Why All the Criticism of Qatar?

The Gulf nation of Qatar has for decades been a highly controversial actor in the Middle East. Most recently, its relationships with and support for Hamas have been on the top of the agenda, but a very close second is Al Jazeera.

Al Jazeera is Qatar’s international “news” medium. It’s a network of stations and sources producing news and commentary on satellite television, internet channels, and other means of communication, with 70 bureaus, broadcasts to about 150 countries, and a claimed audience of 430 million people.

While organized as a private company, Al Jazeera is the voice of Qatar’s regime. It was founded and financed by the then-Emir of Qatar. Whenever I am told that this is not true, and that Al Jazeera is really an independent news source, I ask a simple question: show me one time since its founding nearly 30 years ago that it has voiced one criticism of the Qatari government. I’m still waiting.

When I worked in the George W. Bush White House, we all believed Al Jazeera broadcasting was inciting violence against American troops in Iraq and was costing American lives with its biased coverage. When we confronted Qatar’s foreign minister, he did not hand us the usual nonsense about Al Jazeera being independent; he promised reforms. But none came.

Two current examples will show that very clearly. On June 12, Secretary of State Blinken foolishly gave an interview to a top Al Jazeera news anchor, Jalal Chahda. Perhaps he did not know to whom he had granted this favor, and if so he should fire all his press people. Chahda is a Hamas supporter. In the 2014 round of fighting between Israel and Hamas he called Hamas “the honorable resistance that defends the honor of the ummah.” A few days later he tweeted that “Gaza’s tunnels are the Zionists’ graveyard,” adding that "In the past, I believed that armed resistance in occupied Palestine was one of the methods of liberation, and today I believe that armed resistance is the only method." On July 29, 2012 he wrote "Today, on the day known as the Ninth of Av, the Jews in Israel mark the destruction of their Temple. The hope is that we Arabs can soon celebrate Israel's destruction and its expulsion from our region." [All these quotations come from MEMRI, the Middle East Media Research Institute, here.] He has repeatedly opposed normalization of relations between Arab states and Israel and attacked Arab governments who took that step.

Blinken should have refused to be interviewed by a person with these views. But whatever they show about Blinken’s media advisers, they also show the kind of views that dominate Al Jazeera.

And it’s not just Al Jazeera: Qatar owns other news media that are equally awful. Three days after Blinken’s Al Jazeera interview, the Qatari-owned London-based daily newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi published an article entitled “War Criminal Blinken Wages Diplomatic Campaign to Eliminate Palestinian Resistance and Buy Time for Israeli War in Gaza.” The article is by its Washington correspondent Ra’ed Salhah and the MEMRI report is here. Salhah wrote that Blinken “lies as he breathes” and “his only concern is to buy time for Israel's blood-drenched war with Gaza….”

Let’s be clear: the criticism of Qatar and of these various Qatari media properties has nothing to do with freedom of the press. These news sources are not free; they need to stay close to the Qatari official line and never contradict it in significant ways. They are the equivalent of Izvestia or China Daily, which are also voices of their governments, not of the Times of London, Le Monde, the Washington Post, or for that matter Israel’s newspapers.

And that is what makes their pernicious role so consequential: Qatar could turn them off, or turn them into actual independent news sources, if it wished. Instead it wishes to promote and laud violence, and to call the U.S. Secretary of State a war criminal.

I sometimes drive by Secretary Blinken’s home on the way to work. A disgusting permanent display is on view there, of protesters calling him a war criminal and a supporter of genocide. A better staff might have asked him in advance if he really wanted to be interviewed by a “journalist” and a “news medium” that view him and this country with unalloyed hostility and do all they can to undermine U.S. foreign policy. But be that as it may, anyone who follows Qatar’s government-controlled news media will quickly understand why the place is so controversial in the eyes of many Americans.