If Al-Jazeera English had wanted to impress people with its first week or so of programming, including a David Frost interview with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, it failed. The channel was very quick out of the chute in airing a terrorist video, featuring an “inside” look at the Islamic Army of Iraq, and it misrepresented the Blair interview in order to create the impression that U.S. policy in Iraq—and not Al-Jazeera’s terrorist friends—was producing a bloodbath. Simply stated, Al-Jazeera English looks a lot like Al-Jazeera Arabic, known for its pro-terrorist and anti-American programming. Frankly, we thought that it would keep the radical stories in the closet for weeks or months until the channel got carriage in the U.S. media market. Those U.S. cable and satellite systems which decided not to air the channel have been vindicated. The American people thank them.

Those who doubt the vicious nature of the Al-Jazeera brand of “journalism” should examine the remarks delivered by Judea Pearl, father of slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, at the Merage Jewish Community Center in Orange County, California, on November 19, where he called it “today’s greatest recruiter for terrorism.” He explained, “They are pouring gasoline…for lunatics running around with lit matchsticks. It’s an advocate for terrorism.” Daniel Pearl was abducted and beheaded by al-Qaeda terrorists, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the main architect of 9/11, who was later captured, held and interrogated by the CIA in a counter-terrorism program that Dana Priest of the Washington Post did her best to expose and discredit. Because of the exposure, Mohammed has been transferred to Guantanamo Bay prison, where he will be given legal counsel and all of the “rights” that he denied to Daniel Pearl and almost 3,000 Americans on 9/11.

Richard Chang, the Orange County Register reporter who covered Dr. Pearl’s remarks, thought it was his obligation to go to the defense of the channel. He wrote, in regard to Pearl’s criticism of Al-Jazeera, “While that charge is common among Western critics, other observers say the argument that Al-Jazeera supports terrorism is false. Hugh Miles, author of ‘Al-Jazeera: The Inside Story of the Arab News Channel that is Challenging the West,’ wrote in the July/August issue of Foreign Policy Magazine that ‘the network has never supported violence against the United States’ and ‘not once have its correspondents praised attacks on coalition forces in Iraq.’”

Chang is an embarrassment to his profession. He ignored the fact that Al-Jazeera has been banned from Iraq because of its role in promoting violence and civil war. It has been a consistent mouthpiece for Sunni terrorists in al Qaeda and, more recently, the Islamic Army of Iraq. Indeed, on November 20, Al-Jazeera English posted the transcript of a story it carried by a correspondent, Hoda Abdel-Hamid, who apparently traveled with the Islamic Army of Iraq in order to provide the “inside” story of “its campaign against US troops.” Abdel-Hamid reported on new recruits training on the outskirts of Baghdad and obtained an “exclusive” interview with the group’s spokesman, Ibrahim al-Shamary, who declared, “The fighters sacrifice their lives to protect the people.” The report was terrorist propaganda from start to finish.

In regard to Dr. Pearl’s specific charge that Al-Jazeera recruits terrorists, there is abundant evidence. Our DVD on “Terror Television” shows captured terrorists in Iraq saying they came to kill Americans because of the words and images on Al-Jazeera. In a subsequent letter to the editor of the Orange County Register, Dr. Pearl noted that an Al-Jazeera television personality, Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, “was the first to give religious license to suicide bombers in Israel and Iraq and still defends those licenses on his ‘Sharia Alive’ program.”

Reporter Chang quoted from the Hugh Miles book but he ignored the section on Tayseer Alouni, the former Kabul, Afghanistan bureau chief now serving a seven-year prison sentence in Spain for being an al-Qaeda agent linked to the 9/11 plot. As we note in our “Terror Television” film, Miles says in his book, published before Alouni was actually convicted and sentenced, that if the Spanish judge in the case was right—that Alouni indeed was “an al-Qaeda mole”—then his reporting “might have been the voice of al-Qaeda.”

Miles added, “If al Qaeda had penetrated Al-Jazeera at such a senior level, it would be a serious blow to the channel.” Al-Jazeera, he said, was paying Alouni’s salary, legal fees and “related expenses” during his trial. It continues to defend him.