It’s cool how Jake Tapper compares occupied Palestinians to white nationalists while he’s actually giving them a platform on his own show (Richard Spencer most recently). Collect your man @cnn.
— Sana Saeed (@SanaSaeed) August 5, 2019
There is a little Twitter tiff going on because of what seems like a misunderstanding (misrepresentation?) of what Jake Tapper said on his CNN show on Sunday. The source of the misunderstanding (or, as Tapper stated, the lie) is a journalist at AJ+.
AJ+, of course, is the English-language social media-oriented arm of Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera is controlled by the government of Qatar, an authoritarian monarchy. Not only is Qatar authoritarian, but it is a very explicit caste society.
As a person of South Asian descent, I am quite aware that the United States gives me a far better “fair-go” than an of the Gulf monarchies would, including Qatar. Money is fungible, but the reality is that the funds in Sana Saeed’s bank account almost certainly derive in some way from the exploitation of South Asian laborers in Qatar.
To get a sense of Qatar, you can read this article, Lamborghinis, Burkas, Sex Party Invites And ‘Chop Chop Square’: A New York Lawyer’s 15 Years In The Middle East. It’s basically a hit piece. There’s nothing surprising or novel about the facts reported. It was probably written to satisfy our Gulf allies in the UAE and Saudi Arabia. Both of these states run on exploited labor and operate as caste societies (well, Saudi Arabia less so since it has indigenized more).
Qatar’s game kind of reminds me of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The Soviets, correctly, pointed out America racism. But, they did not shine much of a light on their own prejudices and brutality toward ethnic minorities (they literally engaged in ethnic cleansing several times for reasons of geopolitics). And, Communist anti-racism was fundamentally shallow, as evidenced by the well-known racism among the populace of the post-Communist states.
As with my post on Mehdi Hasan, my point is not to say that people getting their paychecks indirectly from the exploitation of South Asian laborers shouldn’t be able to express opinions. But, considering that they are employed by a media outfit controlled by a mildly racist and very authoritarian regime, perhaps one should be a bit more skeptical of their good faith.
I mean, if Israel is an apartheid state, what would they call Qatar?
Addendum: Also, AJ+ journalists should chill on the guilt-by-association. Their Arabia language channel platforms some really nasty people.