Al Jazeera only reports the Arab side of the Gaza war - comment

• Published date: 09 March 2024
• Author: LINDA GRADSTEIN
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

"I was in Oxford last week and I watched a lot of Al Jazeera," Alon Liel, the former director-general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, told The Jerusalem Report. "They cover the war 23 and a half hours out of every 24. It's basically full-time coverage and much more than the BBC."

He said there is almost no coverage of Israel's viewpoint or interviews with Israeli government officials, although he says they do interview individual Israelis. Liel has been on air five or six times since the war began. The Al Jazeera bureau in Jerusalem denied my request for an interview.

Al Jazeera on the ground in Gaza

Al Jazeera is one of the few outlets that have their own reporters on the ground in Gaza. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 99 journalists were killed in 2023; some 72 of them killed while reporting on Israel's war in Gaza, many of them freelancers.

Israel has claimed that several of the network's reporters are actually Hamas operatives, a claim that Al Jazeera denies. For example, Ismail Abu Omar, who was wounded in an Israeli airstrike near southern Gaza's Rafah in mid-February, has been flown to Qatar for treatment. A cameraman for Al Jazeera was also wounded.

Al Jazeera said Abu Omar's right leg was blown off in an Israeli drone strike, and doctors are trying to save his left leg. Israeli army spokesman Lt.-Col. Avichay Adraee said Abu Omar served as a deputy commander in Hamas's East Khan Yunis battalion. He said that on October 7, Abu Omar infiltrated into Israel and filmed during Hamas's attack on Kibbutz Nir Oz.

Al Jazeera rejected the allegations and said that Israel targeted Abu Omar.

"The network condemns the accusations against its journalists and recalls Israel's long record of lies and fabrication of evidence through which it seeks to hide its heinous crimes," Al Jazeera said in a statement. "Al Jazeera's employment policies stipulate that employees are not to engage in any political affiliations that may affect their professionalism."

Israel has long said that Al Jazeera is not an independent news service, and there have been growing calls to close the network's offices in Israel.

"The Qatar-based Al Jazeera television network is an evil empire," wrote columnist David Weinberg recently in The Jerusalem Post. "It glorifies Hamas, including its 'heroic' massacres of October 7 and ongoing 'resistance' against Israel and all forms of Iranian proxy terrorism against Israel. It aids Hamas by reporting on IDF forces concentrated along...