Al Jazeera controversies and criticism a week of the start of the rebellion in Libya against the Libyan Government, Al Jazeera started using the rebels' tricolor flag to mark its coverage. Qatar's emir appeared on Al Jazeera and urged that military intervention in Libya was necessary. Al Jazeera's journalists were criticized for not challenging the emir over his position. Although Al Jazeera reported on 22 February 2011 that Libya's government carried out airstrikes on Benghazi and Tripoli, observers concluded that the airstrikes did not take place. Saudi Arabia decided to ban Al-Jazeera and another Qatari website after Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani stated
Al Jazeera controversies and criticism motives", as the report was just one of "hundreds of hours of diverse coverage". Some critics have alleged that Al Jazeera has censored criticism of the United States under U.S. pressure. Al Jazeera English's former director, Wadah Khanfar resigned in September 2011 following Wikileaks documents that asserted that he had close ties to the U.S. and agreed to remove content if the United States objected. Some of Al Jazeera's competitors have claimed that Al Jazeera is pro-American. RT, a Russian network sometimes criticized for an alleged Anti-Western bias, asserted that the Wikileaks documents concerning Wadah Khanfar (see above) prove that