GAZA STRIP: In praise of Al Jazeera

Say what you will about Al Jazeera, but the landmark Arab satellite news channel has absolutely led the pack in conveying the realities of the ongoing Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip.

In both its original Arabic and fledgling English-language versions, Jazeera has blanketed the story, bringing real-time images that it's likely most American viewers will never see.

Last night, when desperate Palestinians traded gunfire with Egyptian border police and attempted to break through the border wall and escape, Jazeera was there live from both sides of the border. Its reporters also were standing alongside Israeli tanks as they massed outside of Gaza in preparation for a potential land invasion.

Here's just one example of the work being produced by two intrepid correspondents in Gaza, Ayman Mohyeldin and Sherine Tadros. Be warned: The images here are far more graphic than U.S. news channels show.

One of the hidden realities of the Western media's coverage of Gaza is that most correspondents live in Jerusalem and only occasionally visit Gaza, once a month or so, for specific stories. What that means in the current conflict is that many of us were caught out of position when the Israeli air campaign began on Saturday.

Since then, Israel has shut down the border crossing into Gaza, citing security concerns -- effectively shutting out most of the Western press corps and forcing us to rely on local journalists in Gaza to serve as our eyes and ears.

But Jazeera already had a permanent position in Gaza, and its correspondents continue to risk their lives to crisscross the territory, bringing the most comprehensive coverage of the conflict available.

There's another crucial distinction between Jazeera and the Western press. The channel doesn't shield its viewers from the horrors of war.

An old friend of mine from Boston arrived in Jerusalem for a visit on Friday. The first time she saw Jazeera English's footage of casualties in a Gaza City hospital, she was shocked. She simply never had seen such graphic images.

Now here's the really weird part. Jazeera International, the English-language channel that launched in November 2006, isn't available on the vast majority of America's cable systems.  Nearly all cable operators in the U.S. refused to offer the channel to its viewers. As of July of this year, the channel was offered by just a handful of cable companies, including a small cable provider in Burlington, Vt.

I'll leave it up to our readers to debate just why, in a capitalist system based on the idea of free speech, most American viewers aren't even offered the option of paying extra to watch Al Jazeera in English.

I urge you to check out Jazeera's YouTube site.  The channel has also recently partnered with Livestation to provide broadband streaming through your computer.

If you're impressed by what you see, call your cable provider and ask why you can't subscribe.

--Ashraf Khalil in Jerusalem

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Comments

[E.T]

BOMB THE HELL OUT OF THIS ALJAZEER, NOTHING MORE THAN A PROPAGANDHA TOOL FOR HAMAS, ALQUADA, AND IRAN!!!! SOME REAL BAD PAOPLE.

[Yael]

Gary Rosen is right; who needs Al Jazeera when we already have plenty of terror apologists at the LA Times, Washington Post and New York Times?

Also, some in the audience would like to know if "Ashraf Khalil in Jerusalem" is a citizen of the State of Israel.

[Yael]

The next thing you know, LA Times bloggers like "Ashraf Khalil in Jerusalem" will be advocating for Americans to have the "freedom" to get HAMAS and Al-Aqsa TV. This is what's known as stealth jihad (buy the book -- by Robert Spencer).

People can learn everything they need to know about Israel's war on HAMAS ... in 20 seconds:

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=279_1232105524

[Matteo Berlucchi]

Ashraf,

I am the CEO of Livestation and wanted to point out a couple of things.

We work with international news networks regardless of colour, political views, etc. I believe news is always biased one way or the other. The best. and maybe only way to get a fair view of events is to listen to sources with different points of view and then make up your mind. We are very pleased to be able to offer access to Al Jazeera English all over the world and to Al Jazeera Arabic outside of the US.

CNN realised that people wanted news all the time and everywhere. Livestation wants to offer all the news, all the time, everywhere.

The other main thing we are trying to develop is around the idea of presence. Television (tele= from afar, vision=viewing) is a passive and mostly solitary experience whether you watch it on a TV set or on a computer.

The interactivity brought about by the net give us the opportunity to turn tele-vision into tele-presence where the audience becomes an integral part of the broadcast. Our tag line is "be there now" as we want people to be part of the broadcast as much as possible.

Al Jazeera has been breaking new grounds on this front too. The Riz Khan show (on air Mon to Thur at 8.30pm GMT) uses our live chat tools to allow viewers to participate in the show and ask questions to the guest in the studio - all in realtime. Here's the page on Al Jazeera: http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/rizkhan/2008/11/20081121124026893458.html

Thanks for watching Livestation

Matteo Berlucchi
http://www.livestation.com

[Nicolette]

I did a test, reading Al-Jazeera English for 3 months and comparing with other media accounts. I learned nothing new. I know both sides of the story already, how does that help? It's really worthless. Much of it's entertainment with no good analysis.

I wish I could say it was good, I really do, but I can't.

I think we should just talk to all our immigrant neighbors and Arabs and Israelis in the US. Citizen journalism might be better.

[REG CROWDER]

I was a journalist in the United States for 30 years. Now, I live in France whee Al Jazeera English has NOT been kept off the air by thinly disguised US government/corporporate censorship.

My opinion is that Al Jazeera English is the absolute cream of the crop of the satellite news channels. I won't compare them to Fox because Fox is a pathetic joke, neo-fascist propoganda masquerading as news.

But Al Jazeera English stands head and shoulders above CNN and the other news channels attached the the U.S. global corporate media cartel. They are a little better than the BBC and France 24 English but not by a huge margin. The BBC and France 24 English both observe a much higher standard of ethics and professionalism than what one sees from the American corporate media cartel.

CONGRATULATIONS TO AL JAZEERA ENGLISH FOR ITS COURAGEOUS WORK COVERING THE U.S.-FINANCED, BACKED AND ARMED ISRAELI ATTACKS ON THE PEOPLE OF GAZA, PALESTINE.

REG CROWDER
London, England and Brittany, France
http://www.RegCrowder.com

[Annie Pons]

I think it's really important to realize that you are all talking about two channels with the same name, but they are very different. The Arabic and English channel of Al Jazeera are very different in their coverage, they don't share reporters, stories, or editorial boards. Most people that work at the English channel are ex BBC or CNN and the majority are British. I can say this b/c I worked there for two years. It's really a failure on the part of the English channel to not help people/viewers/critics differentiate between the two channels and how incredibly different they are. Look- bottom line is there are incredibly gifted journalists at this channel and the two that he is talking about- Ayman and Sherine- are far more gifted and credible than most journalists on Western news. Ayman is American- so you can stop the anti-American crap...he loves this country and the Middle East where his family is from and where he was born. Sherine has integrity, convictions, and is fair. They are both risking their lives to tell you what's going on AND on both sides.

I was often shocked at how much HATE there is towards AJE in the US...a channel you can't even watch unless you live in Burlington or Toledo. People can easily hate something they can't see, something they don't understand, and something the media in THIS country has told them to view as the enemy. I'm not saying AJE is perfect or that I agreed with every story that ran, but what I am saying is that for the most part they do a great job of reporting the news. We rarely see the world in another way b/c we only see it from the seat where we're sitting in, but if you watch this channel I promise you that you will be forced to see the world from someone else's seat...

[E.T. WALLING]

A REAL RADICAL CHANNEL TO FUEL YOUNG MEN TO COMMIT SUICIDE. GO THERE AND LIVE, GET THE REAL SKINNY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[media lover]

i ask u all to watch aljazeera english and make a fair comparison with bbc and cnn. the difference is that this channel provide the news with extra coverage and it's the only channel recovering gaza strip in direct. none says to u to be an arabic supporter!.. just take a fair decision without any media influence. all western media are avoiding to show reality about middle east. aljazeera english is covering news objectively.
u may ask why aljazera network lanched such channel in english, simply to provide the real images (hidden all the timesby western media).

[Alfred Hussein Neuman]

I thought Al Jazeera was caught publishing doctored video (http://killtown.blogspot.com/2008/07/al-jazeera-aired-fake-wtc-1-crash.html) fake photos (http://media.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ODhkMGY4MTA3NzY0OTYwODcxYjE4ZTU2MzcwMzNiNDQ=),
airbrushed photos (http://www.breakfornews.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=313) and staged photos (http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1215331062525). Why would anyone want to watch a news network that was willfully manipulated the truth?

[deegee]

Surveys of Al Jazeera show that viewers of the Arabic channel are constantly more anti American than non viewers. This statistic applies both to those who declare themselves familiar with American Affairs and those who are not.

Keep Al Jazeera out

[dott]

May I suggest that Ashraf Khalil apply for a job at Al-Jaz? Oh... right, that didn't work out.

I watch the channel every day. Not impressed, not even by the explicit images.

[Joe Humphrey]

I just don't know what to say --- except that this is pure evil propaganda.

[Ken]

"Last night, when desperate Palestinians traded gunfire with Egyptian border police..."

Can I expect this same sort of "unbiased" reporting if I start watching Al Jazeera?

[Rich K]

Al Jazeera is a propaganda tool for the Arab world. Anyone who thinks they are not biased is deluded. They will never show or tell that it's Hamas as the aggressor. Thousands of rockets every year are pointed and shot into Israel with one thought in mind...wipe Israel off the map. Well you poor Palistine sympathizers keep crying as Hamas sets off more rockets and smiles. If you think the Palistinans are blamless you're a prime reader of Al Jazeera. The Muslim way is to keep their people ignorant to everything except what the Muslim clerics want them to hear and read. The Muslim world teaches the destruction of Israel and US, to children. They praise those who commit acts against Israel and the US. How can anyone in their right mind believe that their motives are anything but belicose? Hamas, the cowards that they are hide behind women and children shoot and run laughing how they sent their rockets into Israel, yet when they get the retribution they cry it's all Israel's fault.

There is no excuse for anyone to back Hamas, and those who do, are cowards just like hit and run rocketeers in Gaza.

[GeoffP]

What's wrong with al-Jazeera? The same al-Jazeera that held a birthday party for Samir Kuntar, the terrorist that bashed out a five-year old Jewish girl's brains with a rifle?

GeoffP

[Average Joe]

Here in the great United States, we don't watch islamofascist terrorist propaganda. Ashraf, why don't you haul you racist rear end back to Jihadistan

[Ashraf Khalil]

For the record, Jazeera English correspondent Hoda Abdel Hamid was reporting yesterday from a southern Israeli town (can't remember which one) when she was forced to flee live on camera from an incoming Gazan rocket.
Jazeera also conducted a lengthy interview yesterday with Mark Regen, the top spokesman for the Israeli government.
Again I urge everyone reading this blog, especially those in the U.S., to go to You Tube's Al Jazeera English channel, and decide for yourselves.

Ashraf Khalil

[Joe]

Al Jazerra threw a birthday party for child murderer Samir Kuntar. So much for Ashraf Khalil's whitewash of how wonderful and unbiased Al Jazeera is. It is a front for terrorists. It says one thing in Arabic and another in English for western consumption.

[muslims are vermin]

when the muslim leaves the 7th century and it's cult "religion" behind it, we'll regard it as a human.

until then, we'll consider them for what they are: violent, virulent, vermin to be constantly kept in the crosshairs.