The Qatar-based broadcaster — and the government that backs it — has peddled anti-Western, antisemitic messages for years, Julie Lenarz says
May 22, 2019 09:32
Friday’s publication of a nakedly antisemitic, Holocaust-revisionist video on Al Jazeera’s online platform was utterly sickening and appalling — 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 rigor, 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 up 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 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, a vile 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 Anti-Defamation 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.
Senior Qatari preacher Muhammed al-Muraikhi had described the Jewish people in a December 2017 sermon as “your deceitful, lying, treacherous, fornicating, intransigent enemy” who “has despoiled, corrupted, ruined, and killed, and will not stop”.
Unlike last week’s incident, Al Jazeera took no effort to sack those involved in these 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, signed by President Trump in August 2018, the federal government is required to more closely monitor Al Jazeera and other similar networks operating in America. The move suggests the American government 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 mullah regime. It begs the question of why Ofcom continues to allow Al Jazeera Arabic to overtly spread antisemitic incitement and Holocaust denial through the West’s broadcast media.
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.
