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Al Jazeera been a continuous thorn in the rest of the Arab world's side, yes, but what caused tensions to boil over in 2017? Their arabic language coverage wasn

• wahern 9y ago
  Right. It's _not_ just Al Jazeera. But that doesn't make Al Jazeera a canard in their justifications. Al Jazeera needn't have done anything contemporaneous with the embargo for it to be legitimately part of Arab countries' grievances. It's obvious that what immediately precipitated the embargo was the rise of crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, but what precipitates an event is rarely the only cause. If we accept that Al Jazeera has promoted narratives that materially threaten the power structures of some Arab countries (see my previous news links), and which support factions in Libya and Syria opposed by Arab-backed factions, to the extent that Al Jazeera is a tool of the Qatar state those narratives implicate Qatar and its leadership. The real question is to what extent is Al Jazeera a tool of Qatar foreign policy; specifically, to what extent has Qatar weaponized Al Jazeera? I don't know enough to have an informed opinion, but it seems clear to me that at the very least the answer is not simple. (FWIW, none of this is to say that I think there's anything wrong, objectively, with most Al Jazeera reporting or even of Qatari foreign policy generally.)