Al-Jazeera does indeed endorse certain "causes", if that's what you're hinting at. Usually that cause is the freedom of the people. They don't support the governments of Syria or Iran nor run any of their propaganda. They regularly interview opposition figures.

All the time.

> Are these guys really beyond reproach?

What?

Have you seen anything of Al Jazeera? probably not.

Now, does any western media channel regularly host speakers from Hamas? I doubt it.

Al-Jazeera always interviews people from the Israeli side (and they get a lot of heat for it).

> You're comparing guys like Samir Kuntar to Israeli government ministers?

No, you are. You're also implying the Israeli government ministers are "the good guys", which they are not. To put it more objectively, Al-Jazeera is an Arabic channel, supposed to be supporting Arab causes, like Palestine. Israel is the enemy here. So, network X is supposed to be endorsing a cause where A is the hero and the victim, while B is the evil aggressor. Yet, X interviews people from the B side all the time and gives them a chance to voice their views.

I've yet to see any American media outlets do the same. I remember a long time ago, a Hamas spokesman appeared on CNN for a few minutes, and the title was reading "Spokesman of Terror?".

You're both a little wrong and right here. The grandparent is right that journalists shouldn't be outright supporting viewpoints. He's also correct that it's generally agreed that Samir Kuntar was responsible for several deaths in his orchestrated kidnapping of an Israeli family (Wikipedia, I had never heard of this incident before this conversation).

However, the Al Jazeera network head then admitted that the behavior of the Beirut office was wholly inappropriate and should never happen again.

How can you compare a nation and it's minions who are conducting a terrible subjugation of an entire group of people who made the mistake of being born there.

Silly.

I'm not sure where you inferred that from. Criticism of Israel's policies and structural flaws is not existentialism criticism unless you have a very paranoid mindset.

> could be the one online forum

There should be no place on this globe where you should be free from the consequences of your actions. It would certainly be nicer if you could retreat somewhere and not have to listen to the grievances that people have and maybe just maybe the way to do that would be to change Israel itself and then the chorus of complaints will be silenced.

> but please keep the snarky one-liners to Reddit.

I'm sick of pro-Israeli policy supporters always using clever language and smear tactics to voice dissent. How about you try to move the debate forward and help us understand your point of view instead appearing as someone who gets touchy when the little "problem" of the ghettoization and subjugation of a whole population is mentioned.

If anytime you travelled abroad you were treated like a hard-core Iraq ware supporter and Halliburton board member you'd get sick of it too. Or if every time your country vaguely became a topic for discussion things immediately devolved to view you and your nationality as not much except native american murderers and subjugators and ask you to answer for everyone else's actions in the history of your country. And when you have a well articulated answer explaining that it's more complicated than an archetypical narrative, or anything slightly well-written, they dismiss you as a highly-trained PR spokesperson lurking on forums instead of a human being with an opinion.

Yeah, it gets tiring.

As a result, you don't really want to get into details because it doesn't really sound like anyone's too open to hearing what you have to say, just looking for a fight. And then people pre-empt you by saying "stop calling me an anti-semite" and "I'm sick of you people saying ___ " while at the same time completely ignoring other important human rights abuses going on in the world, you begin to wonder why you bother engaging anyone, and instead just resort to asking to talk about it elsewhere, not when you're trying to read Hacker News.

And yes, snarky one-liners that gloss over the entire region's history evoke all of this.

If I were from the US I agree that it would get irritating real fast if that was how I was treated while I went about my business - I'm not sure whether that was failed attempt of yours to turn the tables on me or a strange attempt at engendering empathy and garnering support.

I shall repeat because you appear to have missed it: there would be less opportunity to for you to get tired of hearing people calling out Israeli policies if Israeli policies changed, maybe that is where energy should be diverted to maybe just maybe?

Anyway, let's not stray too far from the real real news here, Egypt! The very real possibility of a genuine democracy on Israel's doorstep. That would be awesome, I'm sure we can all agree on that.

One should not blindly support one's government. We all know how that turned out in Europe in the 30s.

What? No one said that. Is this like a knee-jerk response or something? Truly shameful.

Perhaps because of Syria's pro Hezb Allah stance and Hezb Allah's affiliation with Iran. But Al Jazeera is an Arab, Sunni company based in the Persian Gulf. In that region there is a very strong anti-Iranian stance.

On the surface it would seem that Bashar would have more to fear from Al Jazeera than Mubarak.

Probably the short length for a first post, lack of substantiation (just stating an opinion), conclusion from a sample size of one (Obama == ruling class), and the other posts made by the same throwaway account.