Qatar’s Role
he Al Jazeera Media Network was established in 1996 by the emir of Qatar and has its headquarters in the Qatari capital of Doha. Sheikh Ahmed bin Jassim al-Thani, a member of the royal family with no background in journalism, was named director-general.
Today Al Jazeera claims to have the largest audience of any news outlet in the Middle East or North Africa, with an estimated 430 million viewers worldwide.
“Al Jazeera” means “the island” in Arabic, an allusion to the network’s claim that it is independent. But it was founded by Qatar, is based in Qatar, and has consistently followed Qatar’s political line, including its fervent support for Hamas and extreme hatred of Israel.
In 2006, Al Jazeera undertook a major initiative to influence English-speaking audiences, with the launch of Al Jazeera English, a 24-hour English-language news service.
Justifying Suicide Bombers
That same year, Al Jazeera Editor-in-Chief Ahmed Sheikh gave an unusually revealing interview to the Swiss weekly Die Weltwoche, in which he spoke frankly about the outlet’s operations and perspective.
While insisting that “we take no instructions from the Qatari government,” Sheikh acknowledged that “the Qatari government covers 75 percent of our expenses,” with the remainder of the budget covered by advertising revenue and other “commercial activities.”
Sheikh explained that Al Jazeera’s news articles use the term “commando attacks” to describe Palestinian Arab suicide bombings against Israelis because “when the country is occupied and the people are being killed by the enemy, everyone must take action, even if he sacrifices himself in so doing.”
Asked whether it is justified for a suicide bomber to attack “even if in so doing he kills innocent civilians,” Sheikh replied: “That is not a Palestinian problem, but a problem of the Israelis.”

Sympathy for Terrorists
Alongside human interest stories and light features about non-controversial topics, Al Jazeera provides its readers with “news” articles that glorify anti-Israel terrorists as “the resistance” and refer to dead terrorists as “martyrs.”
Al Jazeera reporter Elias Karam has written that he views his work “as a Palestinian journalist in an occupied territory” as “an integral part of the resistance” against Israel. After the kidnap-murders of three Israeli teenagers in 2014, Al Jazeera producer Dena Takruri tweeted: “Resistance is not terrorism.” She also saluted the “bravery” of anti-Israel academic Marc Lamont Hill for supporting the attack.
In 2008, staff members in Al Jazeera’s Beirut bureau organized a party to celebrate the release from an Israeli prison of Samir Kuntar, who brutally murdered four Israelis, including a four-year old girl, in 1979. That resulted in the Israeli government temporarily restricting the activities of Al Jazeera correspondents within Israel.
In 2017, Al Jazeera provided a platform to Ahlam al-Tamimi, mastermind of the 2001 Sbarro Pizzeria bombing in Jerusalem (15 dead, 122 wounded), to explain that she is “part of a movement for freedom and national liberation.”

Anti-American Propaganda
Sheikh was also asked by the Swiss interviewer about Al Jazeera’s sympathetic coverage of terrorists who were attacking American soldiers in Iraq at the time. He responded, “The US is occupying a country, and one has not only to expect but also to accept that the people there resist.”
Al Jazeera’s reputation as a platform for anti-American propaganda was strengthened when it broadcast smuggled videos of Osama Bin Laden during the US offensive against Al-Qaeda following the 9/11 attacks.
David Marash of ABC’s “Nightline” program was hired to serve as the main news anchor for Al Jazeera English, but he resigned because the network’s anti-American bias was “so stereotypical, so reflexive.”
Despite Al Jazeera’s anti-American slant, it has managed to win praise from some mainstream Democrats. Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton praised the network during her testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in March 2011.
“You’ve got a global—a set of global networks—that Al Jazeera has been the leader in, that are literally changing people’s minds and attitudes,” Secretary Clinton said. “Viewership of Al Jazeera is going up in the United States because it’s real news. You may not agree with it, but you feel like you’re getting real news around the clock instead of a million commercials and, you know, arguments between talking heads, and the kind of stuff that we do on our news.”

Reaching Americans
In 2013, Al Jazeera undertook a major move into the American market. It purchased Current TV, a cable television station founded and owned by former Vice President Al Gore. His personal profit from the deal was $100 million, according to The New York Times.
Howard Kurtz, who at the time was the Washington bureau chief of Newsweek and host of CNN’s media analysis program “Reliable Sources,” strongly criticized Gore’s decision. Kurtz said it was an “odd spectacle” for the former vice president, “who would have been running Middle East policy had he won a few more votes in Florida” (in the 2000 election), to be “selling—some say selling out—to the emir [of Qatar].”
Current TV was renamed “Al Jazeera America,” and offices were set up in Manhattan. There was just one problem: Al Jazeera apparently failed to pay the agreed-upon price for the transaction. In 2015, Gore and his partners sued Al Jazeera, saying it still owed $65 million of the $500 million selling price.
After a two year-battle, Gore and Al Jazeera reached an out-of-court settlement for an undisclosed sum. By that time, however, “Al Jazeera America” had encountered such severe financial problems that it was forced to shut down.

Platforms for Anti-Semitism
Since its earliest days, Al Jazeera has compiled “a troubling record of providing a platform to all manner of virulent anti-Israel and even anti-Semitic extremists and of serving as a propaganda tool against the State of Israel,” according to the Anti-Defamation League.
Just a few months after it began broadcasting, Al Jazeera aired a statement by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah calling the Holocaust “a myth” and praising French Holocaust-denier Roger Garaudy as “a great French philosopher.”
On another occasion, Al Jazeera circulated a video asserting that the Holocaust was not a fact but merely “a narrative endorsed by the Zionist movement.” It also compared Israel to Nazi Germany.
Following an international outcry, Al Jazeera said it was suspending the producer and editor of the video, Amer al-Sayad Omar. But Omar resumed working for Al Jazeera’s Media Institute less than seven months later, according to the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis.
Political cartoons published by Al Jazeera frequently indulge in anti-Semitic imagery. They have included depictions of hook-nosed Jews, wearing black hats, slaughtering Arab civilians and bragging that they manipulate America’s electoral process.

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