Family-cide, the true face of Israel

One of the things that has been inescapable has been the manner in which Palestinians are referring to the victims murdered by Israel in Gaza not just as statistics or individual names (though they are doing that too), but by families.  Israel was not just content to murder a person here or a person there, but in the process of carrying out Israeli researcher Arnon Sofer's claims that Israel "will have to kill and kill and kill.  All day, every day" in Gaza, they have been wiping out entire families in one fell swoop.

Al-Jazeera's website has put together a page with pictures and stories of Palestinian families who were either entirely murdered by Israel or had large numbers of their family murdered by Israel.  A warning, there are many graphic images of murdered and wounded children.  It is in Arabic, but even if you don't read the language, you can click through the Arabic numbers at the bottom of the text boxes (remember, right to left in Arabic):

http://www.aljazeera.net/nr/exeres/8387fb46-bb6e-484f-8420-d7833360b0e6.htm

I'm not sure if all the pictures match precisely to each family/incident or not, though they are certainly representative.  And, so as to put names to them for those of you who don't read Arabic, here is a brief synopsis of each of these murdered families which I made based on the info on the Jazeera page (this is my own synopsis and language, not a trasnslation).  The families in order from 1 to 13 are:

1. The al-Daya family: The 65 year-old family Patriarch al-Hajj Fayiz Masabih al-Daya fearing for his family's safety - who as is often the case in extended Arab families lived in a single building built for them to live together - gathered them all onto the ground floor of the family building during Israel's rampage in Hayy al-Zaytoun. But the Israelis bombed the entire building and flattened it on top of them, killing 25 members of the family together in one swoop, ranging from the elderly family patriarch to 16 grandchildren, the youngest of whom was a six-month old baby.
2. The Ba'alusha family: Sleeping one night in the Jabalya refugee camp - one of the most densely populated pieces of land on earth - Israel decided that it wanted to bomb the neighborhood and specifically target the house of worship right next door to the Ba'alusha's. The father Anwar survived after the house collapsed on top of them, only to discover the murdered bodies of 5 of his daughters in the rubble as neighbors helped him dig to find them.
3. The al-Abasi family: Father Ziyad al-Abasi reports they were sleeping in their house in the Yabna refugee camp in Rafah when a missile hit their single-level house.  The house and its asbestos roof collapsed on them.  Israel murdered three of his children.  Sidq (4 years old), Ahmad (12), and Mohammad (14).  His three other children, his wife, and himself were wounded.  He insisted on getting out of the hospital early despite his wounds in order to attend his children's funeral where he cried out asking what they had done to deserve Israel taking this revenge on them?
4. The Kashku family: The Israeli military targeted their home in Hayy al-Zaytoun in Eastern Gaza city, wounding 13 members of the family and murdering the daughter of family patriarch Abdullah Kashku, 8 year old Ibtihal.  Also murdered was the wife of one of his sons, Miysa' aged 22.
5. The al-Samuni family: One of the most visible deliberate murders of civilians befell the al-Samuni family and was reported on widely even in the western press.  Here Na'ib al-Samuni who survived tells how Israeli forces gathered the entire extended family into a single 2000 square foot house, and then proceeded to shell them for 10 minutes non-stop, turning the house into in his words "a well of blood", and then deliberately block Red Crescent ambulances from reaching them for 24 hours during which several family members struggled to hang on and finally bled to death.  The numbers of dead and wounded in various reports have varied amidst the chaos, here Al-Jazeera reports that at least one 7-member branch of the family was entirely wiped out.  Na'ib's wife Hanan was murdered by Israeli executioners along with his daughter Hoda, his 60 year old mother Rizqa, and most of his brothers, cousins, and cousins' children.
6. The Rayan family: Hamas leader Nizar Rayyan lived in the middle of the Jabalya refugee camp.  Not content with just killing him, Israel decided to drop massive munitions on the entire neighborhood, murdering Rayyan's 4 wives and 15 of his children and destroying 10 other homes in the process.
7. The Abed Rabbo family: 8 family members including a toddler girl found with only her head peaking above the rubble murdered by Israel which bombed their home from US-supplied fighter jets.
8. The Abu Aisha family: Father, mother, and 7 children murdered by Israel via missiles and bombs fired from US-supplied fighter jets onto their home.
9. The al-Kahlut family: Father Khalid al-Kahlut needed to get some bread to feed his starving family.  He made the mistake of believing Israeli lies that there was a 3-hour ceasefire for humanitarian purposes and took 3 of his children (15-year old Mohammad, 12-year old Habib, and 10-year old Tawfiq) and his 20-year old cousin Hasan Khalil al-Kahlut in the car to get some food.  As they got back close to home in Beit Lahiya with the supposed 3-hour ceasefire still supposedly in effect, a US-supplied Israeli fighter jet fired a missile at them and murdered them all before they could get the food back to their family.
10. The Abed Rabbo family: A different Abed Rabbo family, this time US-supplied Israeli planes fired missiles on their home in Jabalya, murdering three sisters (Amal age 2, Su'aad age 4, and Samar age 6 ).  It took neighbors and rescue crews hours just to pull their bodies out of the rubble the Israeli terrorist executioners left behind.
11. The Ulaywa family: Salim Ulaywa says he wishes he had never left his house that day.  He had gone out to try to get his family some food, but when he came back and turned onto his street he found his house had disappeared into a pile of rubble with neighbors desperately trying to rescue his family.  But it was no use, they were all found dead covered in dust and blood and he was left alone in the world as the piece says, his wife and 5 children murdered by having their house blown up on top of them with no warning (an old Zionist favorite tactic going back to the days of the Sa'sa massacre in Galilee in 1948 at least.)
12. The Deeb family: 25 minutes before the end of the supposed 3-hour humanitarian ceasefire, Israeli tanks and US-supplied fighter jets sent 4 missiles and rounds into the Jabalya refugee camp, one of which landed in the courtyard of the house of 43-year old Samir Shafiq Deeb who was instantly murdered.  His 70 year old mother and three of his children (12 year old Esam, 23 year old Mohammad, and 20 year old Fatima) were murdred as well, plus 5 of the children of his brother including 2 year old Noor, 19 year old Ala, and two other women in the family (34 year old Amal Matar Deeb and 41 year old Khudra Abdulaziz Deeb).  Another family virtually wiped out in an Israeli mass murder.
13. The Saliha family: 6 members of the family murdered in their home by Israeli executioners in Beit Lahiya.

I wish it weren't true, but even this is only a partial list of the families Israel has murdered the past few weeks, let alone the past 60 years.  Let the deaths of these innocent families - not even individuals, entire families targeted by Israel's Zionist death squads - stand as a reminder.  That while there must be reconciliation between Arabs and Jews and a united country with equal rights for all, that such reconciliation can only come by standing firm against Zionist Israel just as the world stood firm against Apartheid South Africa.  Zionism is racism, period, and it must be confronted just as Jim Crow and Apartheid had to be confronted.  May these families rest in peace and may we build a better world of equality so that Israeli racism will no longer be able to take innocent lives.

A Few Righteous Among the Israelis

Jews around the world often refer to the Righteous Among the Nations, those good people who stood up for humanity and saved the lives of many Jews during the Holocaust. I count at least one of my European relatives among them, a man who in my childhood I remember proudly displaying the items he'd stolen from Nazi soldiers (a helmet, a radio, a boot - he didn't have it anymore, but even a motorcycle) and telling how he had helped Jewish citizens of his country escape to safety during the occupation years. These righteous may have been relatively few in a time of sheer madness, but their goodness and their sacrifice is worthily remembered today.

Palestinians and Arabs often realize as well that while their numbers may be few, there are Israeli and other Jews around the world who acknowledge the crimes of 1948 and subsequent ethnic cleansing by Israel, and who are working very hard as well for acknowledgement of the past and justice and reconciliation for the future including the Right of Return.  Now, I think we need to be clear who we're talking about.  I'm not talking about the Israelis who mindlessly participate in their massacres and then wake up feeling a twinge of remorse 20 years later and spend most of their time worrying about how slaughtering innocent people is bad for their own feelings.  These folks I'm sure help shrinks grow their practices a lot, but frankly such attitudes are all too little too late and if anything simply are another tool to perpetuate Zionist ethnic cleansing by spreading the false myth that somehow Zionism has a humanitarian angle in its roots.  It doesn't, and a handful of people engaged in what Israeli historian Ilan Pappe calls "shoot and cry" doesn't change that fact.  No, the people we are talking about are people who go much deeper, who realize that the founding sin of Israel is its open declaration that one group of people has rights based on ethnicity and all others have none, which is then enforced on pain of death or exile.  These people acknowledge this reality and are willing to say so even in the midst of the brainwashed, unnaturally-militarized Sparta society that Israel is.  These people get the root of the problem, and not just its latest manifestations in the headlines, and they are working to overcome it.

Of course, there is deep deep anger in the Arab world at Israel's decades of crimes and these few righteous often are forgotten in the heat of the moment (a heat that Israel's ongoing crimes ensures stays high most of the time), but just yesterday as Israel's latest Gaza massacres of civilians continue, Al-Jazeera was running a documentary featuring several of these Israeli Jews of conscience dissecting the anatomy of the occupation fact by fact.  Palestinian authors have for decades included in their writings characters of nuance and conscience among Israelis, and it fairly common for non-Zionist Jews (ranging from the Orthodox Neturei Karta folks to secular academics such as Ilan Pappe to crusading journalists and activists such as Meron Benvinisti) to be pointed to in Arab media and discourse as examples of conscience that show that Zionism and Judaism are not the same thing. It is these bridges that give hope for the future of a united country (call it what you want, Israel-Palestine, Canaan, Holy-Landistan, Kiryat Hummus, whatever) where people of all ethnicities will be able to live under a common set of laws and where people will be (to get MLKish heading into the long holiday weekend) judged according to the content of their character and not their creed.

Anyhow, I'm rambling on about this because I came across via the Palestine Remembered website an organization in Israel I hadn't been aware of called Zochrot that falls firmly in this category of Righteous Among the Israelis. They work hard to raise awareness of the Nakba among an overwhelmingly Nakba-denying Israeli populace, and to call for the Right of Return of all Palestinian refugees as a necessary requirement of peace. Zochrot's website is here: http://www.zochrot.org/index.php?lang=english

Here is a brief two minute video of some of the great work Zochrot does, leading a tour of Israelis and Palestinians of the ethnically cleansed village of al-Malha to raise awareness of what really happened (including a brief encounter with an Israeli who tries to deny to the face of a survivor of the Nakba that the local Jewish school was built on top of the Arab cemetery):



Good stuff, you can find more videos on their website.  Keep it up Zochrot and all people of conscience.

Live Blogging Al-Jazeera (Arabic) Coverage of Israel's Land Massacres/Invasion of Gaza

My  attempt to give some sense of what the Arabic Al-Jazeera coverage of Israel's brutal massacres/invasion of Gaza.  All times using US eastern time basis:

10:17pm) Been watching for 15 minutes or so, they had Abdul Lateef al-Qanoo3 on the phone, Hamas' spokesman in northern Gaza.  He was spending a lot of time talking in general terms about how heavy and brutal the invasion was and making a call to recognize that viewers and especially Arab governments were now either for or against the Palestinian people.  He claimed there were heavy losses in the Hayy al-Zaytoon area among the Israelis.  He claimed there were many wounded Palestinians in houses who were not able to reach medical help.

Now they've cut to one of Al-Jazeera's correspondents on the ground, he's running through the various locations in Gaza and talking about sites that Israel has been hitting.  Sorry, was busy typing and missed most of them.  The channel has been showing heavy black smoke and fire in the middle of a densely populated residential district.  I think the correspondent was saying that was a fuel depot attached to Voice of al-Aqsa Radio.

Correspondent saying as of 2 hours ago, saying at least 2 dead at Shifa Hospital from eastern Gaza recently, and latest totals are 477 dead and 2300 wounded at least.  Saying lots of fresh wounded and numbers rising quickly.  Catching bits and pieces as I try to type here, generally sounds like a chaotic situation and really no idea at this point how many really murdered and wounded by Israel.  At least 3 medical workers killed as they tried to rescue people in Jabalya refugee camp.

They've got a constant live camera feed panning around Gaza City and there's lots of explosions going off now.  Correspondent saying several of these are Apache missile hits (my note: if I were an Apache Indian, I would be suing the US and Israeli governments for defaming the honor of my tribe for naming a tool of so much murder after them).

Talking about Voice of Al-Aqsa Radio now, saying the fuel depot that was blown up for them was held their because the lack of electricity Israel has caused meant they had to store fuel to keep power to the station.  Says it is a Hamas-affiliated radio station Israel has accused of broadcasting terrorism, hate, etc.  Says the fuel depot fairly small.  Reiterates everyone has had to try and store fuel because of the lack of electricity.

Correspondent talking about how Israel's target list as steadily expanded from government sites to civilian sites.  He was far more detailed than that, but having to summarize here.

Showing an ambulance now, anchor asking correspondent about it, correspondent saying it appears to be heading from one of the heavily targeted areas towards al-Shifa Hospital.  Saying something about how hospital needed to get out 100 patients to Egypt and get in medical supplies, but I missed if he was saying they managed to actually do so or needed to and haven't been able to.

They just showed an Apache missile as it arced across the sky and hit somewhere in Gaza City.  There's another one from an Apache.  Saying more than 6 now from an Apache towards northern Gaza.

10:34pm) Now going to Beirut and interviewing Abbas Zaki, PLO representative there.  He's starting out encouraging everyone working in Gaza including the Jazeera and media correspondents and condemning Israel's crimes in Gaza.  Condemning the attacks on civilians and failure of Arab governments to provide arms.  But encouraging the citizens of Gaza to stand firm.  Saying if this was a fight between two equal armies would be one thing, but saying this is a wide-ranging attack by Israel on a civilian area.

Zaki asked by anchor what he thinks of the deterioration of the military and humanitarian situation.  Zaki says its not normal the way the Arab nations are reacting.  Now he's rambling on about Sarkozy and how the Israelis call their army a "Defense" force even as it attacks.  Really incoherent.  (Though he's not taking the standard Fatah Quisling line, the Fatah guys must really be feeling the heat and realizing they have to talk tough now as their grassroots aren't happy with them for supporting Israel's barbarity in Gaza.)

Ok, Zaki really rambling.  Jazeera cameras continue to pan over Gaza, missiles falling and bombs going off all over the place, fires and smoke everywhere.  Apocalyptic scene.  Anchor finally cut off Zaki, thank goodness.

Back to correspond Tamir something or other.  Asking if any updates/developments.  Saying more explosions in northern Gaza, more explosions heard eastern Gaza as he turns the panorama cameras that way.

Headline on bottom of screen (been up several times now) saying Washington refuses the Arab ceasefire proposal at the Security Council.

Geez, you keep seeing these bombs and missiles the Israelis are firing and they're going straight into what look like densely built up areas.

Correspondent saying Israeli tanks entered via the agricultural area near where Israeli settlement of Dugit (sp?) used to be and progressing slowly from there.

Saying it's almost morning, 6:45 am, toughest night yet for the Palestinians.  Saying worst incident so far worst incident was Israelis bombing a mosque (I think in Beit Lahiya) that killed 13 people.  Saying the resistance is fighting the Israeli tanks with missiles.  Saying Gaza from the far north to far south facing non-stop bombardment (the pictures and sounds of explosions on the screen certainly back that up).

10:49pm) Dawn breaking it looks like, light on the horizon.  Safwat Ziyad (sp?) on the phone now, a military expert, anchor asking his view of what's happening.  Safwat saying Israeli forces may have made some progress on the ground overnight it appears, but doesn't appear they've been able to stop the resistance from launching Qassam missiles yet, 5 of which went into the Negev overnight.  Anchor asking Safwat (who from dialect is clearly Egyptian) what the destructive power of Qassam's is.  He says they're small, 5-15 kilograms of explosives, goal is to basically show Israelis can't stop them.

Headline on bottom now saying Security Council ended an emergency meeting on Gaza without reaching any agreement or official announcement.

Safwat still speaking, keeps talking about how resistance keeps sending message their capabilities still intact as they continue to launch missiles and Israelis haven't achieved their ability to stop it.  This guy's boring, keeps saying the same thing over and over.  Now he's drifting into politics of ceasefire terms.

Anchor cuts him off (thank you!) and asking correspondent Tamir for any updates on the ground.  Tamir not responding, silence.  Oh, here he is.  Saying bombardment getting more violent now.  Says seeing morning light now and appears to be corresponding with an escalation.  Saying Israeli forces in northern, eastern, and southern Gaza.  Saying slow progress by Israeli tanks.  They appear to be taking firmer control of agricultural areas and stepping up their bombing of residential areas from there.  Heavy machine gun fire being opened up by Israelis to try to cover their tanks advance.

Argh, back to Safwat az-Zayad in Cairo (mis-spelled name first time).  Talking about how Israel doesn't have any system against Palestinian missiles.  He's talking about Israel's "Iron Dome" anti-missile system and how it hasn't worked to date.  Did he just say "lil-asif ash-shadeed" (unfortunately) about that?  Ok, he remains boring, not sure if he's whining about the poor Israelis or if I just misunderstood.

No going to New York and correspondent Khalid Dawoud to ask about the Security Council meeting.  Boom, another explosion in background.  Saying very simple statement out of Security Council asking everyone to stop shooting and minor request to Israel to respect humanitarian law.  Saying US rep specifically didn't want any formal council statement to come out, that they don't want "a return to the situation before things got worse" and that they want the PA (my note: i.e., the Palestinian traitors and American/Israeli puppets) to be back in charge of the border crossings in Gaza again.  Says as usual US is key player and they ended after a 4 hour meeting with nothing.

Says the Arab ambassadors exited meeting very clearly showing disappointment on their faces.  Saying US is ultimately the last word at the UN Security Council and that lack of any statement shows lack of effectiveness of it.  Dawoud spending some time talking about how security council works, how permanent members and US in particular really have last word and any hope of getting international law and international humanitarian law basically impossible there.  He put it in less charged terms than that, more technical, but that's what I got out of it with half of my attention on it.

Ok, need to go to bed soon, but hopefully this gives some sense of how the coverage goes.  It's comprehensive, wall-to-wall coverage.  Correspondents in all the key locations.  Pictures of what's happening on the ground along with people on the ground describing.  Interviews with spokesman from the combatants (no Israelis on in the past hour or so I've been typing, but they've had a lot of them on in general past few days, so both sides putting out their messages).  Good night.

UPDATE: Oooh, just add this one juicy final tidbit.  Khalid Dawoud in NY continuing to talk about efforts at UN, talking about disarray of Arab ambassadors, their failure to achieve anything, but juiciest bit is besides for talking about their divisions, mentions that some of them "probably don't want an immediate ceasefire".  Oh, and talking about how it took 4, 5 days for them to even meet using excuse of New Year holidays, but appears it may well have been a deliberate green light from the Security Council members and the PA to allow the attacks to go forward and have time.  Making comparisons to 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon on that.

Al-Jazeera report miscellani

I was just listening to Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak on Al-Jazeera trying to justify his inhumane participation in the Israeli siege of Gaza by refusing to allow the opening of the Rafah border crossing. His words translated (going from memory about a half hour ago here, but this is about right): 'stuff in, stuff out, but its occupied so the occupier controls the crossing'. He's claiming that the other side of the Rafah border crossing is "occupied" because Palestine is occupied. Basically Mubarak hates Hamas because they have close ties to Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood who in turn are the key (most popular) opposition to his dictatorial regime. So he wants to see Hamas smashed to protect his own rear, even though the vast majority of Egyptians are united in supporting the opening of the crossings for humanitarian aid and defensive arms to the Palestinians. As usual, a tinpot Arab dictator with US support is standing against his people.

At the same time, Egyptians are coming out in increasing numbers to protest the government's actions and demand the border crossings be opened. Mubarak's stooges are teargassing them, beating them, arresting them, and blocking them from reaching protest sites. Nor is this limited to Egypt. Al-Jazeera's correspondent in Jordan reported on what he called possibly the largest demonstrations in Jordanian history as political factions from the Muslim Brotherhood to the Communists to the Trade Unions all are united in condemning Israel and Egypt. As protestors approached the Egyptian and Israeli embassies in Amman, they were fired on by tear gas and beaten.

But the worst suppression of protests was by the Israelis in the West Bank (if we leave Gaza out of it anyways), where at at least 3 demonstration sites at Qalandiya, Jayyous, and Hussan (near Bethlehem), Israeli forces opened fire with *live ammunition* on *unarmed* protestors. One shouldn't be shocked at this though, it has become standard Israeli procedure and unarmed demonstrators are regularly shot dead by Israeli troops. Today at least one AFP reporter was hit and sent to hospital.

In Pakistan Al-Jazeera's Islamabad correspondent reported not just the anger among extremist Salafi types, but the Pakistani Senate also explicitly condemned the hypocritical double-standard of western governments in saying that Pakistan had to fight terrorism while they support Israeli terrorism. Unmentioned, but what US observers (especially in Washington) should take note of is that if they want the Pakistanis to fight the Taliban for them, the fact that the Pakistani Senate is raising formal protests saying that the US is selective in its choice of what terrorism it condemns, then their willingness to commit Pakistani resources and lives to fight US enemies is going to shrink.

Jazeera also reported on widespread protests around the world including ones they showed in Turkey, Sudan, the Philippines, Kenya, Australia, and India (past days have shown protests in many other spots around the world). Most of these protests condemned Arab leaders' complicity in the massacres just as strongly as the Israelis committing them.

All this on top of the reporting directly from Gaza where several more children were reported killed today, the bombing continues non-stop, flour/bread which people already had to wait hours in line for (give great credit to the brave and patient Gazans who are always shown waiting patiently and neighborly in line despite the chaos being visited on them) has now reportedly begun to run out, the funerals are growing, and the firmness of the people is clearly holding strong.

Some notes on Al-Jazeera these days

So, I don’t get to watch much TV these days, but I do try to tune into Al-Jazeera every once in a while. There has been a lot of talk about the Saudi-Qatari political rapprochement and how this has supposedly led the channel to be less critical of both the Saudis and the Americans. Marc Lynch at Abu Aardvark thinks there’s not much to that argument, As’ad Abu Khalil of Angry Arab fame is convinced it is true. Personally in my snippets of watching, I tend to believe it is true, but that the thesis' applicability is only in certain spheres. They are much more circumspect in their Iraq coverage, tending to give more credence to Iraqi government and American officials and not as much to the various armed and unarmed opposition as they used to, and seem to be neutering their language/word-choice to American sensibilities. This is not absolute by any means, they did a groundbreaking interview with Muqtada al-Sadr just recently, but it does seem to me to be a trend that stands out. Removing the Sami al-Hajj irritant seen in this light could very well be an American olive branch attempting to get Al-Jazeera to be that much more compliant now that they sense the propaganda winds blowing in their direction.

I guess the more I think of it, the more it seems the point mostly is about Jazeera's Iraq, Saudi and American coverage. Outside of that (granted, those are big important topics not to be lightly dismissed), I don’t sense any backing down on topics such as Hizbullah, Hamas, Iran, and resistance to the Israelis or further American “projects” in the region (though their coverage of the deployment of American-trained Fatah security forces to Jenin today was more than a little irksome and uncritical). The broader Palestinian issue is particularly noteworthy. The 60th anniversary of the Nakba (“disaster” in Arabic, referring to the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in 1948 and Israel’s independence) is being covered prominently with lots of historical notes on events of those times, interviews with the few surviving old men and women refugees, coverage of anniversary conferences (one today in Denmark of European Palestinians seeking their right of return to their homeland), and general discussion of Palestinians’ and their right to return home. Indeed, they are playing a very positive role in helping I think to refocus the Arab world’s attention on the key issue – that right of return. Americans, Israelis, and Abbas & co. are at best willing to talk about borders, settlements, etc., but they’re all perfectly willing to leave the 6 million refugees out in the cold and ignore their most fundamental human rights. That in many ways is what caused the collapse of peace talks in 2000 – the Americans and Israelis considered the topic forbidden to even bring up, Palestinians when push came to shove insisted their basic humanity represented in the right of return was the core issue and not for sale. Al-Jazeera is certainly reminding people of that basic human right these days and deserve a lot of credit for that since Arab regimes are so in cahoots with the Israelis and Americans in trying to bury it.

Anyhow, I am admittedly only an occasional viewer of Al-Jazeera these days, so if others are watching it more and disagree, feel free to chime in. That is my take from my limited sample these days.

[UPDATE: I forgot to mention something else I've noticed lately around the time of the Saudi-Qatari rapproachment. Suddenly Al-Jazeera's broadcast and website have more advertising than before. See, the Saudis being ticked at the Qataris for so long were able to basically enforce an advertising ban on the channel. Saudi Arabia is the biggest advertising market in the region, so anyone who put commercials on Jazeera would get blackballed in Saudi, so they didn't. The result was you typically only saw ads from Qatari state-owned companies. I mean, Rasgas and Qapco are cool and all in their own way, but let's face it, not many Egyptians or Moroccans or Palestinians are making dire household consumer choices over where the plastic in their kids toys comes from, and none of the above has ever likely consumed a drop of Qatari LNG. No offense, but in the face of the Saudi advert blackout, those were just Qatari state subsidies to the channel. Anyhow, it wasn't for lack of eyeballs, Jazeera obviously in a truly free market has the ability to capture huge advertising revenue. Well, now suddenly one does see international companies starting to advertise more and even Saudi and UAE (the Saudi's bestest buddies) events and companies a bit. The blacklisting is thawing along with relations, while meanwhile the coverage on some key issues (see above) is geting dumbed down.]