Al Jazeera controversies and criticism crowed the station's Beirut bureau chief, hailing Kuntar as a "pan-Arab hero." On 13 March 2008, Israel announced a "boycott" of the Arabic broadcaster al-Jazeera, accusing it of bias particularly during coverage of the conflict in the Gaza Strip and of slanted coverage favoring Hamas. Ministers will refuse to do interviews and according to some reports, will deny visa applications from its staff. Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Majali Wahbe accused the Qatari-owned station of prioritizing/focusing exclusively on Palestinian suffering, and ignoring Israeli suffering. "We have seen that Al-Jazeera has become part of Hamas ... taking sides and cooperating with people
Al Jazeera English "reflexive adversarial editorial stance" against Americans and "anti-American bias". It is often unclear whether recent discussions of anti-American bias at Al Jazeera are referring also to Al Jazeera English or only to Al Jazeera's Arabic-language channel. There are significant differences in tone between the English and Arabic-language channels. (According to bilingual Palestinian journalist Daoud Kuttab, "The English channel uses more neutral terminology; the Arab channel is much harsher.") An example of this is a 2011 claim by Bill O'Reilly that Al Jazeera is "anti-Semitic" and "anti-American" and a subsequent defense of Al Jazeera against these claims made by former Al