The Emergence of Arabic Satellite Channels: Ambiguities of Foundation and Role

Author: ابراهيم ابراش

We return once again to write about Arabic-speaking satellite channels and their coverage of ongoing events and developments in the Arab region and the region since their establishment in the mid-1990s, particularly in their coverage of the genocide in Gaza, its regional ramifications, the Arab role in it, and the deception of the ceasefire negotiations taking place in Qatar.

Before delving deeper, we emphasize the importance of media in shaping and directing public opinion, influencing it, and sometimes manipulating minds. While it has long been said that the media, especially the press, constitutes the fourth authority in the state, the cyberspace, particularly satellite channels and social media platforms, has occupied this position. Therefore, states cannot do without them, but they can organize and direct them in a manner that serves national interest. The audience or recipients should also be cautious in dealing with all new media, especially since the West and Israel have the capability to penetrate cyberspace and influence it technologically and financially.

Sometimes, I do not blame states and Arabic-speaking satellite channels when they open the floor for Palestinian and Arab leaders and political analysts to issue fatwas without knowledge through their platforms. This is because these regimes, whether normalized with the enemy or not, and their media, want to cover their shame and sometimes their complicity with the enemy, and to obscure the fact that they host official spokespersons, political analysts, and Israeli leaders who speak the same discourse that supports Israel and justifies its crimes. These satellite channels even broadcast live every statement and speech from enemy leaders such as Netanyahu, Smotrich, Ben Gvir, Eli Cohen, and Avichai Adraee, to the extent that Arab peoples hear and watch Netanyahu more than they hear and watch their own leaders, and they know Israeli party leaders more than they know their own party leaders.

It is true that many Palestinians and Arabs who appear on satellite channels have a national motive and wish to reveal the truth of the conflict with the enemy and defend the Palestinian people and the issues of the Arab nation. They refuse to participate with Zionists in the same program. However, the problem lies in the mediocrity of official spokespersons and political analysts, both Palestinian and Arab, when they convince themselves that they are important and that they influence public opinion, and that the Palestinian people and Arab peoples wait for what they say, and that Israel trembles at their statements and threats. They know, and may not know, that the satellite channel does not invite them because they have something to say that the channel and the public do not know, but rather to allow the presence of Zionist and American guests and to convey the message that the channel and its funders want to deliver to listeners, with the goal of claiming to be supportive of Palestine and its people or neutral and objective at least in their position on the Palestinian-Israeli war.

When we see that Arabic-speaking satellite channels and their media army, with all their tricks and cleverness, have not influenced the course of the war or the Arab public opinion or increased awareness of the justice of the Palestinian cause, instead widening the gap between the Arab peoples and Palestine, scattering Arab national consciousness, raising doubts about any allegiance to the homeland, and allowing the Zionist narrative to be promoted by every tongue, repeated by a new generation deprived of cyberspace and its tools, we must ask about the usefulness of these satellites' existence except as platforms to justify the rulers' actions and cover up their complicity, even participating in what the Palestinian cause is exposed to in terms of liquidation threats, and serving the policies of foreign states and parties that participated in establishing these satellites and still participate in their funding, directing, and formulating their working strategy?

We also ask: why has the media of colonialist Western nations that do not speak Arabic had an impact on Western peoples and stirred massive protests against Zionist terrorism, even pressuring countries to change their policies regarding the conflict in the region, more than the Arabic-speaking satellite channels?

Some may say that the Western peoples were influenced by the media coverage and the images transmitted by Arabic-speaking satellite channels such as Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya, Al Hadath, Sky News, and others. If we assume the validity of this claim, we pose a deeper question: why have they affected Western peoples but not Arab and Islamic peoples nor the positions of the regimes in these countries? Despite all the crimes of the occupation that stirred global conscience and many peoples around the world, we have not heard of any Arab or Islamic country threatening to take punitive actions against Israel or America, its partner in the war, with the majority of these countries having diplomatic relations with Israel and America and American military bases on their soil?

To understand the true role of these satellite channels that emerged at the peak of globalization and the information revolution, we must return to the stage of their foundation and emergence. Their emergence was not in the context of an intellectual and cultural development in the host states of these satellites, nor was it a process of democratic transition and a desire for democratic transformation and openness to freedom of opinion and expression. Rather, it emerged in the context of regional and international transformations following the second Gulf War and the Madrid Conference in 1991, Oslo, Wadi Araba, and the opening of the countries in the region to the idea of settlement and the new Middle East, as Al Jazeera emerged in 1996 and Al Arabiya in 2003, followed by others.

The emergence of these satellites did not affect the internal situation of the host states in terms of the process of transformation towards democracy and personal freedoms, but these satellites avoided even addressing the internal conditions in their countries, dedicating themselves to regional and international issues, especially the conflict with Israel and Iran, and inflaming discord and division in the major Arab countries with historical and regional and international presence.

Before the emergence of these satellites, Israel had one satellite channel that barely anyone watched, and the Zionist narrative was contained. After the emergence of these Arabic-speaking satellites, Israel now has more than ten channels covering everything that happens in the entity state and conveying the Zionist narrative to every Arab and Muslim home.