Edited by: Fern Sidman

As the war launched against Israel by Hamas terrorists in Gaza rages on with the kind of brutality that has claimed the lives of over 1200 Israelis and others, the global media coverage of this Middle East conflagration has been skewed in favor of the radical Islamic aggressors.  This is not a new concept and the tendentious reportage from mainstream media outlets is both disturbing and dangerous in a world that has morphed into a powder keg of seething hatred for Israel and the entire Jewish nation.

Having said that, the worst offender of them all  is none other than the Al Jazeera Media Network. It is a Qatari state-owned Arabic-language international news television network that failed miserably at an attempt to gain a foothold in the cable news business in the United States. Ultimately, they were compelled to shutter their doors due to exceptionally poor ratings.

Since the war began last weekend and for many years prior to that, Al Jazeera’s anti-Israel agenda was in high gear as their biased and slanted reporting was illustrated through their own inimitable style of propaganda.

Al Jazeera has taken heat in the past for their coverage from some unlikely sources at times.  At the onset of the Qatar diplomatic crisis in 2017, several national governments of the Arab League called for the closure of the entire Al Jazeera conglomerate as part of a list of thirteen demands that were presented to the Qatari government in exchange for re-normalized relations, as was reported by Wikipedia.  Al Jazeera has been accused of pushing “Qatari propaganda” by many countries and organizations, including those in the Arab world.

An article by Sherry Ricchiardi in the American Journalism Review (AJR) noted that critics of Al Jazeera have “assailed what they see as anti-Semitic, anti-American bias in the channel’s news content,” according to information on Wikipedia.org. Ricchiardi had earlier criticized an Al Jazeera report that Jewish employees of 9/11 targets were informed of the attacks beforehand, a report which was also criticized in an October 2001 New York Times editorial, the Wikipedia report indicated. She cited the former Al Jazeera weekly show Sharia and Life, hosted by Yusuf Qaradawi (an Egyptian cleric who “argues clearly and consistently that hatred of Israel and Jews is Islamically sanctioned”).

The organization held a 2008 on-air birthday party for Samir Kuntar, a Lebanese terrorist convicted of killing four Israelis who was released in July of that year, later admitting that its coverage of Kuntar’s release violated its code of ethics, as was noted on Wikipedia. The organization’s Beirut bureau chief said, “Brother Samir, we wish to celebrate your birthday with you” and called him a “pan-Arab hero.”

Former Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly has called Al Jazeera “anti-Semitic” and “anti-American.” Wikipedia also reported that Dave Marash, a veteran correspondent for ABC’s Nightline who resigned from his position as Washington anchor for Al Jazeera English in 2008 due to his perception of anti-American bias there, appeared on The O’Reilly Factor and said: “They certainly aren’t anti-Semitic, but they are anti-Netanyahu and anti-Lieberman and anti-Israeli, right …”

On May 30, 2017, Al Jazeera’s English-language account retweeted an Anti-Semitic meme. The network tweeted an apology after the incident, calling it a “mistake.”

In May 2019, AJ+ produced a video denying and minimizing the Holocaust. Al Jazeera suspended two journalists over the video. Wikipedia reported that the video stated that “the number of Jews murdered in the Holocaust] had been exaggerated and ‘adopted by the Zionist movement’, and that Israel is the ‘biggest winner’ from the genocide.”

During the Second Intifada, Palestinians killed by Israelis were referred to as “martyrs”; Israelis killed by Palestinians were not.

Israel announced a “boycott” of the Arabic broadcaster on March 13, 2008, accusing it of bias in its coverage of the Gaza Strip conflict and toward Hamas, according to the Wikipedia report.  Israeli government employees declined interviews and denied visa applications for the organization’s staff.

According to Israeli officials in 2008, Al-Jazeera covered the Gaza incursion but not Palestinian rocket attacks against the Israeli city of Ashkelon. The Israeli Foreign Ministry sent letters of complaint to the organization and the Qatari government. Officials of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party had accused Al-Jazeera of bias toward Hamas (with which it is at political loggerheads), and Fatah official Mohammed Dahlan sued the broadcaster, the report added.

In February 2009, Israel again imposed sanctions on Al Jazeera after Qatar closed the Israeli trade office in Doha in protest against the Gaza War. Wikipedia reported that Israel had considered declaring Al Jazeera a hostile entity and shutting its Israeli offices, but after a legal review the Israeli government decided to impose limited measures restricting the organization’s activities in the country. All Al Jazeera employees would not have their visas renewed, and the Israeli government would issue no new visas. Al Jazeera staff would not be allowed to attend government briefings; its access to government and military offices was reduced, and it could not interview Knesset members, the Wikipedia report said. The organization would only have access to three agencies: representatives of the Prime Minister’s Office, the Foreign Ministry, and the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit.

On July 15^th of that year, the Palestinian National Authority (PA) closed down Al Jazeera’s offices in an apparent response to claims made on the channel by Farouk Kaddoumi that PA president Mahmoud Abbas had been involved in the death of Yasser Arafat, as was noted in the Wikipedia report. The Palestinian Information Ministry called the organization’s coverage “unbalanced” and accused it of incitement against the PLO and the PA. Four days later, Abbas rescinded the ban and allowed Al Jazeera to resume operations.

In August 2011, Afghan bureau chief Samer Allawi was arrested by Israeli authorities and charged with being a member of Hamas, according to the Wikipedia report. Walied Al-Omary, Al Jazeera bureau chief in Israel and the liberated lands of Judea and Samaria said that a military court accused Allawi of making contact with members of Hamas’ armed wing. The Committee to Protect Journalists Middle East and North Africa program coordinator Mohamed Abdel Dayem stated that “Israel must clarify why it continues to hold Samer Allawi,” the report added. Allawi was imprisoned for over a month and fined $1,400 after pleading guilty to meeting with Hamas, a patently terrorist organization that is funded by Iran.

In 2013, UN researcher Nicola Perugini was accused by UN Watch of fabricating a United Nations Human Rights Council session in his Al Jazeera article about the latest UNHRC report on Israeli settlements, as was said in the Wikipedia report.

Al Jazeera was founded in 1996 as part of Qatari efforts to turn economic power into political influence in the Arab world and beyond, and continues to receive political and financial backing from the government of Qatar, Wikipedia reported.  As a result, Al Jazeera has been criticized for being Qatari state media. In 2010, U.S. State Department internal communications released by WikiLeaks as part of the 2010 diplomatic cables leak said that the Qatari government manipulates Al Jazeera coverage to suit the country’s political interests. It is noteworthy to mention that Qatar is a chief financial benefactor for the terror group Hamas, along with the rogue regime of ayatollahs in Iran.

Al Jazeera reporters and anchors in London, Paris, Moscow, Beirut and Cairo have resigned. Wikipedia reported that Ali Hashem, the organization’s Shia Beirut correspondent, resigned after leaked emails publicized his discontent with Al Jazeera’s “unprofessional” and biased coverage of the Syrian civil war at the expense of the 2011 Bahraini uprising. Since the Bahrain government was supported by the Gulf Cooperation Council (of which Qatar is a member), the protests were given less prominence than the Syrian conflict on the network. Longtime Berlin correspondent Aktham Suliman left in late 2012, saying that he felt he was no longer allowed to work as an independent journalist.