On Friday, we blogged about a suprisingly positive piece on Al Jazeera.com (See The Day After: Once the Palestinians Have a Country, Things May Get Harder.) But now it’s back to business-as-usual for the influential Middle East media outlet, according to an op-ed by Daniel Pearl in the Washington Post, headlined “Why Al Jazeera Owes an Apology.”
Pearl, a professor at UCLA and president of the Daniel Pearl Foundation named after his son, is shocked and saddened by the coverage of murderer Samir Kuntar’s triumphant return from Israeli jail: “A chill went down my spine when British-accented announcers, who introduced Al Jazeera’s English channel correspondent Rula Amin, translated the wisdom of Kuntar’s words from the original Arabic. Imagine a voice cast in a perfect Oxford accent articulating in unmistaken empathy: ‘He has returned to a hero’s welcome . . . After 29 years in [an] Israeli prison, Samir Kuntar spent his first day of freedom vowing to continue to fight against Israel. He says he hopes to see the enemy again very soon.’”
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