Watching Al Jazeera

Watching Al Jazeera, Part I
So Karen and I sit down, flip channels, and what do you know, suddenly Al Jazeera pops up.

"Since when do we get Al Jazeera?" I ask.
"We don't," Karen assures me.

Oh man, gotta call the cable company and make sure we're not paying for this Jew-hatred.

There's all this slow mo footage overlaid with sinister musical stings of grim looking Jooz carrying M16's; this is intercut with Bedouin children herding sheep, looking all innocent and peaceful.

And the narrator/host/entertainer, a woman with shoulders like a fullback, and an absolutely tragic mullet style hair-do from the 80's, keeps talking about "G-d's Jewish warriors," and she repeats these three words—I'm counting, mind you—and by the time she hits number 107, I give up.

I now know what it's like to get brainwashed in some North Korean reeducation gulag.

Anyway, this Al Jazeera lady with the hoo-ha Oxford accent—big shock—states:

"The second intifada was an attempt by the Palestinians to shake off the Israeli occupation."

Really?

Well, what else can you expect from Al Jazeera.

Actually, the second intifada was Arafat's answer to the Camp David Accords. His way of saying no to all negotiations after Barak offered the terrorist leader 96% of everything, including dividing Jerusalem.

The whole two hours of this Al Jazeera program is such typical, and poisonous Arab propaganda that Karen and I are kind of fascinated. This huge lady with the really bad hair interviews guess who as experts on Israel?

Jimmy Carter. Karen Armstrong. John Mearsheimer. There's the obligatory angry loser from Peace Now — dude, clean your office, it looks like cat litter. And a couple of Israeli lefties who are so far gone they might as well be living in Damascus.

Gee-willikers, Al Jazeera lady forgot to interview Hizbullah/Iranian-proxy strongman Hassan Nasrallah; his views on Israel are pretty much the same as the usual suspects above. He's always ranting about the evils of the Israeli occupation. And he vehemently denies that he's a Jew-hater. Like Carter, Armstrong and Mearsheimer he insists that he's merely anti-Zionist.Yup, Nasrallah gets positively indignant when he's accused of being an anti-Semite. Sheesh, can't anyone criticize and bomb Israel without being accused of being a Jew-hater?

There's this long segment on the — horror musical sting here — Israel lobby. Obligatory shots of well-dressed, um Jews, tables of food, which I suppose is proof of evil, people chatting and looking, y'know, conspiratorial.

I'm waiting for Al Jazeera lady to start quoting The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, because that's really what this segment is all about, but I suppose she's too cool for that. This is after all Al Jazeera. They are , allegedly, civilized.

Then fullback lady pulls out the big guns: Actual Jewish terrorists. She comes up with Baruch Goldstein, Yigal Amir , and a group who rigged explosives to the car of an Arab Mayor they suspected of aiding terrorists and who planned on blowing up an Arab girl's school, Disgusting and wrong, but they were caught and arrested, by Jewish cops, thank G-d.

That's it for Jewish terror.

Personally, I think the Jewish people have shown remarkable restraint in the face of a genocidal enemy.

Al Jazeera lady gets all indignant about American Christians who support Israel. They're warriors because... I have no idea; they sing and dance and pray.

I always thought that warriors are people who, y'know, pick up weapons and fight.

Let's face it, Al Jazeera lady is playing the old Soviet game of manipulating and ultimately destroying language: slavery is freedom, the bottom is the top, evil is good.

Karen and I are smiling. Wow, these good Christians show more love of Israel than many Jews. G-d bless them. Al Jazeera just did a big favor, probably increased membership in that Florida Church by 20%.

Then there's segment called: "The Power Couple."

"Hey isn't that your cousin Shani?" I say to Karen.
"Yup, sure is."

Al Jazeera lady grimly reports on Assemblyman Dov Hikind and his wife Shani, who raise money for a united Jerusalem.

Al Jazeera lady darkly spits out: "All. Completely. Legal."

Horrifying.

Al Jazeera lady points out that some of these Jewish warriors are wearing, prepare yourselves: diamonds.

I'm in a state of shock, feel like melting into a puddle.

The chutzpah of Jewish women wearing diamonds.

Every Al Jazeera viewer knows that women should be wearing, y'know, burkahs!

Al Jazeera lady pines for the past when Jews were forbidden to live in Jerusalem; when the Western Wall was the city garbage dump; when synagogues were horse stables; when headstones from Jewish cemeteries were used by the Jordanians to pave streets; when Jordanian soldiers sat on the walls of the Old City, shot and murdered Jews.

Ah, the good ol' days.

Basically, the whole two hours is a hit piece on Jews who wish to live in Judea and Samaria. Al Jazeera lady blames, well, everything on the Jooz. She never points out that after the Jewish surrender of Gaza, Hamas proclaimed victory and promised that "all of Israel would be liberated."

I guess that's sort of an inconvenient truth.

Here's a larger truth: what happens when Arab/Muslims proclaim parts of London, Paris, Brooklyn, under Sharia and the presence of Jews an intolerable provocation?

There are already 22 Arab countries that are Judenrein.

Why does the world find this perfectly acceptable, perfectly natural?

Why does the world keep drawing new lines in the sand where the presence of Jews is unacceptable?

Just asking.

"Hey," says Karen, "this isn't Al Jazeera, this is CNN."

"Well, I know that, I've just been using this as a literary device to make a point."

Christiane Amanpour's work is guilty of moral equivalence. She's a disgraceful journalist. And I guarantee this: tonight 's segment will be an apology for Muslim jihadists.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at August 22, 2007 10:41 AM