SBS world news reporter suspended

An SBS world news reporter with a track record of posting anti-Israel comments and false claims about the Jewish State on Twitter – including using the hashtag #F**kIsrael – was suspended earlier this week.

On Monday, an SBS spokesperson confirmed to The AJN that Essam Al-Ghalib is a cross-platform journalist employed on a casual basis with SBS, and action has now been taken in regard to this matter.

“In light of some tweets published between 2014 and 2015, which we’ve become aware of, he [Al-Ghalib] has been stood down from all duties, pending an internal investigation,” the SBS spokesperson said.

Earlier, on February 1, media monitoring website Honest Reporting exposed a series of Al-Ghalib’s tweets he made between 2014 and 2015, including one which said, “A f**king Israeli soldier choking a Palestinian boy”.

Other tweets by Al-Ghalib in that period claimed that Israel put Palestinians in “concentration camps”, that Israeli soldiers are “bloody murderers”, and that Israel is “the biggest terrorist in the world”.

Honest Reporting claimed when they contacted Al-Ghalib last week, he told them that at the time he posted those tweets, that he was employed as a public relations staff member at Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Culture and Information, before beginning his journalism career.

Honest Reporting also claimed that when they published a tweet on February 1, 2023 that first exposed Al-Ghalib’s anti-Israel tweets, he “swifly moved to delete his posts”.

Al-Ghalib’s most recent report for SBS News about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was a podcast on January 31, 2022, in which he reported that the Palestinian Health Ministry said Israeli forces killed a Palestinian man, Nayef Salman Abu Fouda, by shooting him in the head in Hebron.

That report was described as biased by Honest Reporting, for failing to mention that Abu Fouda had attempted to carry out a terrorist attack by ramming his vehicle into a group of Israeli soldiers.

Commenting on the matter, Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council executive director Colin Rubenstein said, “It is a duty of journalists to provide objective, balanced and fair reports.

“Essam Al-Ghalib’s social media history would cast doubt over whether he would provide such reports in relation to Israel – a concern borne out by his recent report from Hebron.

“In the company of others, including Brett McLeod on Channel 9 – who also omitted the circumstances leading to Israeli soldiers shooting Abu Fouda – he omitted crucial facts.

“We hope SBS will ensure Al-Ghalib maintains the organisation’s high standards of reporting, and not repeat anti-Israel bias.

“We very much welcome this appropriate decision by SBS to investigate this matter.”