Even before the war between Israel and Hamas, a media conflict with numerous actors was raging in the Arab world. This includes national media, but also foreign actors such as Russia, Turkey, Iran and increasingly China, spreading a lot of disinformation. The Arab world is a grateful target group for foreign media because over 300 million people in the 22 states of the Arab League speak the same language and can be reached at the same time. There is no uniform position in the Arab media itself, but very different points of view depending on the government. There are also only a few independent media. However, there is agreement to be very sympathetic to the rights of Palestinians and to be very sensitive to the suffering of the Palestinian civilian population.
The national broadcasters in the Arab world in particular have a strong influence on domestic political affairs. People from other Arab countries only see them to find out what the governments of those countries think. Interestingly, Al-Manar, Hezbollah’s channel, is currently being watched a lot. Because they want to know more about the militia’s position in the conflict.
Social media is definitely, and statistics prove it, even more powerful in the Middle East region than in Europe. Newspapers and their online offshoots are mostly read by a very educated but relatively small elite. However, the perception of the current Gaza conflict is primarily shaped by pan-Arab television channels such as Al-Arabiya and Al-Jazeera. There are enemy states behind them. Saudi Arabia historically founded Al-Arabiya to combat the influence of Al-Jazeera, which in turn is controlled by Qatar, one of Hamas’ most important supporters and the more influential of the two broadcasters. Al-Jazeera is particularly widely listened to because it has first-hand information through its offices in Gaza and Jerusalem. Israel, in turn, is currently accusing Al-Jazeera of Hamas propaganda and is trying to close its office in Jerusalem.
Al-Jazeera is the broadcaster with the widest reach in the Arab world. The channel spans 95 countries, employing a total of over 3,000 people. And the reach is also enormous, reaching several million viewers worldwide via social media. Al-Jazeera no longer only broadcasts in Arabic, but has had an English-language branch since 2006. The station is valued in the Arab world for its on-site reporting and has received numerous awards and praise, not least for progressive formats such as the talk show “The Opposite Direction,” in which people with opposing opinions on moral and religious issues enter into dialogue. In the late 1990s, Al-Jazeera was the first Arabic channel to invite Israelis as guests and also the first Arabic channel to feature Hebrew. The station created a free tone, for example a fully veiled woman spoke to a woman in a miniskirt. There were already initial calls to close the station back then.
The station also tried to gain a foothold in the West with its youth program AJ+. The online medium was founded in 2014 and is available in Arabic, English, Spanish and, since 2018, in French. On social media, AJ+ tries to create the impression of an independent medium: “AJ+ is a unique, digital news and storytelling project that advocates for human rights and equality, holds the powerful to account and makes the voice of the powerless heard,” it says there.
The station is shy when journalists want to research its structures. But if you search the site for an article about the working conditions during the construction of the stadium for the Football World Cup in Qatar or the anti-queer sentiment there, you will only come across articles about the double standards of Western calls for a boycott of the World Cup. The issue of anti-Semitism is similarly one-sided: attacks on Jews are almost never discussed, the topic is only mentioned to defend the BDS-affiliated former Pink Floyd guitarist Roger Waters and the mood in Europe is described as “anti-Palestinian.”. AJ+’s contributions are usually elaborately produced, its journalists are well trained – and, because not many media outlets offer critical perspectives on the Western world in the same sharpness and quality, they are also successful. The narrative certainly resonates with parts of the European left who see themselves as anti-imperialist and feminist. The program’s English-language Instagram account has one million subscribers.
Even though Al-Jazeera vehemently denies the accusation that its owners have direct influence, the station is still noticeably reluctant to cooperate when journalists try to research its structures. The station’s press office usually does not respond to calls or emails. The department heads often only give interviews in the presence of the press spokesman, who records the conversation at the same time, reports the French newspaper Libération. Little is known about the channel’s finances. For example, it is financed entirely by the state – but how high the budget is remains unclear.
The station managed to be with its correspondents wherever conflicts and wars broke out in the Arab world: When the US was looking for Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan after the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001, it was the Qatar broadcaster with videos of the al-Qaeda leader. International media spoke of the “CNN of the Middle East”. In recent years, however, Al-Jazeera’s popularity has declined due to competition from social media outlets.
There have been doubts about the station’s independence since the beginning of the war. Given the reporting on Hamas, but also the ideological proximity to the Muslim Brotherhood, these flare up again and again. The station’s proximity to the Islamist movement forms a separate faction within the station. The Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in 1928 with the aim of spreading Islamic morals and resisting British rule in Egypt, was committed to the credo: “God is our goal. The Prophet is our guide. The Quran is our constitution. Jihad is our path. Death for God is our noblest wish.” The Muslim Brotherhood has spread throughout the Islamic world, one of its offshoots is Hamas in Gaza, which was founded in 1987 after the first intifada from the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza.
Already in the early days of the terrorist organization, Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmad Yasin referred to an anti-Semitic conspiracy narrative called the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” according to which “world Jewry” sought to take over the world by making states financially dependent ferrule. Written at the beginning of the 20th century, the document was exposed as a forgery in the 1920s. However, this did not stop Yasin from spreading his anti-Semitic theses and his hatred of Judaism. The same document served Adolf Hitler and the National Socialists to support their ideology. When Yasin was deliberately killed by an Israeli rocket attack in 2004, Arabic Al-Jazeera said “Farewell, Father of the Resistance.” The obituary came from the Qatari Islamist and Muslim Brother Yousif Al Qaradawi, who hosted the program “Sharia and Life” on the Al-Jazeera channel for many years. He presented radical Islamist interpretations of the Quran to an audience of millions. For example, he spoke of the death penalty being appropriate for sexual intercourse outside of marriage, the mutilation of female genitalia being justified, and homosexuality being punished with lashes.
After Yasin’s death, Qaradawi said goodbye to “a man who dedicated his life to preaching, jihad and fighting for the liberation of his homeland from brutal Zionist occupation” on Al-Jazeera. He ended his obituary with the words: “We say to the Zionists: They have committed an act that no one will forgive them.” Qaradawi glorified the Holocaust “as Allah’s revenge on the Jews,” and suicide attacks by Palestinians were, in his eyes, a martyr’s death not suicide, which is strictly forbidden in Islam. He also conjured up another Holocaust: “God willing, the next time this punishment from God will come at the hands of the believers.” All of this was seen on Al-Jazeera. “Sharia and Life” was the channel’s most popular show for many years.
Al-Jazeera itself insists on its editorial independence, despite its Qatari donors. Informative are documents from the US Embassy in Doha published by Wikileaks in 2010, which stated that Qatar was using Al-Jazeera as leverage in foreign policy negotiations by tailoring its reporting to benefit foreign heads of state and offering to stop critical broadcasts in exchange for major concessions.
Experts often speak of a triangle of forces consisting of Al Jazeera, Hamas in Gaza and the exiled leadership in Qatar: they must be perceived as part of one and the same problem. The fundamental question is why the political leadership of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood can live unmolested in Qatar. The Haniyeh family’s fortune is estimated at several billion dollars. The Hamas leader’s sons like to show themselves in the beds of luxury hotels, in the pool or with expensive sports cars – while people are dying in Gaza.
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