Revisionism exposes Al Jazeera’s true face
FRIDAY’S PUBLICATION of a nakedly antisemitic, Holocaustrevisionist video on Al Jazeera’s online platform was sickening. But surprising? No.
Qatar’s state-owned media behemoth has long been a powerhouse for extremists of all persuasions. It is a vehicle from where they disperse radical anti-Western and antisemitic content to an audience of over 60 million users.
The producers of the video packed the vilest and most prevalent antisemitic tropes into one neat clip. The Jews, or “Zionists”, are modern-day Nazis who use the “same pretexts”, in the words of this so-called documentary, to commit ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians”.
Al Jazeera also informs us that despite veritable libraries of research by an army of the world’s leading historians and a mountain of empirical evidence, the number of Jews slaughter during the Holocaust has been greatly exaggerated and Israel is the “biggest winner” from the genocide.
For too long, this network has been viewed as a legitimate broadcaster in part because it offers two very different platforms.
The English language channel presents an image of moderation and journalistic rigour, in a clear effort to whitewash and distort our understanding of the extremist content of its Arabic sister station. But when one peers through the archives of the Arabic channel — freely available for consumption in British homes — it reveals a litany of past incidents promoting Jew-haters, hardline Islamist ideologues, and even terrorists.
For this there is unimpeachable evidence, demonstrated by Al Jazeera’s extensive airings of Osama bin Laden’s hate-filled preaching while he headed Al Qaeda. And Bin Laden was in good company.
Yusuf Qaradawi — the spiritual head of the Muslim Brotherhood, who recently had his Fatwa app removed from Google due to it being packed with extremist content — is a regular contributor on the channel.
His audience learned that “throughout history God has sent people to punish the Jews for their corruption.”
Through the same channel, the Qatari secret services sought to infiltrate the American and British Jewish communities in a 2016-17 undercover operation, stirring up age-old tropes of non-Israeli Jews having “dual loyalties.”
Around the same time, Al Jazeera’s English channel tweeted, and then deleted, an antisemitic cartoon which alleged a Jewish plot to deny climate change.
It’s critical to understand that Al Jazeera doesn’t operate within a vacuum. Rather, it is a depressing reflection of the government which funds and controls its content. The AntiDefamation League warned last year that the Qatari government still promotes Friday sermons by extremist preachers who engage in antisemitic incitement through state-controlled mosques and television.
And unlike last week’s incident, Al Jazeera took no effort to sack those involved in previous examples of virulent Jew-hate.
In this instance, it is only due to attracting the attention of top-tier media and US President Donald Trump that they have been forced to take disciplinary measures that have otherwise been previously lacking.
As part of the National Defense Authorization Act, the federal government is required to closely monitor Al Jazeera and other similar networks. It suggests the US now suspects what many have often believed to be the case: Al Jazeera is being directed from Doha.
In the UK, Iran’s Press TV was the closest equivalent to Al Jazeera Arabic but its license was revoked in 2012, following a ruling by Ofcom that editorial decisions were being made by Tehran’s regime.
Hopefully this shameful episode will show the world the true nature of Al Jazeera, debunking the myth once and for all that the network does little more than promote hostile, extremist and Jew-hating propaganda.
Julie Lenarz is a senior fellow at The Israel Project
SIR TERRY Pratchett, one of the most gifted science fiction and fantasy writers of his generation, began his career as a journalist before finding fame as an author.
And in one of his books, he set out perfectly what news, so often, can be.
“People like to be told what they already know,” he has one of his characters say. “New things…well, new things aren’t what they expect…what people think they want is news, but what they really crave is olds.”
It’s true. And it’s one of the reasons that in the internet era, fake news spreads like wildfire. It’s simple confirmation bias: people like stories supporting what they believe to be true. The Israel-Palestine conflict provides particularly egregious examples.
Take the case of Aisha Lulu, a fiveyear-old from Gaza who recently passed away from a brain tumour.
The original, grim information appears to have come from the “Quds News Network”. Aisha, we were told, died in a hospital in “occupied Jerusalem…crying, unable to speak and alone”. Why alone? Because “Israel refused to grant permission” for any family members to accompany her.
For any child to die is tragic. For a child to die in pain, alone, without his or her loved ones present, is unspeakably horrifying. Who would be unmoved by such a story? And who would not be angry at the heartless monsters who prevented family from being with that child at the end?
The tale, along with photographs Protesters gather at the Gaza border earlier this month