my specific question is, how do you deal with that in aljazeera? are you pressured by individuals or governments to favor one side or the other? i will call them almost ethnic battles that seem to take place, more or less continuously in the middle east. guest: the issue of defining who is arab and jew is not is a very tricky one. overall, i would like to say that era is not a race. it is not an ethnic group. arabic is a way of being. you are absolutely right. if you travel across the arab world, you will find people who define themselves in a plethora of different ways. that has always been the case in the middle east. incidentally, i really think that is part of the cultural diversity and richness. . aljazeera has described itself as a channel who seized the world through arab allies. very difficult to establish what those arab eyes are. there is a sensibility are around issues like israel, palestine, iraq, corporations with iran fall in a different category because that is a much more clear-cut difference. that sensibility does seem to unite peo

as a reporter, i used to have aljazeera on all the time. they would find dissonance whether it be libyans or someone else working in lebanon on and who was in jail. it was an incredible tool for finding now what kind of opposition did exist in the arab world. one example in the book, a friend of mine's mother was watching al jazeera one day. they do a good job of covering the globe. they're watching peru. is that how come there are no election returns in the middle east? it starts people to thinking and contrasting the systems that exist in the arab world in other places. people are like sponges on those kinds of issues. they know they need change. the difficulty is to create the tools to get it. host: what you believe barack obama's influence on the middle east will be? guest: he hit a lot of the right notes in trying to repair the image of the united states and to talk about people in their own language, their own terms. it signals that somebody is listening. when the united states tries to intervene directly, it is often rejected and see

my specific question is, how do you deal with that in aljazeera? are you pressured by individuals or governments to favor one side or the other? i will call them almost ethnic battles that seem to take place, more or less continuously in the middle east. guest: the issue of defining who is arab and jew is not is a very tricky one. overall, i would like to say that era is not a race. it is not an ethnic group. arabic is a way of being. you are absolutely right. if you travel across the arab world, you will find people who define themselves in a plethora of different ways. that has always been the case in the middle east. incidentally, i really think that is part of the cultural diversity and richness. . guest: the iran ian's are persians. that sensibility does seem to unite people in the arab world. -- the iranians are persians. host: we are monitoring al jazeera right now. it is this what most of the world is now seen? this is what we're getting right now. this is al jazeera. is there one version around the world? is it different here than elsewher

my specific question is, how do you deal with that in aljazeera? are you pressured by individuals or governments to favor one side or the other? i will call them almost ethnic battles that seem to take place, more or less continuously in the middle east. guest: the issue of defining who is arab and jew is not is a very tricky one. overall, i would like to say that era is not a race. it is not an ethnic group. arabic is a way of being. you are absolutely right. if you travel across the arab world, you will find people who define themselves in a plethora of different ways. that has always been the case in the middle east. incidentally, i re