Al Jazeera Media Network

Al Jazeera initially launched their 24 news Al Jazeera Arabic news and current-affairs satellite TV channel in 1996 as an “independent and alternative” news source, in contrast to other Arab state-controlled media channels.

The channel expanded into a network with numerous outlets and specialty TV channels, including Al Jazeera English (AJ English), Al Jazeera Balkans (AJB), the Al Jazeera Documentary Channel, the social media-based AJ+in English, Arabic, French and Spanish, and English-language Al Jazeera podcasts.

Al Jazeera also operates the Al Jazeera Center for Studies, a regional and global current affairs think tank, the Al Jazeera Media Institute - a media training center, the Al Jazeera Public Liberties & Human Rights and the Al Jazeera Forum.

Al Jazeera has hosted a yearly Al Jazeera International Documentary Film Festival since 2005 as well as the Al Jazeera Balkans Documentary Film Festival (AJB DOC) since 2018.

As of April 2020, the network's news operation website listed a total of 50 bureaus around the world and journalists operating in the Middle East/North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas. As of November 2020, Al Jazeera claimed to broadcast to 310 million households in more than 100 countries.

Al Jazeera is owned by the Qatari government and is financed by Sheikh Hamad bin Thamer Al Thani, the Emir of Qatar.

As of November 2020, Dunn & Bradstreet put AJ's annual revenue at more than $310,000,000 USD.

The U.S. State Department noted in 2009 that the government of Qatar exercised “editorial and programmatic control of the [Al-Jazeera] channel through funding and selection of the station’s management.”

A May 2012 article published in Jadaliyya, an independent ezine produced by the Arab Studies Institute, stated that Al Jazeera was " kept alive by the $100 million it receives annually from the Qatari government.”

In September 2020, The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) reportedly ordered AJ+, Al Jazeera’s online news platform based in the U.S., to register as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA).

A September 16, 2020 CNN article reported that the DOJ identified the salaries of the 80 or so AJ+ U.S.-based employees as "paid by funds originating with the Government of Qatar" and that their work was carried out "at the direction and control" of Qatari leadership.

Al Jazeera has been repeatedly accused of slanting news reports to promote and advance the agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood. Al Jazeera has also been accused of hiring and promoting employees according to their Muslim Brotherhood membership and sympathies while firing those who criticize the Muslim Brotherhood or encouraging them to quit.

In December 2001, Pakistani authorities identified Sami Muheidine Mohamed al-Haj, an assistant cameraman with Al Jazeera's Doha newsroom, as a member of the Muslim Brotherhood Shura council, as well as Al Qaeda. The Shura Council is reportedly tasked with planning and outlining the general policies and programs designed to achieve Muslim Brotherhood’s goals.

Al-Haj reportedly “acted as a... propagandist for the al-Qaida network under the cover of his employment... al-Jazeera Media," served as a money courier for Al Qaeda and was involved in plans to distribute weapons to terrorists in Chechnya.

In Spring 2007, Hafez al-Mirazi, the longtime Washington bureau chief for Al Jazeera, resigned and reportedly suggested in an interview that AJ had “crossed the line” to act as a Hamas spokesperson and under Wadah Khanfar’s directorship “made a dramatic change, especially because of him selecting assistants who are hard-line Islamists.”

Though previously covert in their alliance, in late 2011, the Muslim Brotherhood officially accepted Hamas as part of the global Brotherhood movement.

From 1996-2013, Al Jazeera aired a weekly show called "Sharia and Life" on its Arabic media channel, hosted by Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood.

On January 9, 2009, Al Jazeera reportedly broadcast a sermon by Qaradawi, in which he called [00:10:33] on Allah to “take this oppressive, Jewish, Zionist band of people... and kill them, down to the very last one.”

On January 28, 2009, Al Jazeera reportedly broadcast another appearance by Qaradawi, in which he referred [00:00:19] to Hitler’s torture and massacre of Europe's Jews as "divine punishment" that “put them in their place.”

Qaradawi added [00:00:37]: "Allah willing, the next time will be at the hand of the believers.”

On January 30, 2009, Al Jazeera reportedly broadcast Qaradawi declaring [00:00:47] that before he dies he hopes to go to Israel —“the land of Jihad” — to “shoot Allah’s enemies, the Jews.”

Qaradawi publicly called the female suicide bombing of Jews in Israel “the greatest of all sorts of Jihad.” In his Al Jazeera broadcasts, he consistently defended Palestinian suicide bombings against Israeli civilians.” In 2002, Qaradawi reportedly declared in a broadcast "We have the 'children bomb,' and these human bombs must continue until liberation."

From 1961 through at least 2017, Qaradawi was reportedly livingin Qatar, under the protection of the Emir.

On July 16, 2007, Al Jazeera broadcast a conference in honor of Al Qaradawi, featuring speeches by Hamas leader Khaled Mashal as well as Al Qaradawi himself. Mashal thanked [00:00:28] Al Qaradawi for supporting [00:00:53] “the Jihad and the resistance, and to support the fighters, and the resistance factions” during the first and second Intifadas.

During the First Intifada, Palestinian gunmen hijacked multiple buses and carried out shooting, stabbing and bombing attacks against Israelis, including the bombing of the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem. The second intifada was characterized by more than 120 suicide bombings targeting Israeli civilians on buses and in cafes.

Mashal specifically thanked [00:01:02] Al Qaradawi for his religious ruling [00:01:44] that deemed “martyrdom operations” to be “the most noble level of Jihad.”

Al Qaradawi also spoke, stating [00:03:28] “I support the resistance and the Jihad. I support Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah. I oppose the peace that Israel and America wish to dictate. This peace is an illusion. I support martyrdom operations.”

In 2015, the U.S. reportedly identified Al Jazeera’s Islamabad bureau chief, Ahmad Muaffaq Zaidan, as a Muslim Brotherhood member with ties to Al Qaeda. Zaidan reportedly met with Osama bin Laden several times following Al Qaeda’s September 11, 2001 attack on the United States.

In 2015, the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released digital and hard-copy materials retrieved from a raid on bin Laden’s compound, including emails that stated that the terror group viewed Zaidan as an asset.

In one 2010 email, an Al Qaeda leader, “Azmarai,” said he hoped to use Zaidan to talk Al Jazeera into running a documentary on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks.

On February 18, 2008, following the re-publication of a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed in Denmark, Al-Jazeera broadcast a speech by the spokesman of the Salah al-Din brigades in Gaza, calling[00:01:33] on Muslims to “burn down the offices of the newspapers that affronted our Prophet, and bomb them so that body parts go flying.”

The spokesman also called [00:03:51] upon Muslims “to pursue any of the pigs who drew or helped publish the offensive cartoon, and to slaughter them immediately,” and [00:04:19] “to bomb the embassies, to kidnap Danish ambassadors, and to kill them.”

In September 2006, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Postenpublished 12 editorial cartoons, most of which depicted the Prophet Muhammad, to contribute to the debate about criticism of Islam and self-censorship.

The publication led to violent protests and riots in Denmark and around the world in Muslim-majority countries, resulting in more than 250 reported deaths, attacks on Danish and other European diplomatic missions, as well as attacks on churches and Christians, and a boycott of Denmark.

In the years following the incident, jihadist terrorists planned and executed plots against targets affiliated with Jyllands-Posten and its employees in retaliation for the cartoons.

On June 8, 2017, the mother and sister of one of the perpetrators of the London Bridge attack, Youssef Zaghba, told the Times (UK) that Zaghba was radicalized by “London friends, the internet and TV stations such as Al Jazeera.”

On July 9, 2017, the United Arab Emirates Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Anwar Gargash, detailed Al Jazeera's connections to terrorists and terror incitement in a letter to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Gargash alleged that Al Jazeera violated a 2005 UN Security Council resolution that called on member states to counter "incitement of terrorist acts motivated by extremism."

Gargash wrote of Al Jazeera’s interviews with terrorists such as Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, Hamas leaders Khaled Meshaal and Mohammed Deif, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and others.

According to Gargash’s letter, the interviews were “not simply… topical interviews of the kind that other channels might run; Jazeera has presented opportunities for terrorist groups to threaten, recruit and incite without challenge or restraint."

On May 16, 2020, Al Jazeera TV broadcast an interview with Dr. Abduljabbar Saeed, the Head of the Quran and Sunnah Department in Qatar University's Shari'a Faculty.

Saeed stated that on Judgment Day [00:00:27] “we will liberate Palestine from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea,” and included all the land that constitutes the state of modern-day Israel.”

Saeed added [00:01:31]: “I believe that all the rocks and all the trees will be fighting the Jews along with the Muslims and will call upon the Muslims to kill the Jews.”

Saeed then stated: “"Victory will not come on a golden platter. Victory is achieved through the blood of martyrs and over the skulls of the enemies. Victory is achieved by sacrificing money, life, and all that is precious."

On May 15, 2001, Faisal Al-Qassam, the host of a two-hour weekly call-in show on Al Jazeera, reportedly read on-air a viewer's email speaking of Jews as "the sons of Zion, whom our God described as the sons of apes and pigs."

In the same show, Faisal Al-Qassam also reportedly read out a viewer's email that said: "God… will not be deterred unless there is a true holocaust that will exterminate all of [the Jews] at once.”

On June 24, 2006, Al Jazeera reportedly aired a program interviewing Egyptian publisher Muhammad Madbuli, who claimed [00:01:40] that he told an Israeli cultural attaché that Jews are “devils from within, not human beings.”

Madbuli also said [00:02:04] the Jews were “the enemies of every living creature” and claimed [00:02:09] that Jews have “nothing honorable” in their history and are “a people of money, prostitution, banks, gold and petrol” who [00:02:19] “do all this in order to suck the blood of the peoples.”

Madbuli finished by claiming [00:02:30]: “If there were no Jews in the world there would be no destruction.”

On October 31, 2006, Al Jazeera aired an interview with Samir Ubeid, an Iraqi researcher living in Europe, who claimed that the Nobel Prize “stems from the core of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is an anti-Semitic fabricated text that depicts wealthy Jews conspiring to take over the world.

On June 28, 2007, Al Jazeera reportedly aired an interview with Sudanese MB leader Sheik Sadeq Abdallah bin Al-Majed, in which Al-Majed restated his claim [00:01:40] that the vaccination of children in Darfur was a conspiracy of the Jews and Freemasons.

Al-Majed also claimed [00:03:18]: “If the Jews could find a way to annihilate the people throughout the world, and ultimately have the rule to themselves – they would do it.”

On December 10, 2007, Al Jazeera reportedly aired a public address by Syrian cleric Muhammad Sa'id Ramadhan Al-Bouti, in which he purported [00:00:48] to read a speech written by Benjamin Franklin, one of America’s Founding Fathers, translated into Arabic.

Al-Bouti alleged [00:01:02] that Franklin “warned the committee, and the Americans in general, of the Jewish danger for America and the world.”

Al-Bouti claimed Franklin said [00:01:17]: “There is a great danger threatening the United States of America. That danger is the Jewish danger. Gentlemen, in whichever land the Jews have settled, they have corrupted the morals, and lowered the level of commercial honesty… they always attempt to choke the nations economically, like they did to Portugal and Spain.”

Al-Bouti added [00:01:58] “if the world were to give them Palestine... they would soon find a reason to start lamenting their fate once again. How come? Because they are vermin – he was referring to grave-dwellers who leave their tombs to suck the blood of others. They cannot live among their own kind. They live at the expense of Christians and others who do not belong to their race.”

Al-Bouti also claimed that Franklin called [00:02:32] upon Americans to deport Jews from the U.S, stating [00:02:57]: “if we do not deport the Jews, our children will become, within 200 years, field laborers working to feed the Jews, while the Jews will stay in the banks, gleefully rubbing their hands.”

On January 11, 2009, Al Jazeera reportedly aired a program featuring Saudi cleric Khaled Al-Khlewi, teaching children to hate Jews.

Al-Khlewi claimed [00:01:24] “with the Jews nothing works but force” because [00:01:53] “(t)he Jew is treacherous, disloyal, deceitful and belligerent by nature.”

Al-Khlewi asked [00:04:39] an eight-year-old boy from the crowd “Do you like the Jews?” When the boy answered “no,” Al-Khlewi added “You hate them. And why do you hate them? What did the Jews do?” The child responded “they wanted to kill the Prophet Muhammad,” to which Al-Khlewi responded: “Well done.”

Al-Khlewi also asked the boy [00:04:54] “When you curse them, what do you say? ‘Oh God..?’” When the boy responded: “Oh God destroy the Jews” Al-Khlewi commented: “Well done.”

On November 21, 2018, Al Jazeera TV in Arabic broadcast a woman reading an anti-Semitic poem during a conference held in Gaza on the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.

The poet stated: “Oh sons of Zion, the most evil of creatures, oh you wild apes, you miserable pigs...Jerusalem rejects you. Jerusalem spits out your filth.” The poet also stated that Jews “are like herds of stupid cattle” and stated that Jews are “raised on bloodshed” adding “you are destined for misery and humiliation.”

On June 10, 2016, AJ reportedly broadcast an episode of a Ramadan comedy series by Egyptian comedian Abdallah Sharif, dedicated [00:00:32] to glorifying a deadly Palestinian terror attack on a Tel Aviv cafe.

During the episode, Sharif berated his sidekick for citing [00:01:15] Al-Arabiya TV's report on the attack, and criticized [00:00:51, 00:01:15] Al-Arabiya for calling the murdered Israelis “victims” and saying [00:01:17] the attackers had been "killed" rather than "martyred."

Sharif also mocked [00:01:2] Egyptian journalist Bothaina Kamel for her condemnation of the terror attack.

On July 19, 2008, Al Jazeera Beirut’s bureau chief, Ghassan Bin Jiddo, organized a birthday party for Samir Kuntar, which was aired on Al Jazeera Arabic TV, to celebrate Kuntar’s release from Israeli prison. Bin Jiddou addressed [00:00:13] Kuntar as “my brother” saying: “You deserve even more than this.”

Samir Kuntar, a member of Hezbollah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), was kidnapped and murdered 31-year-old Danny Haran, along with Haran’s 4-year-old daughter, Einat.

On July 5, 2008, Al Jazeera Arabic TV aired a program discussing Dalal Al-Maghrabi, whom Bin Jiddo referred [00:02:28] to as “a martyrdom-seeker.”

Known alternatively as “Mughrabi” and “Al-Maghrabi,” Dalal Mughrabi, a member of the Fatah faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), participated in the 1978 Coastal Road massacre in Israel. Mughrabi and other Palestinian and Lebanese militants hijacked a bus in an attack that left 38 Israeli civilians dead, including 13 children. Mughrabi was killed during the attack.

Bin Jiddo also read [00:02:08] a short poem that glorified Al-Maghrabi as [00:01:37] the “mother” of the Palestinians as well as [00:00:59] their “first president.”

From 2000-2005, throughout the second intifada, Al Jazeera reporters often referred to Palestinians killed by Israelis as “martyrs.”

Following Al Qaeda’s September 11, 2001 terror attacks on America, Al Jazeera broadcast videos delivered by terrorist groups justifying the attacks, including from Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda spokesmen Sulaiman Abu Ghaith. This led to accusations by the U.S. government that Al Jazeera was engaging in propaganda on behalf of terrorists.

Al Jazeera reportedly broadcast more than 10 audio and video statements by bin Laden from 2001-2011.

On October 7, 2001, Al Jazeera reportedly broadcast a message from Osama bin Laden that Al Qaeda had delivered to its Kabul bureau, claiming that the 9/11 terror attacks should be applauded by Muslims.

On November 3, 2001, Al Jazeera reportedly broadcast another bin Laden speech in its entirety, followed a week later by a third Al Qaeda tape, showcasing the military skills of four young men said to be bin Laden's sons.

Throughout the Iraq War, Al Jazeera was accused of airing videos by Al Qaeda’s leadership inciting violence against American-led coalition forces.

On July 15, 2004, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) reported on their website that during a May 2003 Al Jazeera broadcast, Ayman Al-Zawahiri stated: "take revenge against your enemies, the Americans and the Jews" and "the crusaders and the Jews do not understand but the language of killing and blood."

Al-Zawahiri has been the leader of al-Qaeda since June 2011, succeeding bin Laden, and founded Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ).

On June 3, 2015, Al Jazeera aired an interview with Abu Muhammad Al-Joulani, Commander of the Jabhat Al-Nusra jihadi terrorist organization. Jabhat Al-Nusra, or the Al-Nusra Front, is the Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda.

Al-Joulani criticized “peaceful methods” and accommodation with the West, stating “"We all hope that one day, the Muslim Brotherhood will realize that their plan of action is wrong. They must return to their roots and bear arms. Jihad is our path. They should take up their arms, and wage Jihad for the sake of Allah."

Al-Joulani also said: “The peoples must liberate themselves by means of armed force.”

On May 8 and 11, 2013, Al Jazeera reportedly aired footage of a visit to Hamas-controlled Gaza by Yusuf Al-Qaradhawi. Al Jazeera broadcast Al-Qaradhawi’s speech in which he called [00:02:19] for Jihad and prayed [00:02:51] to become a martyr.

Al-Qharadhawi stated [00:01:29]: “We are working toward the liberation of the prisoners, and the liberation of the land of Palestine. We are striving to liberate Palestine in its entirety, without excluding a single inch."

On February 2, 2009, Al Jazeera reportedly aired a speech by Kuwaiti Professor Abdallah Al-Nafisi in which he detailed [00:00:11] how to carry out a biological attack on the White House that is “guaranteed to kill 330,000 Americans within a single hour.” Al-Nafisi also prayed [00:05:10] for the success of a purported plan to bomb a nuclear power plant on Lake Michigan.

On July 21, 2009, Al Jazeera reportedly aired public addresses delivered by members of the Islamist group Hizb ut Tahrir in Lebanon, who condemned [00:02:22] Western culture as a whole and called [00:04:07] for “offensive Jihad” to conquer the world.

On June 6, 2004, Al Jazeera reportedly invited Anis Al-Naqqash to participate in a debate on the use of violence in the region.

Al-Naqqash helped orchestrate a deadly 1975 terror attack on the OPEC oil ministers conference and was involved in a 1980 failed assassination attempt on former Iranian prime minister Shapour Bakhtiar. Al-Naqqash also trained Imad Mughniyah, the founding member of Lebanon's Islamic Jihad Organization and one of the main founders of Hezbollah.

Al Jazeera reportedly introduced Al-Naqqash as “a writer and a political analyst who is an expert in this field.”

During the debate, Al-Naqqash called [00:01:56] for strikes against U.S. oil facilities and companies as part of Jihad.