This article is by Jonathan Greenblatt of the ADL. Only now is he realizing what a threat Al Jazeera is? For years, I have exposed the TV terror network of Al Jazeera — I have held press conferences and protests, and have written numerous pieces exposing the terror network’s terror network.
While I did all this, Greenblatt and the ADL excoriated me, while cozying up to Democrat leaders who were enabling Al Jazeera’s work in the U.S. Despite decades of evidence, American leftist leaders led by Hillary Clinton and Al Gore, consistently aligned with evil ideologies and jihad, have long worked furiously to norm and mainstream al-Jazeera, the terror propaganda network. Remember, Al Jazeera is Hillary’s favorite channel, which she lauded: “it’s real news!”
And while she was Secretary of State, Clinton went out of her way to single out Al Jazeera for praise: “You’ve got a global — a set of global networks — that Al Jazeera has been the leader in, that are literally changing people’s minds and attitudes,” Clinton told that members of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
By contrast, Donald Rumsfeld called the broadcaster’s reporting “vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable,” and President George W. Bush joked about bombing it. Senior Bush officials caricatured the channel as an anti-Semitic, anti-American outlet for jihad incitement.
The Iraqi authorities have shut down the Al Jazeera channel’s Baghdad office, accusing Qatar’s state-funded TV network of inciting violence and sectarianism.
Flashback: Congress Fails to Act Against Gore’s Al Jazeera’s Terror TV Deal
“Al Jazeera propagates hatred. Is it also a Foreign Agent?,” by Jonathan A. Greenblatt, The Hill, August 10, 2018 (thanks to Mark):
Qatar’s flagship media network Al Jazeera continues to be a major exporter of hateful content against the Jewish people, Israel, and the United States. For this reason, it is particularly urgent for U.S. officials to evaluate the separate legal question of whether or not Al Jazeera should be required to register with the Justice Department as a foreign agent over to its extensive ties to the Qatari regime. This would be an important signal to potential consumers that Al Jazeera’s messages should be approached with greater caution.
In November 2017, the U.S. Justice Department forced the broadcaster for Russia’s propaganda outlet RT to register as a foreign agent over its ties to the Russian government. Other foreign media outlets with less nefarious profiles, such as companies linked to South Korea and Japan’s public broadcasters, are also registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
FARA was passed in the lead-up to World War II in order to ensure greater transparency from entities that were spreading domestic propaganda on behalf of Nazi Germany. The standard for registration under FARA is basically whether or not an entity such as a media outlet seeks to influence U.S. public opinion or policy on behalf of a foreign political entity such as a government. Organizations or individuals that register under FARA have to declare their activities for public disclosure, and the label tips off the American public that such actors may have an ulterior motive for their work. It would not in any way censor Al Jazeera’s freedom of speech.
This issue has been in the news lately because members of Congress, in responding to the Justice Department’s important action regarding RT, have written to Attorney General Jeff Sessions urging him to assess whether or not Al Jazeera fits the same legal criteria. These members noted that Al Jazeera was founded and funded by the Qatari state, and that the U.S. Ambassador to Doha determined a number of years ago that Qatar’s government uses Al Jazeera as a tool of Qatari statecraft.
It also is worth noting that Al Jazeera and Qatar’s corporation for public broadcasting are both overseen by the same board chairman. And that Al Jazeera’s coverage of Mideast current affairs vacillates wildly based on whether or not Qatar’s rulers are getting along with other countries’ leaders at any given time.
If Al Jazeera was required based on the legal merits to register under FARA, its disclosure requirements would mirror an important new trend taking place in the private sector.
Earlier this year, YouTube began requiring disclaimers under Al Jazeera’s videos that note “Al Jazeera is funded in whole or in part by the Qatari government,” a requirement it has also begun applying to many other government-linked broadcasters. Other social media companies, such as Facebook and Twitter, should follow YouTube’s lead, most notably because Al Jazeera has been specifically targeting social media users with its youth-oriented AJ+ channel, which spreads such problematic messages as moral relativism about terrorism….
Another blog recently published by Al Jazeera declared that, by moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, President Trump was “firing the final bullets in the heart of the Islamic Arab Ummah.” The article celebrated what it foresaw as “the collapse” of “the West,” accused the Jewish people of “killing the Prophets,” and falsely asserted that the historical existence of a Jewish temple in Jerusalem is a malicious fabrication.
The network even published a recent article on its Arabic news webpage targeted at youth to decry the supposed “control of the Jews over the pornography industry.”
Al Jazeera is anti-Israel, anti-America, and downright hateful to the Jewish people. Americans deserve to know if it is also acting as a foreign agent for the Qatari regime.