Antony Loewenstein

At some point, and it will come soon, blind backers of Israel will be forced to acknowledge the horrific human rights abuses in their beloved homeland. But in the meantime they prefer to behave like bullies, trying to silence any voices that challenge Israel. Palestine? Don’t even think about such dirty things.

This is a revealing Al Jazeera investigation that uncovers some predictably under-hand tactics in the US:

Over the past year, I have obtained public records that shed light on how the Israel lobby works on US campuses. At UC Berkeley, my alma mater, as well as at UC Hastings School of Law, the documents reveal how the Israel lobby pressures university administrators to interfere with campus activity – both academic and political – that addresses Israel’s policies towards and treatment of the Palestinian people.

My requests were made in the shadow of two high-profile backlash campaigns to counter events at UC Berkeley and UC Hastings School of Law. In March 2011, esteemed legal academics and practitioners attended a conference called “Litigating Palestine” at UC Hastings School of Law.

On the eve of the conference, the UC Hastings Board of Directors voted in a closed emergency meeting to withdraw its sponsorship of the event without explanation. Though the conference was permitted to proceed, the Dean of the Law School was asked not to give opening remarks as planned.

A year earlier, a historic decision by UC Berkeley’s student government to divest from companies profiting from Israeli human rights violations and war crimes and occupation was overturned in response to similar pressure. Though the bill initially passed with a 16-4 majority, the student body president vetoed it and, after weeks of intense lobbying, the student senate was one vote short of overcoming the veto.

Though the fact of lobby pressure is a matter of common knowledge, it requires demystification. The records I obtained tend to reveal some of the ways in which the lobby actually applies its pressure. They contain valuable lessons for those who wish to defeat it. I draw several hypotheses from these documents.

Foremost among them is the proposition that the lobby’s influence stems primarily from the fact that, despite public criticism, it is largely uncontested by organised campaigns. Subject to intense pressure, university administrators often make decisions they do not like because they feel they have no other choice. 

In hundreds of pages I obtained from UC Berkeley, UC office of the president, and UC Hastings School of Law, I saw communications between the highest level university administrators – people who students can rarely meet or address – and lobbyists in Washington DC at the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, the Zionist Organisation of America, and more.

Yet not a single letter came to these administrators on issues like UC Berkeley’s divestment campaign or the UC Hastings’ conference from similarly high-profile national community organisations like the Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee, the Arab American Institute, the Council for American-Islamic Relations, or the Muslim Public Affairs Council.

As a result, university administrators were presented with a one-sided view and the impression that the only organised feedback was negative. In both cases, they ultimately adopted the view in front of them, caving into pressure on policy decisions without making an effort to solicit the input of other groups. Where issues were clearly important not only to Jews but also to Arabs, Muslims, and others, administrators only took into consideration the position represented by the Israel lobby. But there is no rational reason why one group’s perspective should be privileged over the others.

The former head of the media company is stepping down, amidst allegations he was too close to the US as revealed by Wikileaks, but he denies this:

The wider question, asked in Foreign Policy, is will the station retain its (mostly) aggressive style of insightful journalism?”

In recent weeks, the details of conversations between U.S. officials and Al Jazeera executives, including Khanfar, had been the subject of much chatter in the Arab world (Omar Chatriwala details that story for FP here). One October 2005 cable describes U.S. officials presenting Khanfar with the findings of a Defense Intelligence Agency report complaining about the network’s coverage, and him agreeing to remove a particularly inflammatory slideshow from Al Jazeera’s website. The cable was taken out of context and seized upon by the network’s critics as evidence of a CIA-Qatari conspiracy to manipulate Arabs in the service of U.S. foreign-policy goals.

Middle East Online is running with the headline “WikiLeaks topples Al Jazeera director.” But if Khanfar somehow had to resign because of the cable controversy, which has hurt Al Jazeera’s credibility in certain quarters, it doesn’t wash that his replacement would be a member of the Qatari royal family. Middle East Online also reports that unnamed Qatari officials were already looking to cashier Khanfar over a supposed dispute with Azmi Bishara, a Palestinian intellectual and former Knesset member who lives in Doha (and appears frequently on Al Jazeera).

So perhaps something else is going on. My sense from watching the Arabic network’s coverage over the past few months is that it had more or less dropped the pretense of independence, and at times seemed like the official network of the Qatari Foreign Ministry. For instance, its Libya coverage was utterly over-the-top, enthusiastic cheerleading for the rebels — and it just so happened that Qatar was heavily engaged in overthrowing Muammar al-Qaddafi. When Qatar brokered a peace agreement between warring factions in Darfur, Al Jazeera broke away from its normal coverage for two hours to show the final announcement. And, as many have noted, the Arabic channel’s usual aggression has been noticeably lacking when it comes to Bahrain.

The upcoming Festival of Dangerous Ideas is taking place at the Sydney Opera House in October. Feel threatened.

I’m involved in the following event on 2 October at 6pm:

In Egypt and Tunisia we have seen ordinary people come together to claim democracy and human rights in the face of oppressive regimes, with Twitter and Facebook the other heroes of the revolution. Are social media and Al Jazeera instrumental in what happened, or are they just the latest communication tools? Can anyone with a mobile phone foment revolution or do the punitive regimes in Syria, Bahrain and Libya show that it takes a whole lot more?

Join our panel: Mona Eltahawy, columnist; Simon Sheikh, international public speaker and national director of the community advocacy group GetUp!; and Salil Shetty, Secretary General of Amnesty International.

Salil Shetty appears with the support of Amnesty International.

Chaired by Antony Loewenstein;

We may speak about this, this, this, this or this.

This Wikileaks cable from October 2005 displays a concerning enthusiasm from Al Jazeera Managing Director Wadah Khanfar to censor content following US concerns over “disturbing” material:

Summary: PAO met 10/19 with Al Jazeera Managing Director Wadah Khanfar to discuss the latest DIA report on Al Jazeera and disturbing Al Jazeera website content. Khanfar is preparing a written response to the DIA points from July, August and September which should be available during the coming week. Khanfar said the most recent website piece of concern to the USG has been toned down and that he would have it removed over the subsequent two or three days. End summary.

¶2. (C) Per Ref A, PAO gave Khanfar a hard copy of DIA’s unclassified snippets from July, August and September.

Khanfar said he had recently received hard copies of the July and August snippets via the MFA and was in the process of preparing a written response to them. He said he would include September’s points in the report and pass it to PAO during the course of the coming week. “We need to fix the method of how we receive these reports,” said Khanfar, noting that he had found one of them (presumably sent from the MFA) “on the fax machine.”

DIA’s unclassified snippets for September
—————————————–

¶3. (C) PAO told Khanfar that despite an overall decrease in negative coverage since February, the month of September showed a worrying increase in such programming over the previous month. She summarized the latest USG reporting on Al Jazeera by noting that problems still remain with double-sourcing in Iraq; identifying sources; use of inflammatory language; a failure to balance of extremist views; and the use of terrorist tapes.

¶4. (C) Having had an opportunity to review the July and August reports, Khanfar said he had several observations to make. On a semantic level, he objected to the use of the word “agreement” as used in the August report on the first page, under the heading “Violence in Iraq”, where a sentence reads: “In violation of the station’s agreement several months ago with US officials etc”. “The agreement was that it was a non-paper,” said Khanfar. “As a news organization, we cannot sign agreements of this nature, and to have it here like this in writing is of concern to us.”

¶5. (C) He then said that broadly, the reports’ points fell into three categories. “Some are simple mistakes which we accept and address,” he said. In the second category, he said, are points that are taken in isolation and out of context by the USG report. “This report takes bits and pieces from a whole thing and does not give the context,” he said, noting that in some instances during the AJ broadcasting day, a comment made or position taken by one person may be balanced with a different comment or position later in the same show or later on during the same day. Since Al Jazeera is live 24 hours a day, seven days a week, it is not always possible to provide needed balance at the moment itself, he said. The report, he said, fails to note where balance was achieved in the following news hour, for example, or later on the same day. Thirdly, said Khanfar, there are points on which resolution does not seem possible, such as the use of terrorist tapes. “We have always said that we are going to use these tapes and we will continue to use them. The question is how. None of the tapes are used just like that,” he said, meaning that they are reviewed for newsworthiness and are edited. Concerning the use of inflammatory language, Khanfar said the station’s concern is with the language used by its own reporters and anchors. No station staff member is permitted to use loaded vocabulary. The reports’ focus on inflammatory language is on that used by non-Al Jazeera interviewees, he pointed out. “How can I control what these people say? I can only control Al Jazeera staff. All we can do is try to balance what these people say in other parts of the program,” he said.

¶6. (C) Commenting on the reports overall, he said they lacked balance in that they only focus on the negative. “A report like this should have both sides,” he said. “It does not report the voice we have given to American spokespeople over the recent past,” he said. “We do not always find a military spokesman, for example, but we are trying our best, and we have some success. This is not mentioned.” Speaking of Al Jazeera’s coverage of the Iraqi referendum, he said the station provided 12 hours of continuous coverage, which featured voices from all those vested in the process — Kurds, Shia, Sunni, Americans, Britons and others. “I would really like to see that in next month’s report,” he said. Khanfar repeated that he would respond in more detail to all three reports over the coming days and pass the response to PAO.

PAO raised the question of an Al Jazeera website piece published in the last week, listed under the heading “Special Coverage”, and containing “Live Testimony Concerning Tal Afar”. The site opens to an image of bloody sheets of paper riddled with bullet holes. Viewers click on the bullet holes to access testimony from ten alleged “eye witnesses” who described recent military operations in Tal Afar.

Al Jazeera English captures the post 9/11 decade well, showing how the vast majority of journalists and media companies became propagandists for endless war against the Muslim world:

The struggle for democracy in Syria has continued for most of this year. The media has been largely locked out of the country, so independent reporting has been very difficult (though local bloggers have remained essential).

Al Jazeera’s Listening Post discusses the crackdown and I was asked to comment (my last appearance on the show was in February on the Egyptian revolution). My comment is at 9.26:

As Rupert Murdoch’s empire faces unprecedented pressure in Britain over phone-hacking, criminality, ethical breaches and romancing of the political and media elites, it’s time to assess how one man and one family has amassed so much power in countless Western democracies. It should be challenged.

Here’s my interview on Al Jazeera English yesterday: