On July 22, Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, Israeli coordinator of government activities in the territories and former spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), sat for an interview on Al Jazeera's Arabic channel. Mordechai had been invited to the network's Tel Aviv studios by virtue of his fluency in Arabic, which he mastered at university during his studies for a bachelor of arts degree. His fluency, however, was merely a pretext cited by the network for an interview in uniform. Actually, the interview was designed to demonstrate that the network was true to the motto it adopted nearly 20 years ago — “The opinion, and the other opinion.”
Two decades, thousands of hours of live broadcasts and “a new Middle East” have shown that Al Jazeera not only cheers on revolutions, but also covers radical Islamic movements in the turbulent Middle East with sympathy and empathy. It began with its exclusive releases of al-Qaeda videos back in the days of Osama bin Laden and was subsequently manifest in its unqualified support for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, as well as in its backing of Hamas in Gaza – and this, not for the first time.
