Al-Jazeera’s Holocaust legacy: Justification alongside outright denial

The decision by the Israeli government to shut the offices of Al Jazeera in the country sparked heated debates both in the country and abroad, with some officials justifying the move on the backdrop of what they deemed homeland security issues, as well as a history of antisemitism propagated by the official Qatari mouthpiece.

According to a report by the Zachor Institute, the Qatari-owned media gargantuan has provided a platform for antisemitic discourse in many instances, including the broadcasting of sermons by Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, Muslim Brotherhood leading cleric who endorsed suicide bombings, in which the latter claimed that Allah used Adolf Hitler to inflict the Holocaust upon the Jews as “divine punishment,” praising him for “putting [Jews] in their place.”

However, instances of justification and glorification of the Holocaust are not the only type of antisemitic discourse promoted on Al Jazeera, as outright holocaust denial has also been given a platform on its different outlets.

The most well-known affair regarding Holocaust denial by Al Jazeera, more specifically by its “younger” tributary AJ+, is a seven-minute “documentary” published in May 2019, which reportedly claimed that the Holocaust was “different from how the Jews tell it,” promoting it with a tweet reading “Gas ovens killed millions of Jews…So the story says. How true is the #Holocaust and how did the Zionists benefit from it?”

Reports, blogs and op-eds

Instances of Holocaust denial can easily be found on Al Jazeera’s website, left untouched for years and sometimes decades.

For instance, a 2002 article regarding the dismissal of a Syrian-born German minister following his likening of Israel to the Nazis, reported in a dry, allegedly objective tone, that Holocaust denial is “the card that the Jews are still playing in Germany, which is still paying reparations to Israel for the alleged Holocaust.”

More modern examples can also be found. For instance, a blog by writer Abdelkhaleq Mansour from March 2017, claims that “There are many studies and writings that have refuted the claims of the leaders of the Zionist entity that Nazism killed millions of converts to the Jewish religion in Europe, and revealed the extent to which those who adopted the concept of Holocaust massacres exaggerated in narrating those events.” He also added that a “growing belief in the inaccuracy of these allegations, with the emergence of the concept of Holocaust revisionism, that is, research, writings, and people who believe that the actions of Nazism were not as horrific as those mentioned in the writings of the Jews.” This passage includes both holocaust denial and a referral to the debunked, antisemitic Khazarian theory.

A similar entry by Moroccan blogger Adel Ayashi from August 2018, claimed that “Although the conflict with the Jews reached its climax after the mission of the Messenger, there are turning points in history in which Arabs and Muslims demonstrated profound humanity towards the persecuted Jews throughout the world. Numerous testimonies and general facts indicate that Muslims have demonstrated - despite the plots of the Jews against them - about their great chivalry in their defense of the Jews persecuted by Nazism specifically during World War II, and whether the alleged Holocaust was fact or fiction.” In this passage, the writer manages to both deny the Holocaust, highlight historical hostility toward the Jews, and paint the Jews as a collective - as plotting and being ungrateful.

Similarly, Palestinian journalist Nael Abdulatif wrote a piece in Al Jazeera in June 2018 in which he criticized Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for “apologizing on remarks he made regarding the alleged holocaust,” thus inherently denying the holocaust and the need to preserve its memory.

Another more recent example is from early 2023, where a panel discussion hosted by the Qatari National Library featured Dr. Abaher Al-Saqa, who discussed in his speech “the alleged Holocaust kept by the Zionist Jews... They have made a museum about the perishing or Holocaust which they claim [happened].”

One final example is from December 2023, where a critical article made accusations that the Israeli film industry revolving around the Holocaust “Ignores any reference to the complicit role of Zionism in the crimes, whether in the Nazi camps, or in the camps that the Allies established in Germany after the war, in which hundreds of thousands of Germans were killed, and some estimate the number in the millions.” This accusation against Zionists - interchangeable with Jews - with imaginary wrongdoings is another form of antisemitic discourse salient on the Qatari-owned mouthpiece Al Jazeera.

An ideology of antisemitism

Holocaust denial is not the only type of antisemitic discourse led by Qatar. Only last week, Qatari member of parliament Essa Al-Nassr expressed antisemitic and violent views, regarding Jews as “killers of prophets” and promising that the October 7th massacre was “just a prelude,” implying a supposed Godly promise to bring in Jews to the Holy Land so that Muslims can more easily defeat them. 

Additionally, Qatar is perceived as a host nation of the Muslim Brotherhood axis, through sporting and promoting a wide array of religious institutions, political parties and even Western-based NGOs which promote what is known as political Islam or Islamism around the globe. The Muslim Brotherhood is regarded as key player in importing classical European antisemitic discourse into the Arab and Muslim spheres, with one of its main thinkers, founder of Salafi Jihadism, Syed Qutb, even writing a well-known pamphlet named “Our Battle with the Jews.”