Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, September-October 2002, pages 66-67

Northwest News

Al-Jazeera: Mouthpiece for Terrorists, Lackey for Israel, or Voice for Democracy?

By Sr. Elaine Kelley

The World Affairs Council of Oregon’s Monthly Headline Forum on July 25 featured a talk by Hafez Al-Mirazi, Washington bureau chief for the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera satellite TV news network. An Egyptian-born U.S. citizen, Al-Mirazi, previously Washington correspondent for the BBC World News Service and hosts the weekly program “From Washington” which highlights U.S. policy for Arab audiences. In Portland, he discussed his network’s role as a voice for democracy in the Middle East.

According to Al-Mirazi, the news service began in 1996 as a Saudi-owned satellite in partnership with the BBC, with the Arab partners providing the financing and the BBC contributing staff, training, and management. The concept was to ensure sound and balanced coverage.

The project lasted only eight months, however. “The BBC/ Arabic TV service couldn’t agree on editorial policy,” Al-Mirazi said, “and the Saudis stopped financing the project,” causing 250 people to lose their jobs. In Qatar, meanwhile, the crown prince took over and implemented some changes toward increased democratization. Among Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani’s initiatives were discussions with the BBC in Doha, the capital, which resulted in Qatar agreeing to fund the first five years of Al-Jazeera (in Arabic, “the Peninsula”). Initially, Al-Mirazi noted, “This was just like Great Britain’s financing of BBC. Al-Jazeera started at six hours a day in the Arabic-speaking world,” he told the audience. “Now we are at 24 hours a day and reach the whole world.”

The news service was widely denounced within Qatar and elsewhere, Al-Mirazi continued. “The foreign minister of Qatar received 400 diplomatic protests, and three or four calls to ambassadors protesting Al-Jazeera’s broadcasting as inviting opposition.” Now, the Washington bureau chief observed, after failed attempts by some in the government to restrict the access of reporters, his network is seen as “the other voice.” “This is a sign of democracy,” he stated, “a new page for the country.”

Al-Jazeera, long dubbed the “CNN of the Arab world,” remained little-known in the West until the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S. which piqued a new interest in the Middle East. Al-Jazeera had operated in Afghanistan prior to Sept. 11, and its journalists were the only ones the Taliban allowed to remain when the U.S. launched its attacks on the country. As a result, Al-Mirazi pointed out, Al-Jazeera became the only source for regional news and live war footage, eventually providing the most up-to-date information on the world’s biggest news story. Estimates on the numbers of new viewers claim an overnight increase from 35 million to billions of viewers.

Al-Jazeera is best known by Westerners for its airing of live interviews with Osama bin Laden. Perhaps indicative of its journalistic achievements, the agency has been widely criticized in the U.S. and in Israel, in Arab countries, by the Palestinian Authority, as well as by members of al-Qaeda and the Taliban. It is accused of being both a mouthpiece for terrorists and as a lackey of Israel. Last October, Secretary of State Colin Powell complained to Sheikh Hamad about Al-Jazeera’s “inflammatory” reporting. The following month U.S. bombs completely destroyed the agency’s Kabul offices. The Israeli media have condemned Al-Jazeera for inciting Palestinian violence, while some Palestinians are enraged that Al-Jazeera interviewed representatives of the Likud government. Even the Arab League at one point called for a boycott of “the TV station that invites Israelis” to be interviewed.

“What is shocking to me,” said Al-Mirazi, “is that the U.S. government is doing the same here in trying to control the media.” He has been introduced, he said, as “the bureau chief of bin Laden’s and Saddam Hussain’s favorite TV channel.” The network is viewed with suspicion by U.S. officials and fellow journalists.

Al-Mirazi insisted, however, that Al-Jazeera’s coverage proffers a challenge to its critics. When CNN, for example, declined a permanent presence in Afghanistan, Al-Jazeera filled a void there and successfully exposed the Taliban to the Arab world, providing an awakening message about regimes claiming to be Muslim. When Al-Jazeera received a March 2001 tape by the hijacker of Flight 93 explaining what he was going to do against Americans, Al-Mirazi said, it decided to investigate to verify its authenticity because, in the Middle East, there was considerable doubt whether the Taliban or Bin Laden had been involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. Arabs weren’t of the mind, he explained, that just because the Pentagon believed it the rest of the world had to. “We believed it needed an extra effort to convince people it really was Bin Laden,” he added. “We investigated and aired live for our audience.”

Al-Mirazi reported that there had been negative reactions to the airing from Arab viewers who criticized Al-Jazeera for not focusing on the Palestinian cause, while some believed the tape had been “doctored.” “That didn’t affect us,” he said. “It was the same as the criticism that we were listening to Israelis.”

In Al-Mirazi’s view, “the job of media is like a court of law,” and both sides must be heard. Some only want to use the media to influence and change public opinion, he said: “They want people carrying the American flag.” He argued, however, that the audience must be engaged in the issues, in a sincere and constant way. As an interpreter of news between the East and West, Al-Mirazi said, Al-Jazeera has an obligation as the “translator in the middle.”

When he heard President Bush’s words referring to Saddam Hussain’s description of America’s war as a crusade, for example, Al-Mirazi said he saw the similarity in the Arabic use of the word jihad. “There is nothing different in Arab and American culture,” he maintained. “’Give me liberty or give me death’ was said by an American hero,” he pointed out, but when similar statements are put into a different historical and cultural context the meaning is questioned: “One entrance for white, one for colored; we need a higher moral ground.”

Al-Jazeera is trying to establish a larger U.S. presence by the end of the year, Al-Mirazi said, and plans to expand its broadcasting from Washington from the current four hours to 24 hours a day within the next three to four years. Because there is a growing demand from the English-speaking audience for access to Al Jazeera, he added, subtitles will be added to some shows, primarily on re-runs. Meanwhile, its English-language Web site, <http://english.ajeeb.com>, has been very successful, Al-Mirazi said.

The World Affairs Council, sponsor of the monthly forum, recently announced the line-up for its 2002-2003 International Speakers Series, which will include Amr Moussa, secretary-general of the Arab League; Sen. George Mitchell, architect of the Mitchell Plan; and Nobel Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Demonstrators Rally for Palestine, Protest Cheney Visit

Anti-war activism has blossomed around the country since Sept. 11, and Portland, Oregon—City of Roses, recycling capital of the West, wilderness refuge of the Woodstock generation, and birthplace of radical poet/journalist/Bolshevik hero John Reed—is no exception. Portlanders have their own Constitution that begins, “We, the peaceful, loving People,” and like to think they single-handedly started the movement that ended the Vietnam War.

Now, several wars later and at the dawn of a new millennium, a growing coalition of Portland-based groups championing the causes of everything from Middle East peace to health care, campaign finance reform, environmental protection, worker and immigrant rights, and war-tax resistance has found common ground in opposing U.S. military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, and U.S. military and economic support of Israel and its military occupation of Palestinian land.

That all came together on Sunday, June 23, when Vice-President Dick Cheney was in Portland to attend a fund-raiser for Oregon’s conservative U.S. Senator Gordon Smith, who this election year has become one of the top 10 recipients of pro-Israel PAC funds.

The Portland Peaceful Response Coalition is an umbrella group for members of Americans United for Palestinian Human Rights (AUPHR), Friends of Sabeel, Women in Black, the Pacific Green Party, the Coalition Against Hate Radio, Freedom Socialist Party and Radical Women, among others, to join forces for special occasions like Cheney’s visit.

Despite an 11th-hour organizing effort, come together they did, on a bright and rare sunny afternoon. While only about 400 of the most steadfast showed up, in colorful attire, their highly creative placards revealed a strong undercurrent of pro-Palestinian support among the liberal, radical, and left-wing street marchers. A surprising number of the participants had been to Palestine—having joined trips sponsored by AUPHR, the International Solidarity Movement or Friends of Sabeel. Nancy Hedrick, who visited Palestine with this writer in December 2001, has been faithful to that experience ever since her return, speaking and writing extensively on Palestinian issues. She was there, holding her “Free Palestine” sign.

Some marchers thought the riot police outnumbered the demonstrators and that the hovering helicopters were perhaps a bit of an overreaction to such a peaceful, nonviolent bunch. One chant directed at the police insisted, “There is nothing here to fear; take off all that stupid gear.”

Marching through downtown Portland, the protesters were barricaded at every intersection and forced away from the building where Cheney was clinking glasses with the corporate set. For all the effort put into the protest, the next day’s Oregonian gave it only a half-sentence mention. That same day the Sierra Club announced it would give its endorsement to Smith’s opponent, Bill Bradbury, and sanctioned Oregon’s Republican senator for “hosting the vice president of an administration apparently interested in creating a legacy of dismantling sound environmental policy, and who chaired the administration’s energy policy that incorporated the kind of policies that Enron wanted.”

Unfortunately, Bradbury is no friend to the Palestinians either. His position paper on Israel sounds even more to the right than Smith or Cheney in its rhetoric on terrorism, insisting that “…it remains clear that America and Israel must continue to strengthen their alliance and increase their commitment to working together to eliminate terrorist regimes in the Middle East...”

Thus it is left to the mustard seed coalition to address the wholesale terrorism of Israel and the U.S. While Cheney raises tens of thousands in a day to advance the power politics of the Gordon Smith campaign, the grassroots continue on, knowing that in the end these things too will pass into dust like the “shattered visage” of Percy Shelly’s arrogant and powerful King Ozymandias.

Sr. Elaine Kelley is the administrative officer for Friends of Sabeel–North America.