Al Jazeera Convictions Outrage World: Congratulations to Egypt for Diverting Attention from Iraq

Egypt's conviction of the Al Jazeera journalists is drawing worldwide denunciation. Though Al Jazeera was clearly tilted towards the (formerly in power, now outlawed) Muslim Brotherhood, the "terrorism" charges against the reporters made little sense and the evidence  was meager.

Those, including me, who hoped that if convicted, the reporters would receive a Presidential pardon, seem to have been disappointed: Sisi says he will not interfere in the court's decision.

And the silencing of diverse voices proceeds: novelist and commentator Alaa Al-Aswany is giving up weekly column in Al-Masry al-Youm. Because, he says, "criticism and difference of opinion  is no longer allowed."

And just as the world's eyes had been focused on Iraq, Egypt propels itself back onto the world's front pages, and not in a good way. And just after John Kerry's visit with Sisi.

Al Jazeera's Nonstory on US Aid for Morsi Opponents

Al Jazeera, long known for its straightforward reporting, has come under increasing fire for its undisguised support for Muhammad Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, reflecting the views of its Qatari owners. For the most part the tendency has been most pronounced in Al Jazeera Arabic and their Misr Live channel from Egypt, and less so in Al Jazeera English. But this strange "exclusive" story is bizarre, "Exclusive: US bankrolled anti-Morsi activists: Documents reveal US money trail to Egyptian groups that pressed for president's removal."

It's already well-established that Egyptian secularists and liberals believe the US backed Morsi and helped support the Brotherhood; now we're being blamed for his overthrow as well?

Indeed, the US supports a number of organizations that promote democratization:Washington's democracy assistance programme for the Middle East is filtered through a pyramid of agencies within the State Department. Hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars is channeled through the Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL), The Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI), USAID, as well as the Washington-based, quasi-governmental organisation the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

In turn, those groups re-route money to other organisations such as the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute (NDI), and Freedom House, among others. Federal documents show these groups have sent funds to certain organisations in Egypt, mostly run by senior members of anti-Morsi political parties who double as NGO activists.

In fact, as anyone familiar with these organizations should know (and could determine with a few calls), they generally maintain links with a broad range of political parties. Secularists have attacked some of them for their links to the Brotherhood, buy they, like the Embassy, maintain relationships with parties across the spectrum.  This is just as great an oversimplification as the charge that the US Embassy supported and propped up the Brotherhood, or that Ambassador Patterson was personally some sort of enabler of Morsi.

The lesson may be that if you try to keep lines open to all sides, all sides will end up blaming you. But Al Jazeera used to be above such blatantly slanted reporting, and they deserve to be called out on this.

Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya on Syria

Anyone interested in Arab media needs to read Sultan Al Qassemi on at Foreign Policy on "Breaking the Arab News," how Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya are both compromising standards and skewing news in their reportage on Syria, presumably reflecting the views of their Qatari and Saudi ownership. This criticism has been growing lately, and it's not the usual beleaguered-regime-blames-the-media situation. Al Jazeera Arabic seems more blatantly guilty, from the little I've seen of it, than Al Jazeera English. One doesn't have to like the Syrian regime or wish it well — I certainly don't — to feel some of the Arab reporting has been askew and unbalanced.

It's too bad, since Al Jazeera in particular was a pioneer among Arabic media, but it's good to see an Arab media critic speaking openly about it.

AJE's Arafat Report: The Longer Version

On Tuesday I reported on Al Jazeera English's investigative report claiming Yasser Arafat showed traces of exposure to radioactive polonium in his last days. At the time I embedded their first short news report and noted that the full report would be broadcast later that day. I'm now embedding the full report. I know some are calling for exhuming the body while others are saying there's no real evidence. Judge for yourselves.

Clayton Swisher on His AJE Arafat Story

I noted earlier today Al Jazeera English's big story today claiming to have documented the presence of radioactive polonium in Yasser Arafat's body at the time of his death in 2004.  At AJE's blogs, reporter Clayton Swisher, who got the story, discusses his experience with the story.

And again full disclosure, as previously noted Clayton is a former colleague of mine from his days at MEI, pre-Al Jazeera English.

Arab Satellite Networks Compromised by Revolts?

 A subject that's been pretty obvious to a lot of people is addressed in The Guardian by Ali Hashem: "The Arab Spring has Shaken Arab TV's Credibility." Al Jazeera did a fine job in Tunisia and Egypt (though Ben Ali and Mubarak would disagree), but Bahrain and Syria are other matters, where Qatar clearly had a stake in the drama. Satellite networks revolutionized the Middle Eastern news scene in the 1990s, but so long as they depend on funding (or are owned by) national  government patrons, they will have their limitations.

Al Jazeera Goes to Mahalla

A couple of weeks ago I noted in passing the continuing labor unrest in Egypt's big Delta textile industry center of Mahalla;  which has a good argument for being where the revolution really started; now Al Jazeera English reports on the huge factory there and its legacy of unrest. An important notice of a much-underreported story (underreported because the government has limited access).

Al Jazeera's "Tweets from Tahrir" Retrospective

Al Jazeera has put together a series of "Tweets from Tahrir" using clips of the events of a year ago  superimposed with Twitter tweets from the time. They run from January 25, when it began, to February 11, when Mubarak stepped down. A useful record.

Is Syria in Civil War? It's Starting to Look Like it on Al-Jazeera

 The debate over when or whether the Syrian conflict deserves to be called a civil war remains a subject for debate, but yesterday on Al Jazeera Arabic's Al-Ittijah al-Mu‘akis ("The Opposite Direction," a show that features controversial issues with spokesmen for both sides), a pro-Syrian Lebanese commentator and a Syrian opposition figure literally came to blows: (you really don't need to understand the Arabic: they're shouting at the same time anyway):

Did Wikileaks Take Down Al Jazeera's Wadah Khanfar?

Al Jazeera Director General Wadah Khanfar announced yesterday that he was retiring after eight years at the head of the news agency. He said he'd been discussing this with the Chairman of the Board for some time, and that he'd decided to move on to new opportunities, etc. (here's his farewell message to his staff), but given the fact that Khanfar has turned up in the latest Wikileaks cable dump, it's not surprising that a lot of people and commentators, up to and including The New York Times, think this is Wikileaks related. One has to admit the timing doesn't suggest he just wanted to spend more time with his family.

If there is a smoking gun, it appears to be this cable from Embassy Doha, released by Wikileaks.  The Embassy PAO, the Public Affairs Officer, met with Khanfar to discuss a Defense Intelligence Agency report about Al Jazeera. Despite some of the reporting there and abroad, he did not meet with the DIA directly, at least not according to this cable. (The DIA representative is usually the Defense Attache.) Nothing in what I read suggests he agreed to "soften" Al Jazeera coverage, just enforce a greater control over what appears on their website.

Admittedly, in the conspiracy-prone Middle East, any whiff of the CIA or the DIA can be fatal, but it suggests a rather naive view of how reporting works. The other day somebody posted a link on Facebook to some publication trying to paint Juan Cole (Juan Cole!) as a "CIA consultant" because a CIA officer had said they had had meetings with him and other academics to give them alternative views. Believe me, in Washington, both academics and journalists interact with the intelligence community because we share the same space. Sometimes we know who they are; sometimes we don't. (I remember an Indian Embassy official taking me out for a lovely Indian lunch in my defense journalism days and quizzing me about the real range of Pakistani ship-to-ship missiles. I assured him that all I knew was what I read in Jane's, and asked him what his job was. "I'm just a visa officer," he assured me. "This is a hobby with me." As an aside, India's intelligence service, the Research and Analysis Wing, has the greatest acronym of the English-speaking intel world, RAW.)

If you touch policy in DC, you'll touch the intel community. My old college roommate spent a career in the intel community. I've considered myself a personal friend of Miles Copeland, knew William Colby, and met Richard Helms a few times; I've known at least two former heads of Mossad and one former head of Israeli military intelligence and have met ‘Omar Suleiman of Egypt. I've spoken to the DIA and most of the war colleges but have never worked for our or any other government. Kermit Roosevelt once served as President of the Middle East Institute and a former US Defense Intelligence Officer for the Middle East serves on my Board of Advisory Editors today. The number of ex-CIA analysts ensconced in Middle East think tanks in DC is considerable, and they are not all on one side of the ideological fence. I won't even start to name them.

If this is what really forced the resignation of Khanfar, it's too damned bad.

Oh: Khanfar's replacement? Sheikh Ahmad bin Jasem Al Thani, head of Qatargas, a member of he Al Jazeera Board, and, as his name should make obvious, a member of Qatar's royal family. He certainly has no questionable political links.

EEK! It's an Al Jazeera Reporter!

I rarely deal with the wilder shores of American Islamophobia/Arabophobia because I assume anyone reading me is not reading them, and vice versa. Oh, sure, sometimes it's irresistible, as in spring 2010's Miss USA furor, when Rima Fakih, a Lebanese-American of mixed Shi‘ite-Christian background who posed in a leopard-skin bikini (photos at the link for historical and educational purposes only) and whose family in South Lebanon fly a huge American flag from their house, was accused of being a Hizbullah mole. When it was learned she'd posed topless, but with her back to the camera, that proved it. Somehow. And I also noted it when Switzerland, with a 5% Muslim population and a total of four minarets in the entire country, voted to ban minarets.  But Jon Stewart's take was so much funnier than mine that I gave up on that issue.

But I have not yet dealt with the issue of Al Jazeeraphobia. Al Jazeera was the pioneer of Arab satellite television, and being based in Doha, Qatar, they have long been pretty free to criticize other Arab countries and regimes. (Qatar is immune, but pretty much only Qatar. The Saudis, Mubarak's Egypt, and other Arab countries hate Al Jazeera, but they have by far provided the best coverage of the Arab revolutionary movements. Though Bahrain is a traditional rival of Qatar's, they've been a bit cautious there, but not elsewhere. As a result Tunisia, Egypt, and Syria have all accused them of seditious plotting. This is usually a good sign.)

Though Al Jazeera has been around for quite a while and Al Jazeera English has a growing reputation as one of the finest non-Western-based cable news channels in English, Al Jazeera's reputation in the US has always been somewhere between spotty and downright hostile. Many people know nothing of it other than it has received certain Usama bin Ladin tapes before anyone else. Most Americans cannot even see Al Jazeera English: in a few markets such as New York and Washington, it's available as an extra cable package or in some broadcast HD side-channels, but most can't get it even if they want it, which is why Al Jazeera English offers a Watch Live link on their website. 

I don't agree with everything Al Jazeera Arabic or Al Jazeera English broadcast, but they do broadcast multiple viewpoints. Instead of Voltaire's classic, "I disagree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it," much of the criticism of Al Jazeera amounts to "I disagree with what (I imagine) you say (though I haven't actually read it or heard it) so I will not only fight against your right to say it but also against your saying anything at all." If much of their coverage of the Middle East is critical of US policy, that's simply a reflection of the  current opinion on the ground.

What provoked this rant are some recent incidents emphasizing the US attitude towards Al Jazeera.

First off, my former MEI colleague and now Al Jazeera English correspondent Clayton Swisher, who  broke the Palestine Papers story, big news in Israel, Palestine, and the Arab World, though mostly ignored in the US, recently had a post on the recent Wikileaks uncensored document dump in which he studied the attitudes toward Al Jazeera in some of the US Embassy Cables. From Clayton's blogpost:

And right now I'm thinking about how they made sources out of just about everyone they spoke with, in many instances without their permission. That was obvious as I waded through the trove of US Embassy Doha cables related to my employer, Al Jazeera.
We may have been hailed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for doing real news when she spoke to the Senate this year. But thanks to WikiLeaks, we now know that, not even five years ago, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz was scaremongering to then-US Ambassador to Qatar that "Al Jazeera is killing Americans".

The result? Under the Bush Administration, numerous US diplomats began cycling in and out of Al Jazeera. Senior network staff became targets of "information warfare", and as they followed the Arab customs of offering tea and dates to visiting dignitaries, we now know the US ambassador was reading off a tightly prepared script of questions submitted by the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).

Even rank-and-file journalists were probed by the Americans' passive elicitation. Doha-based US diplomats seemed to want grist to feed their White House audience on the "we're-losing-Mideast-wars-because-of-Jazeera" narrative.

Yet Qatar, Al Jazeera's home, and the Royal Family of which is the patron, sustainer and at least partial owner of Al Jazeera, is a critical ally in the US position in the Gulf.

But Clayton's post was from several days ago. What prompted this really was this report from an Al Jazeera English correspondent, making a road trip across the US in preparation for the 10th Anniversary of 9/11, who tried to interview people at a high school football game in Texas:  "Welcome to Texas! Unless You're Al Jazeera".

The journalist is Brazilian. But when he presents his business card:

She said she was out of business cards, so I reached into my back pocket, pulled out my wallet, grabbed by business card, and handed it to Mrs. Yauck.

I don't think anything can wipe that double-wide smile off Mrs Yauck’s face. But my Al Jazeera business card does the job pretty quick.“So you’re from Al Jazeera,” Mrs Yauck says in a sharp tone, still looking down at my card. Looking up at me, she adds quickly, “ So what’s your spin on this story?”

“I don’t have a spin,” I say, still smiling to try to ease any sudden tension. “What I told you is exactly what I want to do. Just talk to people, film a bit. That is it. Nothing more. Nothing less.”

“But you’re with Al Jazeera?”

“Yes,” I say proudly, still smiling.

But Mrs Yauck is again staring down at my business card.

“Our superintendent is here, let me just go talk to him and I’ll be right back.”

Ultimately, he is told he can neither film nor interview.

Now, admittedly, and it's important to note that Al Jazeera is noting this as well, the school official involved is insisting that he was preoccupied with other issues and disputing some details of the account.
But the mere fact that the first person to see the journalist kicked the matter upstairs, apparently because it was Al Jazeera, is where things went astray.

America: Al Jazeera was the first Arab news channel, other than official Egyptian and Jordanian channels, to interview Israeli leaders regularly. Before you proclaim them the enemy, watch them a bit. Online anyways, since your local cable probably doesn't offer them.

Al Jazeera Suspends Syrian Bureau Operations

Al Jazeera, both Arabic and English, has suspended operations from its Damascus bureau due to harassment and threats. English servicr correspondent Cal Perry was kicked out over the weekend; his account of trying to leave via Jordan, encountering the confrontation at Deraa, and having to reverse course to Lebanon is here.

Blaming the messenger continues to be popular.

Jim and Gim and Al Jazeera (Al Gazeera?)

Since Arabic dialects, pronunciations, etc. get mentioned here a lot, let me call your attention to a couple of interesting guest posts over at The Angry Arab (As'ad AbuKhalil), dealing with Al Jazeera's pronunciations; first came this post by contributor Joseph,

I should note that al-Jazeera has insisted, correctly I believe, in not granting the northern and urban Egyptian pronunciation (that is erronesouly claimed as representing all “Egyptian” pronunciation when the majority of Egyptians do not uphold it) of the “jim” as “gim” entrance into its coverage (Jamal ‘Abd al-Nasir to name the most obvious example remains Jamal, and never Gamal), increasingly al-Jazeera insists not only on pronouncing the name of Qadhdhafi as Gadhdhafi or of the head of the Jordanian Mukhabarat as “Raggad” and not ‘Raqqad” but also of insisting on naming Libyan cities as “Briga” and not “Burayqa”. Does this mean that the Egyptian city of Qina should be pronounced on al-Jazeera as “Ina” for example? Why is al-Jazeera conceding on these pronunciations and not on others?"

To this Elias Muhanna (Qifa Nabki) replied:

This observation is problematic in my opinion, for a few reasons. First of all, the "gim" in place of "jim" is not limited solely to northern and urban Egyptian pronunciation but is also present in various other Egyptian dialects from around the country. It is also to be found in Omani, Yemeni, and Central Arabian dialects, and also (in certain linguistic contexts) in some North African dialects.

Furthermore, it is worth noting that there is some linguistic evidence that suggests that /gy/ was actually viewed as the "correct" pronunciation of the letter "jim" during the early Islamic period. (Phonetic descriptions by Sibawayhi and al-Khalil ibn Ahmad suggest that the letter was not pronounced as it is today in Modern Standard Arabic).

Obviously, this has nothing to do with whether or not Aljazeera is justified in deciding what kind of accents to permit... But, someone needs to stick up for the "gim"!"

In the midst of revolutionary upheavals, war and repression, this may seem a trivial discussion, but I thought it worth noting. I'm not, however, going to provoke the wrath of non-Egyptian Arabs by jumping in.

All I'll add is: when Al Jazeera starts calling itself Al Gazeera, that will get my attention.

You Can't Make This Stuff Up: Haim Saban Wants to Buy Half of Al-Jazeera?

Okay: strangest story so far today (but it's early): Haim Saban wants to buy half of Al-Jazeera?

Now Haim Saban is a media mogul, born into the Jewish community in Alexandria, Egypt; he owns pretty much whatever he fancies. (And is the benefactor of the Saban Center at Brookings.) But for all his financial clout, he's a strong supporter of Israel and lives there part of the time: can he really persuade the Amir of Qatar to let him buy half of Al-Jazeera? Especially now that the report is public?

Ah — but let's read the story a bit more. Key words: The Egyptian newspaper Al-Mesryoon Reported This Week.

Aha! Al-Misriyyun is an Egyptian independent newspaper; a bit sensational at times (at the moment they're headlining the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood doesn't accept Muhammad al-Baradei as a candidate for President of Egypt, which would only be interesting if he had a chance) and here's the original Haim Saban/Al-Jazeera story for those who read Arabic. It would not be outrageous for this to be a piece of disinformation aimed at discrediting a) Al-Jazeera, b) Qatar (neither of which are very popular with Egypt right now), or c) both.

Oh, I don't doubt that Haim Saban, a strong supporter of Israel, would like to own half of Al-Jazeera (wouldn't you?) But can anybody really picture this happening, at least in the present Arab-Israeli environment? Since the Qatari Royal Family would be involved?

I think this is a case of an Egyptian paper rabble-rousing against Al-Jazeera, even though there may be a nugget of truth deep down in there somewhere. I'm a little surprised that Ha'aretz played the story so straight.

Reading that story it strikes me as the sort of sensational story that turns up too often in the Egyptian press raising specters of Israeli takeovers of all sorts of Arab institutions. It's pretty much unsourced (Egyptian sources working in Qatar) and may represent some echo of a feeler put out by Saban — if that. I don't see Al-Jazeera being half-controlled by Haim Saban anytime soon.

The odd part, I still think, is not that Al-Misriyyun ran this, but that Ha'aretz did.

Clayton Swisher Gets Israeli Opinions of Obama

Here's an interesting piece from Al-Jazeera English. Before he was a correspondent for Al-Jazeera English, Clayton Swisher (the reporter on this piece) was the Programs Director at MEI, so it's sort of an alumnus report. He's interviewing Israelis on Ben-Yehuda street in West Jerusalem, and the opinions are mostly pretty negative: several insisting Obama's a Muslim, etc. Anyway, here's Clayton's report:

Marc Lynch on Khanfar at MEI

Marc Lynch has a posting up about a small gathering held today with Al-Jazeera Director Wadah Khanfar here at MEI. I didn't attend so I'll let his commentary do the job.

The Palestinian Authority's Al-Jazeera Blunder Deepens

Talleyrand is usually credited (though others also claim the phrase) with having remarked of Napoleon's execution of the Duc d'Enghien that it "was worse than a crime, it was a blunder." The same might be said of the Palestinian Authority's closing of the West Bank Al-Jazeera offices in retaliation for Al-Jazeera reporting the Farouq Qaddoumi charge that Mahmud ‘Abbas and Muhammad Dahlan had conspired with Ariel Sharon and unnamed Americans to murder Yasir ‘Arafat. I first posted on the Qaddoumi affair on Wednesday, when it was still gathering steam. I didn't write anything about it yesterday, but Marc Lynch had a good summary of events up to that point, including the remarks that:

That's a major mistake, and all too typical of the way the Palestinian Authority and most other Arab governments have approached critical media over the years. Shutting down critical media outlets represents the bad habit of the official Arab order, which has never adjusted to the contentious new media (whether al-Jazeera or political blogs).

The PA decision is more troubling than the run of the mill story of Arab regimes hating free media, though, because it comes at a time when the contours of an emerging Palestinian state are being shaped. Salam al-Fayyad's role in the crackdown is particularly disturbing, given the great hopes which the U.S. has placed on him personally. The reflexive hostility to a free media shows yet again why the Palestinian Authority in its current configuration is a poor foundation for building a viable Palestinian state and the need for major political and institutional reforms. What does it say for the hope of building a political system on the basis of the rule of law and political freedoms when its U.S.-backed leadership cavalierly closes down media outlets it doesn't like?

He also noted that in defending itself, Al-Jazeera was running more on the story than would have been the case if the story had just been ignored. That is still the case today on Al-Jazeera's front page (though I've linked to the main page so it will change hourly or daily).

I certainly agree that the closing of the Al-Jazeera offices represents the traditonal Arab regime's view of media reportage as something that can be contained and controlled, and a failure to understand that new media — even if satellite television was the new media a decade ago more than today — is not as easily controlled as in the old days of only state-run channels. The fact that Al-Jazeera's closing is not only being reported by Al-Jazeera, but by all the internatonal Arab media and online as well, makes it virtually impossible to contain the story. And it shows that the old guards still don't understand.

Of course, there are plenty of regimes who don't like Al-Jazeera. The Saudis see it as an enemy of their Kingdom; the Egyptians aren't much more favorable, and there are many Americans (mostly those who've never seen it) who think it is anti-American. But closing the bureau because it reported on a public statement to the press made by a longtime public figure (and as Al-Jazeera was quick to note, also quoted all the denials) is indeed more than a crime, it is a blunder. In the first place, it is clearly shooting the messenger, since Qaddoumi's statement was public and was going to be reported in Jordanian and pan-Arab media. In the second place it was not Al-Jazeera's story, merely a public story they reported.

But in the third place, an accusation that might have been dismissed like any other conspiracy theory in the Middle East (and there are plenty of those) is now in its third or fourth day of high visibility publicity. If it had simply been dismissed as nonsense without any other action being taken, it might have gone away by now.

Instead, the sheer overreaction of the Palestinian Authority is going to make many people wonder if there could be something to the story after all. I personally think it's nonsense, the silly kind of conspiracy theory the coffeehouse domino players and shisha-smokers delight in trading. But Qaddoumi is sticking by his story and says he has documents, transcripts of a meeting, and he challenges Abu Mazen and Dahlan to disprove the documents.

The funny thing is, first, that the closing of the Al-Jazeera offices just gave Qaddoumi more credibility, though I still think it's nonsense. It will make a lot of people wonder why the PA overreacted, though really they reacted the same way Arab autocracies have traditionally done.

As Lynch and others have already noted before me, this also sullies the escutcheon of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, who is the Great Moderate Hope of many in the US Administration: it was his office that ordered the closure.

Although I have Asad AbuKhalil's "Angry Arab News Service" in my blogroll, I don't think I've actually linked to any of his posts; he's usually a little too Angry for my own tastes, but this whole affair is right up his alley. He had a right-on-target post yesterday, though, including this:

As you all know, the Abu Mazen collaborationist regime shut down AlJazeera offices (and I am glad that the Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the closure). But you need to read the Orwellian official statement that was issued by Salam Fayyad (the same guy who was dubbed "reformer" because he strictly follows orders from the World Bank and from Elliott Abrams). The statement justified the closure in the name of "the Supreme Palestinian interest". The language used was the same as that used by Saddam Husayn's regime or the regime of Enver Hoxa. It was classic terminology of tyranny.

After that he gets angrier, but that doesn't make him wrong.

I just looked at my page of RSS feeds of Middle Eastern bloggers and just noted — pretty much randomly — two posts by Zenobia at Egyptian Chronicles: "The Poll of the Month No. 1: Who Killed Arafat?" and "Arabic X-File: Who Killed Yasser Arafat?" These may not be typical; I'll try to track various blogs on this, but if I find more as the day goes on I'll update. Watch the comments too. (And that blog is in English, usually more restrained than some of the Arabic ones.)

This may still blow over sooner rather than later, since eventually Qaddoumi needs to either produce evidence or fold his hand, but he is a respected senior figure in Fatah, and one uncompromised by participation in the Palestinian Authority's sometimes dubious dealings. He's not a fringe figure, though Israelis would like to think he is, and so would many Americans. But I think it's already clear that this thing has lasted longer (in the regional media, not in the West) than would have been the case if the PA had attacked Qaddoumi but left Al-Jazeera alone.

Of course, the fact that the conspiracy theories have shifted from blaming Israel for ‘Arafat's death to blaming Israel, Abu Mazen and Dahlan, means the Palestinians are once again in circular firing squad mode, attacking each other. And that's probably not good for anybody, including Israelis.

The Qaddoumi Affair

There's a new flap involving the Palestinian Authority, Jordan, Al-Jazeera, and former high PLO figure Farouq Qaddoumi. The short version: Farouq Qaddoumi, one of the original leaders of the PLO and one who has refused to return to the Palestinian Authority, spoke to reporters in Amman and accused Abu Mazen (Mahmud ‘Abbas) of conspiring with Israelis and others to kill Yasir ‘Arafat.

Naturally, the Palestinian Authority reacted, denying and denouncing the story. Then they closed Al-Jazeera's West Bank bureau because the network reported the story. There are also reports of a rift between the PA and Jordan.

The Middle East has been rife with rumors about what killed ‘Arafat since the onset of his final illness, never clearly identified. So long as those rumors simply blamed Israel, they appeared in the Arab media with impunity. But accuse Abu Mazen — and the accusation seems wildly improbable, to say the least — is to cross a red line. But it was Qaddoumi who said it, not hte Jordanian government, and closing the Al-Jazeera offices is simply blaming the messenger, though by now they're used to that.