Hillel Frisch
JNS, Jan. 12, 2023
“Comparing these two sites based on 60 days of coverage reveals the gnawing contradictions in their messages and the cynical media manipulations of their sponsor.”
Israel’s willingness to swallow abuse and indignity from foreign states has long been a feature of its foreign relations. Such forbearance in the case of Egypt and Jordan has been justified as being due to weighty geostrategic considerations. Such tolerance for the tiny Kingdom of Qatar, located firmly on the axis of evil and persistently evil toward Israel, is much more mystifying.
Qatar’s positioning on the axis of evil is reflected in two contradictory foreign policy vectors. On the one hand, Qatar is an ally of Iran—the Islamic theocracy that poses the greatest danger to Israeli national security. Throughout the corona crisis, the kingdom was the only state in the world that maintained flights with Iran. On the other hand, Qatar is the leading state supporter and sponsor of the Islamic Brotherhood, Hamas and other extremist Sunni organizations, all of which have a strong tradition of enmity toward Qatar’s Shi’ite ally, Iran. The common denominator behind this Janus-faced foreign policy is blind hatred of Israel and support for the violent acts Qatar’s allies promote against Israel.
An integral dimension of this duplicity is the media front, in which Qatar, with its Lilliputian citizenship and small geographical dimensions, is perhaps the wealthiest state in the world thanks to its gas exports and considerable reserves.
The kingdom’s investments have centered on the creation of the extensive Arabic-language media site Al Jazeera, arguably the largest in the Middle East; Al Jazeera in English, a much less successful venture despite Qatar’s lavish spending on the site; and AJ+ in Arabic, English, Spanish and French. The first two sites primarily provide round-the-clock news coverage. By contrast, AJ+, disseminated mainly via YouTube, is characterized by more comprehensive and focused reports than the first two sites, ranging from 12 minutes to close to an hour.
What is striking are the differences in thematic focus between Al Jazeera Arabic and AJ+ despite having the same sponsor: the Kingdom of Qatar.
In keeping with a kingdom that hosted extremist Egyptian-born Sunni preacher and scholar Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Al Jazeera Arabic is infused with Sunni religious messages and coverage. Far less coverage is given to issues such as women, environmental concerns, human rights, democracy and workers’ rights—including ignoring the deaths of hundreds of workers while building the infrastructure needed to stage the 2022 World Cup. That is precisely why Qatar has justifiably come under attack. …Source