Qatar and Al Jazeera
The Justice Department ordered an Al Jazeera online news platform based in the US to register as a foreign agent on Monday, declaring that the outlet is “an agent of the Government of Qatar,” according to a letter from the Justice Department obtained by CNN.
Read more at CNN
“Indeed, Al Jazeera is an overt tool of Qatar’s emir. Until recently, the emir was Al Jazeera’s owner of record. As the Rubio/Zeldin letter states: “(D)ocuments filed in the United Kingdom show that Al Jazeera International (AJI) was controlled by the emir of Qatar until 2018, after which the person of significant control was changed from the emir of Qatar to Al Jazeera Media Network (AJMN). The board of AJMN is chaired by Sheikh Hamad bin Thamer Al Thani, a relative of the emir.” Indeed, Sheikh Al Thani has even engaged in foreign relations on Qatar’s behalf.
Read more at Newsweek
The Department of Education is investigating whether Northwestern properly disclosed donations from the Qatari government. Since 2012, the school has accepted approximately $340 million in donations funneled through the Qatar Foundation, a nonprofit group with links to terrorism. The university’s elite Medill School of Journalism in 2008 partnered with the Qatari government-owned media company Al Jazeera, an outlet accused of promoting and aiding al Qaeda, the Iranian regime, Hamas, and the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as advancing anti-Semitism.
Read more at The Washington Free Beacon
In a video posted on Sunday evening, Qatar’s Al Jazeera posted a video praising the late Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani.
Al Jazeera called him a “warrior in the path of God.” Soleimani is widely reviled by some in the Middle East for his role in supporting the Syrian regime and suppressing dissent in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen.
Read more at The Jerusalem Post
Al Jazeera “is free to criticise other countries but never to criticise Qatar”, says a media-watcher in the emirate. The state-funded channel trumpets the Saudi women seeking asylum in the West, but keeps mum about Qatar’s own women seeking asylum in Britain. “There’s no Qatari opposition,” says its acting director, Mostefa Souag, when asked to explain the lack of Qatari dissent on his programmes.
Read more at The Economist
But Mona Elswah, an Arab media researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute, said its Arabic channel had become a “mouthpiece for the Qatari government”.
“If the government changes its position, Al Jazeera would have to change its position no matter what,” she told AFP.
Read more at Agence France-Press.
In practice, Al Jazeera continues to act as Qatar’s alter ego, zealously advancing the emirate’s pro-Islamist agenda. While Doha serves as a safe haven for jihadist field commanders from the Taliban and Hamas, Al Jazeera English programming is replete with Jewish-power conspiracies and terrorism apologias. AJ Plus, the network’s slick online video content platform, produces the same anti-American and anti-Semitic subject matter but with a militantly progressive slant.
Read more at The Washington Examiner
Authoritarian countries understand well the value of maintaining a strong messaging presence in Washington to try to influence elite opinion in Congress, at think tanks and in the media, whether that means Russia’s RT, Qatar’s Al Jazeera, the China Global Television Network, and increasingly the efforts of TRT World.
Read more at The Washington Post
Like no other, the Al Jazeera (AJ) network has endorsed and amplified the voices of Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)—interviewing their members, broadcasting their rallies, and glorifying their dead as “martyrs.” AJ reporters have shaken terrorists’ hands, and have amplified their voices, unto the point of physically lifting microphones to their mouths. AJ has become a proxy for terrorists, enabling them fame, and thus, opportunity to mobilize support and funding.
Read more at The Times of Israel
Like no other, the Al Jazeera (AJ) network has endorsed and amplified the voices of Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)—interviewing their members, broadcasting their rallies, and glorifying their dead as “martyrs.” AJ reporters have shaken terrorists’ hands, and have amplified their voices, unto the point of physically lifting microphones to their mouths. AJ has become a proxy for terrorists, enabling them fame, and thus, opportunity to mobilize support and funding.
Read more at The Times of Israel
Al Jazeera is at the centre of a row over its decision to pull an investigation into a black propaganda campaign waged against a London-based businessman whose Russian father-in-law, a mining magnate, has apparently fallen foul of rivals linked to the Kremlin.
The journalist who carried out the investigation, Will Jordan, who has been with the broadcaster for a decade, has resigned in protest at the decision which he claims amounts to censorship.
Read more at The Guardian