A look at the news program of al-Jazeera, the Arabic-language channel of the Qatari satellite broadcaster, about the terrible situation in Gaza: Eight members of a Palestinian family were killed there the day before in a bomb attack by the Israeli army. Behind the presenter of the main news program, grim images of destroyed buildings in Gaza, of the Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and the masked face of Hamas spokesman Abu Ubaida are shown. Then the program switches to the coastal strip, where people are shown running through hospital corridors, injured people, desperate relatives and, at the end, a row of dead people wrapped in white cloths. There is no commentary on the report. This makes it seem raw, direct and all the more emotional. Al-Jazeera broadcasts such pieces again and again. They are direct insights into a brutal war.
The TV magazine brings in an Iraqi military expert who, together with another presenter, analyzes the advance of Israeli troops in Gaza on an interactive screen. The Palestinian resistance is doing well, says the man. Anyone who listens to him gets the impression that Israel is facing defeat.
These images are no longer seen in Israel itself. The channel is banned there. Police stormed its offices in Jerusalem, and shortly afterwards al-Jazeera disappeared from screens and the internet. It is a threat to internal security, government sources said. Israeli journalists’ organizations have criticized the ban – they say it contradicts freedom of the press.
Is the channel really a propaganda machine for Hamas, as the Israelis claim? In fact, the Arabic al-Jazeera reports more intensively from Gaza than any other medium. The channel is devoted almost exclusively to the war; it really has no other topic. It can rely on numerous reporters on site – in contrast to western media, whose journalists are not allowed to enter the coastal strip.
To the outside world, al-Jazeera presents itself as very professional. The station allows a number of Hamas representatives to speak, but it also broadcasts the statements of Israeli politicians with almost no comment. They simply want to show what is going on, say those responsible for the station in Doha. But the choice of words used by the presenters quickly reveals the worldview that the station cultivates. Israel’s military is consistently referred to as the “occupation army”, while the fighters of Hamas and Islamic Jihad form the “resistance” and dead Palestinians are referred to as “martyrs”.
If you watch al-Jazeera for a few hours, you will be presented with a fairly clear picture. On the one hand, there are the Palestinians in Gaza, whose suffering is given a lot of space, and on the other hand, there are Israelis, who mostly only appear as soldiers or politicians. They either drive through ruins in tanks or announce further military operations. The channel also shows images of the demonstrations against the Netanyahu government and devotes a lot of attention to the problems that Israel’s economy is struggling with as a result of the war. However, the hostages held by Hamas in Gaza or their families are hardly mentioned – nor are Palestinians critical of Hamas.
The channel has a strange relationship with the Hamas terror of October 7. Al-Jazeera does not deny the atrocities committed by Hamas, but one gets the impression that they never really happened. This is also consistent with a documentary film that the much-praised investigative department of the English-language sister channel recently produced: The film, which claims to inform about everything that happened on October 7, spends a large part of its broadcast time simply explaining what did not happen: For example, the long-disproven rumor from the first days of the war that Hamas allegedly beheaded 40 babies in a kibbutz is once again refuted at length. There is also speculation that Israel itself may be responsible for many of the civilian deaths. The way the Hamas fighters went on the rampage, however, is only mentioned in passing. In the end, a simple picture emerges: Yes, October 7 was bad – but much of it is just propaganda, and anyway, the atrocities of Hamas pale in comparison to the suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza.
Al-Jazeera is therefore repeatedly accused of bias and manipulation. Representatives of the broadcaster deny this – and point out that it is their journalistic duty to focus primarily on the situation of civilians in Gaza, where tens of thousands have died and a humanitarian catastrophe is taking place. Nevertheless, the reporting gives the impression that the broadcaster is literally throwing itself into Gaza and leaving out what does not fit into the picture. This is no surprise, after all, those responsible in Doha must know that the bloody war in the coastal strip arouses deep emotions in the Arab world and is met with unanimous outrage – in contrast to other topics.
Before the war, al-Jazeera often had a difficult time. The station, founded and financed by the Qatari government in 1996, was repeatedly caught in the crossfire of internal Arab politics. During the Arab Spring, it was accused – analogous to Qatari politics – of giving the Muslim Brotherhood too much space. Several prominent reporters left the station in protest. Later, al-Jazeera became a target of the Saudis and the Emirates, who banned it from their countries as an alleged Qatari propaganda channel and tried to undermine it with their own satellite channels. However, these channels still do not match the popularity and reach of al-Jazeera.
The Qataris revolutionized television in the Arab world with their satellite channel. Where previously loyal presenters bored their audiences with dull state propaganda, debates suddenly took place and even Israeli representatives were given a voice. Al-Jazeera still thrives on this today – even if the station’s reporting also offends some Arabs. Many liberals are annoyed by what they consider to be overly friendly treatment of Islamists. And an Iraqi journalist who used to work as a freelancer for al-Jazeera justifies her termination of her engagement by saying that the station has been calling the militias in her country, which are considered to be brutal gangs, “resistance fighters” since the beginning of the Gaza war – just because they are fighting against America.
This has not affected al-Jazeera’s success. Meanwhile, its English-language offshoot is also gaining popularity among young, pro-Palestinian activists in America. The fact that it is now banned in Israel will hardly harm it – especially since the program can still be received on the Internet using a VPN. The only thing that could really plunge the station into crisis would be an end to the war in Gaza. Because what would it then report on?
All publishing rights and copyrights reserved to MENA Research Center.
