matteo Moschella, in an article entitled “Gaza school burns overnight after Israeli air strikes,” reported on a video published by Saleh al-Jafarawi, referring to him as a “member of the press,” supposedly depicting him in the Ibn Rusdh school in Deir al-Balah, which was heavily damaged and on fire. According to the NBC report, al-Jafarawi stated: “It is 2:30 a.m. and the Israeli occupation targets a school that shelters displaced people…. These are people are peaceful who are displaced in this building…. Our lives are at risk every moment, and we are constantly facing the threat of death.”
Other than al-Jafarawi’s commentary, there is nothing to support the proposition that the school was only being used by “peaceful” displaced Palestinians. In fact, the video – which the article didn’t show – includes a detail that challenges al-Jafarawi’s narrative: a secondary explosion. NBC News omitted that the IDF had stated – two days before the article – that a “command and control center” had been “embedded” within the “Ibn Rusdh School” compound. Al-Jafarawi’s footage shows the building already on fire when a secondary explosion goes off from underneath the rubble, indicating the possible presence of weapons in the part of the school compound that the IDF had targeted.
That NBC News advanced only al-Jafarawi’s narrative and referred to him as a supposedly independent “member of the press” reflects journalistic malpractice. Hamas’s cynical conversion of schools into military sites is well-documented, and thus any truth-seeking journalists should have been on alert. That NBC News nonetheless aired the claims of a known propagandist, without providing context or caution, raises serious questions as to the network’s journalistic standards.
NY Times, CNN, and The Guardian on al-Jafarawi’s Shifa Hospital Images: In what is perhaps the least egregious, but still highly problematic example, several outlets, including CNN, The Guardian, and the New York Times, credited al-Jafarawi for videos and images in their coverage of projectiles that hit al-Shifa Hospital in Nov. 2023.
Here, the New York Times surprisingly demonstrated responsible journalism in its Nov. 14, 2023 article “Evidence Points to Israeli Shells in Strikes on Gaza’s Largest Hospital,” informing readers that “Mr. al-Jafarawi has been the subject of various internet controversies for his prolific social media posts.” The authors, Malachy Browne and Neil Collier, then explained what steps they took to independently verify “the material he captured at Al-Shifa.” This transparency enabled readers to decide for themselves which parts of al-Jafarawi’s material could and could not be trusted.
CNN and the Guardian, however, demonstrated no such responsibility or transparency. CNN’s Katie Polglase, Gianluca Mezzofiore, Eliza Mackintosh, Livvy Doherty, Henrik Pettersson, Byron Manley, and Lou Robinson simply credited “Saleh Aljafarawi” for two images and one video in their Jan. 12, 2024 piece, “How Gaza’s hospitals became battlegrounds.” So too did The Guardian’s Manisha Ganguly, Elena Morresi, Ashley Kirk, Byrony Moore, and Harvey Symons in their Dec. 1, 2023 story, “Hospital damage in Gaza during Israeli offensive – a visual investigation.” Neither alluded to al-Jafarawi’s history nor indicated any effort to verify his videos, images, or claims. Their audiences were left completely in the dark as to the need for caution over anything coming from al-Jafarawi.
Discrediting the Journalist Profession
Consider what these outlets’ reliance on and descriptions of al-Jafarawi say about the state of journalism.
CNN’s MacFarlane, for example, referred to al-Jafarawi as a “journalist” in covering the killing of six supposed journalists. Among those six “journalists” was Anas al-Sharif, a known Hamas terrorist. Captured documents indicated he was the head of a terrorist cell and served on Hamas’s Nukba Force, which led the Oct. 7 massacre. Captured images included him taking selfies with senior Hamas terrorists like Yahya Sinwar and Khalil al-Hayya. His public record is replete with remarks such as praise for the Oct. 7 attack and Palestinian terrorism generally.
If al-Jafarawi and al-Sharif are “journalists” in the same way that CNN’s reporters are, then why should the public trust CNN? If the profession has become so debased that obvious propagandists are included, then what purpose does journalism actually serve? If we take CNN’s MacFarlane at her word, that al-Jafarawi and al-Sharif are proper journalists, then the purpose of journalism plainly does not involve truth-seeking or truth-telling, but rather narrative-building.
After all, while CNN is unequivocal in Mr. Fafo’s status as a “journalist,” it can’t seem to decide whether there is enough evidence to acknowledge Hamas’s use of hospitals for human shielding, despite the dozens of videos, images, intelligence agency confirmations, and testimonials showing exactly that.
With such loose and inconsistent standards of “journalism,” it’s no wonder trust in the media remains at historic lows.
Tellingly, at least in this case, even social media has turned out to be more credible and reliable than mainstream outlets like CNN. Five months before MacFarlane’s report on CNN, Meta – the owner of Facebook and Instagram – banned al-Jafarawi from its platforms on the grounds of its policy against “individuals and organizations linked to terrorism.”
Conclusion
The media’s reliance on al-Jafarawi was inexcusable from the morning of Oct. 7, 2023 when he publicly and proudly displayed his lack of objectivity for all to see. But instead of exercising basic journalistic ethics, these media outlets found Mr. Fafo too irresistible. The harm isn’t limited to the truth; those living through the conflict are also affected when the profession’s commitment to accuracy is replaced with commitment to a narrative. It’s not farfetched to imagine that members of their audiences, having seen their legitimizing of al-Jafarawi, may even have been personally victimized by his “children’s hospital” scam.
In an essay at Tablet Magazine on the phenomenon of “Mr. Fafo,” Liel Leibovitz wrote, in reference to al-Jafarawi and his fans: “For them—for us—there are no hard facts, only hard feelings and soothing fictions.”
One of those “soothing fictions,” it would seem, is that professionalism is still a virtue in a world of journalism that now includes Mr. Fafo.
