Nothing we didn't know already, but it's good to have more confirmation. From AFP, with thanks to Ted Robertson:
Iraqi Defence Minister Hazem Shaalan branded the popular Arabic-language satellite television Al-Jazeera a "channel of terrorism", in a newspaper interview. That brought a sharp reaction from the broadcaster, which expressed its "utter outrage" at what it said was an "unsubstantiated allegation"."Al-Jazeera is a channel of terrorism. That is clear and we say openly and without hesitation: Al-Jazeera is a channel of terrorism," Shaalan was quoted by the London-based Arabic newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat as saying.
The Qatar-based station, which has been banned from reporting in Iraq since early August, has frequently been accused by US and Iraqi authorities of inciting violence by screening "exclusive" videotapes from Islamic militants, including Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
Despite the ban, the 24-hour news channel is often first to announce breaking news from the war-ravaged country, including kidnappings and beheadings of foreign hostages as well as statements from militant groups.
Shaalan charged that Iraqi "terrorist" Omar Hadeed, who he alleged has links to Al-Qaeda, is a brother of Al-Jazeera's office director in Iraq, Hamed Hadeed.
He also said the journalist was receiving videos showing beheadings in the restive Iraqi city of Fallujah from his brother.
Al-Jazeera has denied that its Iraq director has any relationship with Omar Hadeed.
Al-jazeera a terror channel?
The fact that is is news when someone states the obvious is ini itself a sad reflection of what's wrong with the world today.
A posting from April 14, 2004 may bear reprinting here, as what it suggests in dealing with Al-Jazeera, the equivalent of a Nazi propaganda organ, does not date:
A recent article (April 2) by A. O. Scott in the New York Times, about a soi-disant documentary devoted to Al-Jazeera, writes sympathetically of a "balding, rumpled" Saleem Khader. And Mr. Khader, who is presented as a man of some complexity -- the evidence adduced for this implausible idea, given that he works not for a news organization, even a bad one, but for a propaganda network that is not a bit better than anything the Nazis produced, and is responsible for the deaths of many American soldiers, and civilians -- is that he berates another Al-Jazeera employee for carrying an interview with an American anti-war activist, berates him becasue the interviewee is, as Sameer Khader has it, unrepresentative. Great.
But the important part of the tale is this: Khadeer lets Ms. Noujaim (yes, the "Harvard-educated" Egyptian-born Ms. Noujaim -- the Ivy League touch is de rigueur here; shows she's one of us, inhabits the same intellectual climate, and so on) know that he, Sameer Khader, a collaborator of al-Jazeera, and hence a collaborator in an instrument of Jihad that has been directly responsible for American deaths (ask General Kimmitt, or Sanchez, or Abizaid, or any of the soldiers now in Iraq) complacently tells her that he is going to send his own children to university in the United States, so that they can taste the "American dream" and avoid the "Arab nightmare" (the very nightmare which he is helping to prolong).
Not so fast, buster. It would be absolutely outrageous to allow this man, who has participated in such an organization, to assume that when it comes time for him to arrange his childrens' future, the little matter of his participation in a sinister organization like Al-Jazeera will not weigh heavily against him. If he, and all the other Muslim Arabs who think they can act and write as they do, whipping up hatred, and trafficking in lies (even if some of them are slightly less enthusiastic about it, or do it only 90% of the time, not 100%), and then go off to the West as a combination funhouse-and-brothel, and get medical care in Boston or the Mayo Clinic, and send their children to American or other Western universities -- well, it's time to put paid to that assumption. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that would get their attention more, and modify future behavior more, than condemning their own children to the prison of their own awful countries and societies. Yes, of course one can argue that, in the first place, the "sins of the fathers..." But there is no right to be allowed in to the United States, much less to be given a student visa. It is a way, an effective way that does not require the risking of American lives, and that will help save American lives, if those involved in such enterprises realize that they cannot visit the United States, cannot have their children take full advantage of what they, in their schizophrenia, secretly recognize to be superior to the dar al-Islam which they are doing their utmost, willy-nilly, to expand. And to the argument that one way to get people to change is "to let them experience the United States for themselves." Nonsense. Plenty of Arabs have experienced the United States, and are living here as immigrants right now -- and their experience has not changed one whit their attitude of hostility and menace.
By starting to deny the great privilege of living, even for a short period, in the United States, or the other countries of the advanced West, to the relatives of those implicated in the propaganda war, this will eventually have an enormous effect on the behavior and on the career choices, of those who in the future may be considering working for Al-Jazeera and similar organs of hate, hysteria, and lies. They will have to think twice, before putting their talents to work for the Jihad, spouting antisemitic and anti-American propaganda. There will be consequences--their children are going to have to remain, and live, in the world that they are helping to create. They will not be allowed, themselves, the escape-hatch of the West. That itself should cause them to behave a bit more responsibly, when their own children's future is at stake.
If they have talent, so much the worse for them that they lent that talent to evil. Goebbels was extremely talented; was Leni Reifenstahl; so were a host of others who worked for the Nazis, or for Stalin.
Write your Congressmen. Make sure no close relative of anyone working for Al-Jazeera ever gets an entry visa. That will be one more useful anti-Jihad measure that costs nothing, and risks no American lives.
End of reprint. No one associated with Al-Jazeera, nor family members, should be allowed into the United States, or for that matter into any Western country that still wants to be considered a member of the Western alliance -- or of NATO. Sanctions should be imposed on those states who help ease the way for those who work for a station that has American soldiers' blood -- and that of civilians, come to think of it -- all over its hands.
And as for the Al-Thani family that rules Qatar, the days of Colin Powell's mild reproof, so easily deflected, should come to an end. The notion that Qatar, because of the good-looking wife of the ruler (involved in "women's issues" for Western consumption), or Bahrain, or any of the mini-statelets of the Persian (yes, Persian) Gulf, can be relied on is silly.
Bases in the southern Sudan, however, are another matter. Think not in terms of "moderates" and "immoderate" Muslim states. No, think in terms of Muslim states, and Infidel states. That is the real division that must be kept in mind. Just as the "moderate" Muslim can overnight become most immoderate, to Infidel peril, so can a "moderate" ruler of a "moderate" country. These fixed Homeric epithets get in the way of reality. They are not aids to, but substitutes for, thought.