US asks Qatar to ‘turn down’ volume on Al Jazeera news | Al Jazeera

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is said to have asked Qatar to moderate Al JazeeraIsrael announced its war on Hamas amid concerns from the Biden administration that the channel is fueling public opinion and raising the risks of a wider conflict.

Blinken raised the satellite news channel’s coverage with Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim al-Thani Sheikh, according to the Axios website, which said the top US diplomat was informed of the request during a meeting with US Jewish leaders.

The US administration’s concern about the network reflects the strong influence its coverage has on public opinion in the Arab world.

Al Jazeera is one of the few news organizations with a functioning office in Gaza, allowing it to report on the devastating impact of Israel’s heavy shelling on the territory, which the Palestinian Health Ministry says has so far killed 7,028 people, including nearly 3,000 minors. .

This week Al Jazeera’s chief correspondent, Wael al-Dahdouh, became part of the unfolding story. his entire immediate family was killed in an Israeli airstrike in a house in the Nuseirat refugee campThey were relocated after Israel warned residents to move from northern Gaza on October 13.

The network broadcast images of al-Dahdouh breaking down in grief as she looked at her son’s body at the hospital morgue. His wife, daughter and granddaughter were also killed in Tuesday’s strike, along with 21 others.

“They take revenge on our children?” he said kneeling over his son’s body.

In a statement, the network said it “strongly condemns the indiscriminate targeting and killing of innocent civilians in Gaza, which has led to the loss of Wael al-Dahdouh’s family and countless others.”

Another Al Jazeera journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, was shot dead last year while reporting on an Israeli attack in the West Bank. The Israeli army later admitted there was a “high probability” that one of its soldiers had been shot, after initially insisting he had been shot dead by Palestinians. A joint investigation by Forensic Architecture and the Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq he later alleged that he was killed “intentionally”. and Al Jazeera filed a formal complaint with the International Criminal Court.

Al Jazeera Media Network, which is funded by the Qatari royal family, insists on editorial independence. But the network is seen by foreign governments as an instrument of soft power for the Gulf monarchy.

The governments of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain have previously been accused of promoting terrorism, Al Jazeera reports.

Last week, the Israeli government approved emergency measures that will lead to the closure of Al Jazeera’s office in Israel. considering that his broadcasts promote Hamas and are “stinging”.. The matter still has to give final approval to the security cabinet.

Trita Parsi, of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft in Washington, said Al Jazeera was widely respected in the Arab world as an authoritative source on the current war because it continued to focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict even after other Arab media outlets. they reduced their coverage.

“After the Arab Spring, there was a general trend where Arab societies turned inward – or in the case of the Syrian civil war, had their own problems – and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict fell down their list of priorities,” he said. “There was a false assumption in the Arab world that it lost steam, but it didn’t, and Al Jazeera is good to cover it now because it never stopped covering it.”

Blinken’s comments about the network came during an Oct. 13 visit to the Qatari capital, Doha, as Hamas launched a frenetic round of diplomacy to limit the fallout from deadly attacks on Israel six days earlier that killed at least 1,400. the people

He identified Al JazeeraAs an example of what Qatar can do to change its favorable public attitude toward Hamas, Axios reports.

Blinken asked Sheikh Mohammed to “turn down the volume on Al Jazeera’s coverage because it is full of anti-Israel incitement,” the website quoted one of its sources as saying.

No specific example of the offending station output was given, but it is believed that Blinken was referring to its Arabic language rather than the English channels.

Neither the US State Department nor the Qatari Foreign Ministry have commented publicly.

Speaking at a press conference alongside Sheikh Mohammed after the meeting, Blinken told reporters that “there can be no more business as usual with Hamas.”

The Gulf kingdom is home to two senior exiled Hamas leaders, Ismail Haniyeh and Khaled Mashal, who originally moved there after King Abdullah was expelled from Jordan in 1999, two years after surviving an Israeli attack on the Jordanian capital Amman.

Blinken’s complaints about Al-Jazeera are particularly sensitive because Qatar is heavily involved in negotiations to release Hamas hostages from Israel and hostages taken to Gaza.

Last month, the country was also at the center of a complex U.S.-Iran deal that freed five long-term U.S. detainees in Tehran in exchange for the Iranian government’s access to $6 billion in frozen oil revenue. Sanctions imposed by the Trump administration.

However, the US reached a “quiet understanding” with Qatar to prevent Iran from withdrawing the funds – which were transferred to a Qatari bank account – amid suspicions of Iran’s possible role in the Hamas attack.