By Jamal Elabiad
“I’m no longer a viewer of Al Jazeera for several reasons, one is that Al Jazeera is a lion with the Arabs and a lamb with Qatar.” replied a close friend of mine when I lately asked him whether he listened to the testimonies of Mohamed Ben Said Ait Idder on Shahedon Ala Al-Asr, one of Al Jazeera’s weekly programs presented by Ahmed Mansour.
I’m sorry to say that my friend, like many others, is a victim of many rumors the opponents of Al Jazeera have circulated so as to make it lose popularity. Arab governments, needless to say, are among those who feel threatened by Al Jazeera TV channel, and who have vainly turned to the weapon of rumors in order to tarnish its image around the Arab world.
The other rumors that my friend didn’t mention, and that surely led him to stop watching Al Jazeera are that Al Jazeera is a mouthpiece of Al Qaeda, and both the CIA and the Mossad are the real forces behind it.
They are rumors simply because no one has so far proved whether Al Jazeera is really pro-Ossama Ben Laden or a product of CIA and Mossad. But with regard to Al Jazeera’s blind eye to what’s happening in Qatar, I know many guests of Al Jazeera who did criticize live on-air both Qatar’s trade links with Israel and its military agreements with the United States.
I also told my friend that the Qatar-based Al Jazeera TV channel, albeit those rumors, is still the first channel the majority of Arabs rely on for news, documentaries and politically related programs. Many reasons lie behind that, one is that it that it reports without red-lines. In other words, it sheds light on issues the Arab governments do not want their citizens to know about. This is no doubt the reason why the office of Al Jazeera has been closed in many Arab countries, including Algeria and Tunisia.
1998 was the year I boycotted Moroccan TV channels (2M and RTM) and started watching regularly Al Jazeera. Without Al Jazeera, I would, for instance, have known next to nothing about many events that happened before and during the reign of king Hassan II, such as the “years of lead”, the military coups, Tazmamert, the victories of the Moroccan leader Mohamed Ben Abd el-Krim el-Khatabi, and the assassination of Al Mehdi Ben Barka. Also, Al Jazeera made me realize that my knowledge of Moroccan history is full of fabrications and fallacies.
I concluded the discussion with my friend saying that the weapon of rumors, among other weapons, has been directed against all those in the Arab world who refuse to toe the Arab governments’ line, but this weapon sometimes backfires. And Al Jazeera TV channel is a case in point!