Israa al-Fass
It was on Saturday, August 30, 2014, exactly at 23:00 when Bahrain’s foreign minister Khalid bin Ahmad Al Khalifah, skimming the latest tweets published on Twitter, stopped at some tweet posted by a Qatari activist.
In her tweet, the activist cited Qatari academic Mohammed al-Musfer as saying that “Egypt is the cause of the Gulf dispute and Qatar hadn’t changed its mind towards supporting the legitimate Egyptian authority.”
On that day, the Gulf region was in a less tense crisis between Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which was uncovered after withdrawing the ambassadors of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain in early March 2014. The announcement seemed applicable in the crisis market. The minister didn’t comment immediately. He did neither note it in public. Instead, he went where he used to go, where he would “press the button” that explains all questions regarding similar titles that suddenly topped the headlines of the Gulf Saudi-related newspapers.
In a direct message, the Bahraini minister copied the tweet to his Emirati counterpart Abdullah bin Zayed. The al-Manar website obtained a leaked copy of the minister’s private messages from his own Twitter account. His conversation with Abdullah bin Zayed was among the leaks.
Bin Zayed said: “I need a copy for the operations room,” in which the Bahraini minister replied: “It seems like an anesthesia room, not an operation room.”
“A try won’t mind,” the Emirati minister replied.
So what is this Operation Room?
It is a room gathering 20 TV channels, in addition to Saudi-affiliated journalists and analysts. The Emirati minister has a representative in case he was busy, and so does the Bahraini minister. It is uncovered through their conversations. The room’s goal is to fabricate, direct media campaigns, draw their paths and follow up their activities.
The Bahraini minister spent the night following up the “room’s” activity… and before he went to bed, he sent the Emirati minister a new message: “The room started operating; we are following news by news…. May Allah help us.”
On the next day, the Saudi “Asharq Al-Awsat” newspaper, Saudi TV Al-Arabiya, Emirati TV “SkyNews”, and the Bahraini al-Ayam Newspaper cited the same source as saying that: “The positive atmosphere in the Gulf foreign ministers’ meeting doesn’t mean that the dispute between Saudi Arabia, and the UAE and Bahrain on the one hand, and Qatar on the other hand, is over. It is because Doha is still sticking to the Muslim Brotherhood’s support and still hasn’t signed the Riyadh deal. And hadn’t Qatar signed the Riyadh deal and applied it word by word, it will face harmful measures.
Bahraini and Emirati foreign ministers run this room, Saudi Arabia also does. They hire Arab and foreign newspapers, flooding their consciences with money, to attack their foes and pass fake stories fabricated in the black room to serve the goals of the ministers and their representatives, hitting Iran and Syria, and Qatar lately… and it is today targeting Hezbollah again.
The Green Light
In the morning of Tuesday, August 29, 2017, the Saudi “Asharq Al-Awsat” newspaper started a new campaign against the battle to defeat ISIL, taking the audience from the scene of celebrating victory to another one. The main headline topping the Saudi paper’s cover was: “ISIL” from al-Qalamoun to the Iraqi Border, Sponsored by the Regime. The news however didn’t mention any transfer of ISIL militants after their surrender in the western Qalamoun battles from the Syrian side, and in Ras Baalbek and al-Qaa’ from the Lebanese side.
The paper also published a piece for its ex-editor-in-chief, and former Director General of Al-Arabiya TV Channel Abdul Rahman al-Rashed entitled: “The Lebanese Army’s Turn in Defeat.” Al-Rashed tried to defame the integral image of the role of confrontation between the Lebanese army and the resistance, and to defame the defeat of the organization that terrified the world for more than three years, in which he wrote: “The deal looks fishy… letting this huge number of the organization’s fighters go alive in exchange of dead bodies, while Hezbollah claims it has seized those mountainous areas. For this reason, the families of the dead Lebanese considered the deal a betrayal of their sons.”
For its part, the London-based and Emirati-funded “Al-Arab” newspaper went in the same flow with al-Rashed, publishing an article under the title “The Outskirts Dawn… Hezbollah Worried of Lebanese Army’s Growing Power.”
The campaign didn’t stop at the attempt to hurt the relation between the army and the resistance. The black room’s reports turned to focus on part related to the Iraqi borders. In this respect, the Emirati “SkyNews” TV Channel selected a main title on its website on Wednesday: “After Lebanon… the Scandal of Hezbollah and ISIL Rocks Iraq.”
On the same day, Asharq Al-Awsat came up with another title: “The Deal of Dreams between Hezbollah and ISIL,” in which it assumed that the Lebanese and Syrian military offensive against ISIL ended up in disappointing, and shocking results, especially the photos of ISIL fighters mounting the air-conditioned huge buses that lifted them from the Syrian-Lebanese borders to the far Syrian east near Iraq, under the Syrian regime’s protection.”
In parallel, the Al-Arabiya TV enlisted its website to publish all the articles that aimed at shattering the image of the Lebanese victory. On its main page, the first title was: “The Hezbollah-ISIL Deal Provokes Iraq… “An Attack against Us”.
The Gulf newspapers’ publishes soon echoed on the social media platforms. It was clear that everybody is recruited in a clear operation. The Gulf affiliates repeated the same words, using “negotiation” and “deal” instead of “surrender”. They also turned a blind eye to the paper tiger that was exposed by media as a beast, focusing on the air-conditioned buses. Intentionally, they ignored the transfer of those fighters inside the Syrian territories in Deir Ezzor, to play another issue using the geographic position in which the Syrian province neighbors the Iraqi border.
What does it all explain? We return to the Bahraini minister’s messages. This time, the conversation was with a Lebanese journalist who was complaining about the Saudi negligence of Lebanon, demanding a Gulf support for a “political battle that re-forms the project of confronting Hezbollah. The Bahraini minister said it all clear: “It matters all of us because those we are fighting in Syria and Yemen are based in Lebanon.”
Translated by website team
Source: Al-Manar Website
