“We affirm that Al Arabiya channel has been and continues to play a suspicious role, operating according to an agenda that intersects with that of the Israeli occupation and its intelligence agencies in targeting our people and their resistance.”
This was the clearest indication of the Palestinian resistance’s view towards the Saudi channel broadcasting from the UAE. The statement was issued on Wednesday in response to the channel’s promotion of rumors about the resistance and its leadership.
In the view of the resistance, the channel’s role aims to erase Palestine’s presence, humanize Israel, and remove its bloody politics, even if this policy is what Gaza and the West Bank are suffering from currently, with escalations condemned by the entire world.
Al Arabiya covers Palestinian events as if they were ordinary occurrences, giving them less time and coverage compared to the lost Chinese rocket or even the extensive time it dedicates to hosting Israeli spokespersons or some discordant voices that claim the battles in Gaza are merely electronic video games!
Al Arabiya, with its long history of undermining and attacking the resistance, has, during recent Israeli aggression on Gaza, tilted the scale towards Israel, considering the aggression as merely a “fight” between the resistance and Israel. It even went so far as to describe the “massacre of the Tabayeen Mosque” as targeting “terrorists.”
The channel described what is happening as “escalation” rather than “aggression,” equating the Palestinian resistance with Israel in launching rockets, without any consideration for the occupier or even the capabilities of the army compared to a Palestinian faction.
Instead of referring to Israel as the “occupying army,” the Saudi channel calls it the “Israeli Defense Forces,” and it describes the victims as “Palestinian casualties” rather than “martyrs.”
Previously, Al Arabiya covered Israeli airstrikes on Gaza by showing footage from Israeli towns where civilians fled to shelter from Palestinian rockets and alarm sirens, implying that the resistance was the aggressor.
The Saudi station, which initially showed little interest in the Palestinian event during the early days of the aggression, later focused on a political agenda, accusing Iran of supporting Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and providing them with missile technology, criticizing the support the Palestinian resistance receives.
The network boasted in one of its reports about the destruction of homes of Palestinian faction leaders by the occupation forces, glorifying the Israeli Defense Minister’s supervision of the operation and the destruction of Palestinian resistance tunnels.
Additionally, the station re-shared photos of 30 leaders whom Israel claimed to have assassinated from Palestinian resistance factions, publishing them on its media platforms.
The channel broadcasted Israeli statements about targeting senior Palestinian resistance leaders, aligning with the complete Israeli narrative.
The latest chapter of the channel’s hostility towards the resistance involved promoting rumors about the evacuation of some resistance faction leaders and their families to Egypt amid the Israeli aggression on the sector, prompting the Gaza Interior Ministry to issue a statement refuting these claims. The channel even went further, accusing Palestinians of financially benefiting from the genocide occurring in Gaza.
On social media, attacks on the channel and its counterpart, Sky News, which broadcasts from the UAE, are prevalent.
Activists accuse Al Arabiya, Al Hadath, and Sky News of being “Zionist” in their coverage of events, asserting that they do not support the Palestinian cause, and emphasize that they exclude any perspectives that do not align with Saudi Arabia’s normalization policies with the occupation.
Academic Ahmed Bin Rashid shared via his Twitter account some of what he described as “Al Arabiya’s bias towards the Zionist aggression against our people in Palestine.”
Meanwhile, Abdullah Al-Shayji wrote: “We thank Al Jazeera’s comprehensive coverage of the Zionist war against those in the Al-Aqsa Mosque, in comparison to watching Al Arabiya (to know more) and its offspring Al Hadath, which after half an hour of the bulletin provided precise coverage of the Zionist crimes.”
Another added: “We used to consider silence about what happens in Palestine as betrayal… But today, Al Arabiya, Al Ikhbariya, and Saudi and Emirati trolls have gone beyond silence to supporting the aggressor occupier… Through twisted or explicit methods, what do we call this?”
