Qatari Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani spoke on al-Jazeera recently and stated that an unidentified businessman sought to buy the popular Arabic-language news channel for $5 billion.

al-Jazeera is a pioneer in the field of Arab television. Launched by the Qatari government in the late 1990s, the station was a revolution in the region’s news coverage. Prior to al-Jazeera, most Arabs got their news either from the BBC’s Arabic radio station or France’s Radio Monte Carlo, or from the stale government media. Although the former two did offer critical regional coverage, they could not match the on-screen presence that al-Jazeera brought to Arab homes.

The station was daring in that it covered human rights abuses by Arab governments [leading to many of them banning or greatly harassing the station] and it was the first station to air an interview with an Israeli IDF official [raising the speculation that it is owned by the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency].

The television is funded by the Qatari government to the tone of over $70 million a year, and because of that critical coverage of Qatar is off-limits. Other than that, al-Jazeera is a professional station. This remains so even though the network has toned down its criticisms of Arab regimes, particularly Saudi Arabia.

Anyway, back to the supposedly $5 billion offer. I do not know about an offering of $5 billion [and don’t believe that], but the unidentified prospective owner is Israeli-American media mogul Haim Seban. Seban made his fortunate by buying the rights to market Japanese kids show “The Power Rangers” in America. He is a strong defender of Israel, friend of comatose Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, and started the Seban Center at the Brookings Institute.

The Brookings Institute used to have a balanced panel on Israel, but with Seban taking hold of the Middle East division and appointing former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk; the Institute has become just another pro-Israel so-called think tank.

Seban wanted to buy al-Jazeera [though I am sure not for $5B because that would be all the money he has] so as to turn the station pro-Israeli. There was no other reason for Seban to buy it. He does not even own a newspaper in America or Israel. He just say al-Jazeera is a powerful station and thought if only he could get a hold of it and broadcast a pro-Israeli message then Arab opinion of Israel would change.

For an otherwise smart businessman, I can’t believe that he would be so stupid. Just because al-Jazeera all of a sudden starts to sound pro-Israel does not mean that Arabs will change their views. Arabs can see beyond propaganda no matter the source and they know Israel’s criminal behavior against the Palestinians. It would have been such a lost investment by Seban. If al-Jazeera became a propaganda outfit for Israel then Arabs would have simply turned the channel off seeing it for what it would have become: a now discredited channel bought by a Zionist to disseminate Israeli propaganda.