The Eternal Satellite Channel…
Hussein Shobokshi

The Baath Party, and the way that it occupied neighboring Arab countries and murdered leaders and officials, will be remembered for its “contribution” to “one Arab nation, with an eternal mission”. It accused those who disagreed with the party’s values of betrayal and issued statements charging individuals with treason and affiliating them with “imperialism” and international conspiracies against the nation. Incomprehensible phrases were and still are tantamount to the drugging of the futures of nations.
On the other hand, there is the Muslim Brotherhood that has revived the notions of denouncing individuals as infidels and the politicizing of religion. It seeks to overthrow “disbelieving” regimes and to guide the “misguided” nations and has issued fatwas that permit assassinations and that state that anything goes in the interest of a higher goal.

These two ideologies, that of the Baath and that of the Muslim Brotherhood, have caused much havoc and division in the region. Ten years ago, their goal was realized in the form of a satellite television channel that presents an evil mix that plants ideas into the minds of innocents. Many of the programs and news bulletins are based upon an odd mixture of Baath and Muslim Brotherhood beliefs, the strongest level of Arab secular political ideology on one side and Islamic political extremism on the other.

Writing in Asharq Alawsat, Hussein Shobokshi wonders just what Al-Jazeera TV is about.

He notes that the TV channel is right out there condemning Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, but has remarkably little—try nothing—to say about Lebanese imprisoned in Syria. We hear a lot about the US ‘occupation of Iraq’, but nothing about Iranian occupation of islands in the Persian Gulf claimed by the UAE. To pretend that Al-Jazeera speaks for the Arab world is nonsense, Shobokshi says:

The continuous attempt to sell the idea that only one source is presenting the complete truth in the interest of the Arab world and Islamic justice is nonsense and the result of which is extremism, an increasing frustration amongst the public and an unstoppable Arab division.

A Qatari official commented on the Tunisian statement regarding the closure of its embassy in Doha and the suspension of diplomatic ties, saying that Qatar has no authority over the concerned satellite channel, whilst this very channel receives all its support and assurance of its continuation from the Qatari government. Comments such as these have become an old joke….a very bad old joke.