Al Zawraa, a television version of the now-infamous jihadi websites, is being broadcast across the Arab world by Nilesat, a satellite provider answerable to the Egyptian government.
The Iraqi station features non-stop scenes of US troops being picked off by snipers, blown up by roadside bombs and targeted by missiles.
“We find the channel utterly offensive,” said one US diplomat. Getting the Egyptians to pull the plug is “at the top of our agenda.”
But the Egyptian government insists it’s all just business.
“For us, it means nothing,” Egyptian Information Minister Anas Al Fiqi told me. “It is a channel that reserved an allocation on Nilesat. They had a contract, paid the fees. There is nothing political for Nilesat. It’s pure business. We have no concern what the channel is doing.”
Hey, I have an idea. Can I buy a channel on NileSat for Kifaya and the Muslim Brotherhood? I want to air a soap opera about life inside the Mubarak household. An Everybody Loves Hosni kind of thing.
Anyway, read on for the interesting details on how Egypt has resisted pressure to drop the channel — including threats against the Egyptian embassy in Baghdad — despite having quite a hands-on role in the affair, since it is not just relaying the channel but actually broadcasting taped footage on repeat from Cairo since last December. Arguments about freedom of speech seem moot: NileSat is not a platform for freedom of speech anyway, and if the channel is as nasty as reported, it should drop it.
I’ve been watching the channel today. It’s full of images of Iraqi citizens who were killed by the occupation troops, images of rocket attacks on American targets, as well as threats made by military clad guys against the occupation forces and their Iraqi spies.
Apart from the fact that some of the time it did sound a bit too radical and violent ( I didn’t like the way they talked about other Shiite militias) nothing struck me as “offensive”.
بصراØØ© Øاجة غريبة
لو القناة بثت Ù�يديو لناس تقاوم الاØتلال ..يبقى ارهاب؟
امال هي المقاومة تبقى عاملة ازاي يعني؟
انا متÙ�Ù‚ مع ايمان ان مشكلة قناة الزوراء انها طائÙ�ية Ùˆ تبث شعارات طائÙ�ية Ù�ÙŠ بلد على ØاÙ�Ø© خرب اهلية طائÙ�ية Ùˆ العملية مش ناقصة
بس بصراØØ© Ù†Ù�سي Ø£Ù�هم يعني ايه مقاومةو يعني ايه ارهاب!
تقبل تØياتي
I can understand why the americans have a problem with the channel, but why do you Isandr have a problem?
I’ve never actually watched it, but I’d like to know why you think it’s wrong to show occupation soldiers being killed by the local resistance (the fact that the local resistance is sectarian).
interesting to know that it is a sectarian platform as well, maybe I should give it a look.
nilesat is being used to broadcast things that are very critical of hosni including the popular el 3ashera masa2an program, and stuff I think the it’s only business explanation is accurate.
Very very interesting article. Rather ironic that the Americans are calling for pulling the plug here, and the Egyptian govt is making a show of being pro free speech (Hosni and Fouad Ajami should team-teach a class on Talking Out of Both Sides of Your Mouth).
I don’t see how “distasteful” footage is reason enough to censor a channel, though. It sounds qualitatively similar to US-promoted al-Hurra stuff propagandizing against anti-American insurgents and calling them terrorists. Till they actually incite people to go get someone, the Americans should try a little intellectual honesty, remember that the First Amendment has served them pretty well, and stop getting huffy.
If “it’s only business” wasn’t bullshit, http://www.sat7.org“ rel=”nofollow”>Sat 7 wouldn’t have to broadcast on hotbird.
I think that if Egypt is serious about being a US ally, as its current president constantly boasts, it should not be airing a channel that glorifies the killing of American soldiers and certainly play stupid games about it. What I’d like to know is who pays for the airtime — I wouldn’t be surprised if it was some wealthy Gulf emir that people don’t want to offend. Egypt has nothing to gain from airing this channel, which although I have not seen (my satellite dish is not working at the moment) does appear to contain rather dubious content. But then again I am not a supporter of the Sunni insurgency in Iraq, which is largely to blame for Iraq’s current problems — yes, more than the Americans. They haven’t really shown themselves to be great people as far as I can see, whether jihadi or baathist or otherwise.
The question is not, IMO, whether the Sunni insurgents are worth defending/promoting or not (clearly they are not, romantic ideas about “resistance” notwithstanding, and it’s a cheap trick for Mubarak & co. to re-transmit the channel as a way of retaining some street cred while also allying with the US).
The question, rather, is whether the US stands to gain anything by pulling the plug on this channel, and I think they’d come across rather as hypocrites if they did, and the existing sectarian channels would carry on as usual (there was a recent paper about these: http://www.policy.hu/almarashi/policypaperdecember2006.pdf)
Understandable that the Americans would want to do anything they could with Iraq going to hell in a sectarian handbasket, but they’ve sort of lost credibility with their vindictive approach to Al-Jazeera and this banning would only increase paranoia about the New American-Backed Shia Dispensation.
Is the channel really as bad as all that? Don’t the Americans have more important things to focus on in Iraq?
I don’t like the suni or the shia resistance for that matter, not sure I agree they are worse than the US since they wouldn’t exist if the US wasn’t there to begin with but I agree they’re bad.
but still me not liking them has nothing to do with whether a satelite owned by the Egyptian government should air their channel.
IMO supporting pulling the plug is a dangerous position, any resistance with a propaganda arm is using directly or indirectly infrastructure that is more or less controled by some government, think of phone networks, satelite phones, GPS, internet router and fiber cables and servers and what not not just satelite channels, it’s dangerous to go down the slipery slope of pressuring a government for allowing some group to use their infrastructure as long as that group doesn’t have a special deal and is using it in a context similar to all other users (which is the case when it comes to this channel).
don’t ask for less freedom of speech no matter what your excuse is.
as for egypt being an ally and what not, by that logic the Egyptian government should use it’s power over state owned newspapers to censor speech that might undermine’s their ally’s goals and stuff.
finally this is Egypt remember the word serious about and Egypt should never be used in a single sentence.
Must-watch Insurgent TV…
Here’s an article about that Iraqi insurgent satellite channel that got the U.S. all pissed off (not just for obvious reasons, but also because the Egyptian government-owned NileSat rebroadcasts it in the region):
An American soldier slumps in th…