I watched an episode of a political talk show on Al-Jazeera channel recently, called “The Opposite Direction” that should instead be called “The Spiteful Direction.”
A man of hatred and resentment and envy for my beloved Kingdom was part of the discussion in the program. His name is Anis Al-Naqqash, which is truly appropriate. “Naqqash” means “carving”, which is precisely what this man was doing with the facts: carving them into little pieces and then performing a shell game to conceal the whole truth from the audience. His partner in this crime was the famously unfaithful host, Faisal Qasim.
In order to try to get an unbiased view of this show, I decided to watch it again just to make sure I didn’t just happen on a quirk episode of the show. But again I wondered to myself why Al-Jazeera would broadcast such trash-talk.
The topic of the show seemed to revolve around stirring up Arab and Muslim disdain for Saudi Arabia, namely by forming a sorry juxtaposition on the issue of Israel’s Zionist incursion into Lebanon: Saudi Arabia on one side and the Arab world on the other. The host and his guest accused the Kingdom of treachery, referring to some allegations that the Kingdom condemned actions perpetuated by the Arab side of the current crisis.
Whenever the other guest of the program, Samy Al-Nesf, tried to answer these treacherous charges, Qasim and Al-Naqqash would raise their voices and utter other misinterpretations about the Kingdom’s stance, tossing in Kuwait, Egypt and Jordan to boot.
But the truth is that these countries are putting in a lot of diplomatic effort in trying to resolve the crisis.
As a Saudi citizen I strongly reject and declare my protest against this program and this spiteful channel. What Al-Jazeera is doing is misleading and deceiving the public, messing with the minds of Saudis and Arabs.
Faisal Qasim was anything but objective in his discussion. He declared hostile opinions as if he was the guest in the program rather than the host. In an authoritative voice, he announced some historical information wrapped in lies and misconceptions. His behavior was anything but objective.
I demand that we take action against this channel and this TV host. We can’t bear more intentionally malicious accusations because these sorts of things are dangerous. To continue to air and watch these programs is a poor attempt to shake the local public opinion and the citizens’ loyalty to the leaders.
I also would like to mention here reports that US missiles heading for Israel are being transferred through America’s largest naval base abroad, in Qatar. Qatar is also home to Al-Jazeera. Perhaps Qasim and his colleagues at Al-Jazeera would like to comment on something like this happening in their own backyard?
