West Bank: Al Jazeera loses love over Palestinian national anthem parody
| Ramallah, West Bank
鈥� A local, slice-of-life story from a Monitor correspondent.
Palestinians closely identified with Fatah 鈥� the mainstream faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the leading force of the Palestinian Authority (PA) 鈥� have long since fallen out of love with Al Jazeera, the Arab satellite channel based in Qatar. The channel, Fatah officials charge, often tilts toward Hamas.
But on a recent program that focused on how miserably divided Palestinian society is, Al Jazeera broadcast a scathing parody of the Palestinian national anthem, 鈥淢awtini,鈥� meaning 鈥淢y Homeland.鈥�
The lyrics include:
听
Catastrophe, hypocrisy, calamity!
Oppressors, cunning people who lack sincerity, you are controlling my homeland.
I see you suffocated, constricted, mouth folded.
Reconciliation will not appear in the form of unity鈥�.
Each party wants to satisfy the enemy, and neither cares about mosque or country.
All they care about is humiliating their people.
All they care about is the dollar, the dinar, and their properties and real-estate projects....
Palestinians are outraged, and several mainstream Palestinian newspapers have run editorials demanding an apology. Dr. Ghassan Khatib, the head of the Palestinian Information Centre in Ramallah, says the anger goes beyond Fatah.
鈥淭his is the first time that people other than Fatah members are criticizing Al Jazeera for its behavior. This is a responsible satellite channel that should not be insulting the Palestinian national anthem,鈥� says Dr. Khatib. 鈥淭he media should play a neutral role, and this was not neutral.鈥�
Walid Omari, the head of Al Jazeera鈥檚 offices that cover the Palestinian territories and Israel, defends the station鈥檚 programming.
鈥淲e did not invent the reworded national anthem. It had been on YouTube for 10 days and our colleague, Ghassan Bin Jaddo, who hosted the discussion program ... did not mean to insult the Palestinian people,鈥� he says. 鈥淚f the PA and Fatah are so angry with the issue of the national anthem,鈥� he adds, 鈥渢hey should be working on the reconciliation rather than wasting their time on
attacking Al Jazeera, which is only a medium.鈥�
