As my Grandma Ludwig used to say, "There's more than one way to skin a cat".
And there is more than one way to censor the Empire's opposition.
From the far Right Shock Jocks to the Fox in the hen house News, to
the cuts in Federal Funding of Public Broadcasting. And the attack is
not just on the broadcasting media. The Christian Science Monitor,
which was about the most objective reporter ever offered by the
newspaper industry, has fled to an on-line edition, along with so many
others. Investigative reporting is being undercut, and those who
remain are becoming very bland in their reporting. And of course the
Internet is also coming under attack.
Frankly, I can't see any way out, so long as we continue holding hands
with Capitalism.
Carl Jarvis
On 3/29/18, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
And, in fact, I heard today that Al Jazeera has been designated as a
foreign
entity, along with RT and Sputnik Radio. I wonder when they'll find a way
to
outlaw The Real News Network?
Miriam
Will a Hard-Hitting Investigation Into Israel's Influence in US Government
Ever See the Light of Day?
By Robert Fisk, The Independent
29 March 18
According to Swisher, if his documentary on the American lobby doesn't air
soon, 'it might prove to be ammunition sought by a group of zealous US
politicians who wish to declare Al Jazeera a foreign entity, and label us
journalists as 'spies''
So when am I going to be able to watch Al Jazeera's hard-hitting
investigation into Israel's powerful lobby in the United States? Remember
Al
Jazeera? The tough, no-holds-barred Middle East satellite channel that
transformed Qatar into a media empire whose reports frightened dictators
and
infuriated potentates and presidents alike? Why, George W Bush once wanted
to bomb its headquarters in Doha - so it must have been doing something
right. It even has an office in Jerusalem.
But something seems to be amiss. Not Al Jazeera's disastrous American
venture, which was supposed to break free of the dross on CNN and Fox News
and ended up looking just like CNN or Fox. Nor the tragicomedy of its
journalists' imprisonment in Sissi's Egypt, banged up by Cairo's farcical
laws and the stupidity of Al Jazeera's own management in Qatar.
No, I'm talking about a documentary called The Lobby, directed by one of Al
Jazeera's top journalists, Clayton Swisher, the man whose exclusive (and
book) on the "Palestine Papers" blew open the secret and scandalous
American-led negotiations between Israelis and the Palestinian authority
between 2000 and 2010. But after months of postponement, The Lobby, which
secretly filmed pro-Israeli US activists and Israeli government officials
and was completed last autumn, is still no nearer to being shown - and
Swisher himself has taken a paid leave of absence. He even chose to explain
his frustration in an article for the progressive American Jewish magazine
Forward, which has always maintained a liberal and often very critical view
of Israel.
"Don't mistake me - I love Al Jazeera," Swisher told me this week. "I love
working for Al Jazeera. They've done fantastic things. And they look after
their staff very well. But our new documentary doesn't seem to be getting
on
air."
In his published explanation, Swisher described how his award-winning
investigative unit - which he says operates "without [Qatari] government
interference" - sent an undercover reporter to look into "how Israel wields
influence in America through the pro-Israeli American community. But when
some right-wing American supporters of Israel found out about the
documentary, there was a massive backlash. It was even labelled as
antisemitic in a spate of articles."
Nothing surprising there, you might think. Any reporters who have dared to
criticise Israel grow used to the vile smear of antisemitism thrown over
them - but there was an even more disturbing background to Swisher's
attempts to get his documentary on the air.
The programme's completion, he writes, "came at a time when, due to an
arbitrary blockade on Qatar imposed by the United Arab Emirates and Saudi
Arabia, Qatar had been pursuing an end to its siege by appealing to the US.
According to reports, Qatar sought to offer its own side of the narrative
in
this conflict by hosting thought leaders, including from the American
Jewish
community. From reports in the Israeli press, I learned that [Harvard
Professor Alan] Dershowitz had been brought to meet with the Qatari emir
[Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani], and that the American Jews had brought up what
they saw as Al Jazeera's antisemitism in those meetings. Of course, our
documentary is not antisemitic. It is an exploration of how Israel, a
foreign government, influences US foreign policy."
Ironically, one of the Saudi-UAE demands for a return to normal relations
with Qatar was to shut down Al Jazeera.
Most of Swisher's staff within Al Jazeera are American or British, and he
recruited a young Oxford postgraduate, James Anthony Kleinfeld, to meet and
mix with members of pro-Israeli groups in Washington. When this was
discovered - partly because Swisher, for legal reasons, contacted those
appearing in the programme to say that his team had used secret filming
during their investigations - there was uproar.
Kleinfeld, who apparently used the name "Tony Kleinfeld", was accused of
being "pro-Palestinian" but of "embedding himself with the Washington
pro-Israel crowd" while spending "months of his life under a new and
meticulously fabricated persona to infiltrate pro-Israeli groups".
The concern of Israeli lobbyists was not without reason. Recipients of
legal
letters from the documentary group - referring to the secretly recorded
Israeli activists - included AIPAC, the Israeli-American Council, the
Sheldon Adelson-created Maccabee Task Force, the Israel Project, the
Zionist
Organisation of America and other groups. Although Swisher's reporters had
exposed genocide in Myanmar, presidential corruption in the Maldives and
paedophilia in British youth football, another documentary under Swisher's
direction concentrated on Israel's influence over Britain and included a
secretly filmed sequence in which Israeli official Shai Masot discussed how
to "take down" British MPs regarded as pro-Palestinian, including Sir Alan
Duncan. Masot was forced to resign and the Israeli ambassador to London,
Mark Regev, issued a formal apology.
According to Swisher, if his documentary on the American lobby doesn't air
soon, "it might prove to be ammunition sought by a group of zealous US
politicians who wish to declare Al Jazeera a foreign entity, and label us
journalists as 'spies'". In response to antisemitism claims after the
London
documentary, the broadcasting regulator Ofcom ruled that the programme was
"a serious investigative documentary". It was the same question, Swisher
says, that he and his team sought to answer in the American edition of The
Lobby: "whether the Israeli government was funding or involved in lobbying
efforts in the US under the guise of a domestic lobbying group".
Swisher says that several "leaders of Jewish American organisations" met
with Qatar's registered agent and lobbyist, Nick Muzin - a former aide to
US
Senator Ted Cruz, who supported American recognition of Jerusalem as
Israel's capital - "to see if he could use his ties with the Qataris to
stop
the airing". Since October, Swisher says, "we've faced a series of
unexplained delays on broadcasting our project, the likes of which I've
never experienced. I was repeatedly told by everyone to 'wait', and was
assured our documentary would eventually see the light of day. Then, as
now,
I took my senior management at its word. To my own specially trained ears,
'wait' did not constitute 'stop'. In fact, it must not constitute 'stop'."
Almost every journalist I've met in the Middle East has encountered similar
problems. When I worked for the The Times, I alerted the then editor,
Charles Douglas-Home, to evidence that Israeli officers had secretly buried
at least seven Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners - done to death in an
interrogation centre - at night in a Sidon graveyard in 1983. He wanted me
to spend as many weeks as necessary to find out if the story was true.
Then,
months later, when witnesses emerged with evidence of the burial, including
the gravedigger - the bodies still had their hands tied behind their back
with nylon rope when they were brought to him - I called my editor. My
witnesses were being "visited" by armed members of the Israeli Shin Beth
intelligence agency, I told him, and I was being trailed around Sidon by
Israeli-registered vehicles. It was time to run the story.
To my shock, Douglas-Home - an editor who otherwise loyally stood by me in
every Middle East dispute over my work - replied that he wasn't sure "how
we're justified in running a story like this so long after the event". In
other words, we had to be sure of our facts on such an important story -
but
by taking the time to do just that, the story was now out of date.
After much argument - during which I suggested to the Israelis that they
might like to institute a military inquiry into the deaths if they wanted
to
avoid a scandal (they said, mysteriously, that it was already under way,
although I doubted this) - the story ran. A deputy editor, I was told, had
tried to cut the report by two-thirds. He was overruled. Then the story
ran.
In full.
So, old story, new story. I've appeared many times on Al Jazeera. And never
been told to mince my words. Nor would I. But a lot of us are waiting to
see
Swisher's new documentary. If we don't, we'll know what to think of Al
Jazeera.
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