Israel Shuts Down Qatari-owned Al Jazeera, Claiming Security Threats as Negotiations Falter
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
After years of Israeli threats to shutter one of the most popular Arab networks, government follows through on threat at a critical time when Qatar acts as mediator between Israel and Hamas
Israel’s government ordered the local offices of Qatar’s Al Jazeera satellite news network to close on Sunday, bringing a long-standing dispute between the two to a climax. For years, Israel has voiced its dissatisfaction with the Qatari network, blaming it for incitement. Since the eruption of the war between Hamas and Israel this past October, the Israeli government has repeatedly threatened to shut down the network’s operations in the country. On Sunday, the Israeli cabinet approved the decision.
Al Jazeera correspondents have harmed the security of Israel and incited against IDF soldiers. The time has come to eject Hamas’s mouthpiece from our country.
“Al Jazeera correspondents have harmed the security of Israel and incited against IDF soldiers. The time has come to eject Hamas’s mouthpiece from our country,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after the decision had been made.
The measure will be in place for 45 days and can then be renewed.
The move is believed to be the first time Israel has shut down a foreign news outlet. The channel’s various outlets are now blocked from being viewed in Israel; its website is inaccessible from the country.
The move came as Qatari-mediated negotiations for a deal between Hamas and Israel on the release of Israeli hostages and a cease-fire in Gaza entered a critical phase.
Walid Omary, Al Jazeera’s Jerusalem bureau chief, confirmed in a conversation with The Media Line that Israeli police arrived Sunday at a hotel where the network’s English-speaking correspondents would have broadcasted from and confiscated broadcast equipment, closing off access to the room.
The main offices of Al Jazeera, located elsewhere in Jerusalem, were already shut down a while ago due to what Omary described as “long-time incitement” by members of Israel’s current far-right government. As a result of the recent government order, the network has stopped all work within Israel and is currently operating out of the West Bank territories under Palestinian Authority control.
According to Nitzan Chen, director of the Israeli Government Press Office, a decision regarding the revocation of Al Jazeera journalists’ press accreditation has yet to be made.
“The issue is subject to legal clarification,” Chen told The Media Line, refusing to answer any other questions on the sensitive matter that has sparked criticism of Israel.
The network has 16 staffers currently unable to work in Israel. Al Jazeera employees a total of 57 people in Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
While Israel claims that the network poses a security risk to the country, it has not released any evidence to back this claim. Israeli media reported that the heads of the national security services voiced their reservation regarding the timing of the move, as it could negatively impact the truce talks currently being mediated by Qatar.
“This is a very big mistake,” said Omary. “There are no security reasons; there are internal political reasons for this within Israel. Israel can no longer say it shares Western values and respects those values of democracy, liberalism, human rights, freedom of press and expression.”
The station has differentiated itself from others in the Arab world, both by allowing for the expression of views contrasting those broadcast in state-run and closely censored Arab channels and by frequently interviewing Israelis—officials and others—whose voices were previously never heard in the Arab world.
Omary denies the Israeli government’s claims about Al Jazeera posing a threat to Israel’s security. Part of the cabinet deliberations on the order to shut down the network are sealed from public access, making some of Israel’s accusations difficult to prove or disprove.
“Al Jazeera glorifies Hamas and aids it by reporting on Israeli troop movements,” said David M. Weinberg, senior managing fellow at the Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy. “It constantly seeks to drum up terrorism against Israelis during Ramadan, calling daily for West Bank Palestinians to rise up against Israel in sympathy with the Hamas in Gaza.”
"We do not incite against Israel and have never violated the law ..."
According to Omary, “This is all a lie. We constantly broadcast everything from Israeli officials—from government spokespeople to Israeli military spokesmen. We are always ready to have Israeli officials come and express their points of view. We do not incite against Israel and have never violated the law, including military censorship. The government knows very well they have no real accusations against us, this is being done for political reasons,” he added.
Hours after the cabinet meeting, there were reports that the talks between Hamas and Israel had essentially collapsed and intense efforts by US officials were underway to salvage them.
“Israel is trying to pressure Qatar in order to reach a deal on the hostages—this is the major reason,” said Omary.
“It’s clear that Israel has delayed acting against Al Jazeera until now because of the role that Qatar was playing in the attempts to cut a hostage deal with Hamas,” Weinberg said. “Given the fact that the Qatari efforts seem to have failed, there is no longer any good reason to delay acting against Al Jazeera,” he reasoned.
Meanwhile, there has been no official announcement from any of the parties involved in the talks that they have ended in failure.
The move has been widely criticized both in Israel and internationally, coming under fire as a move that curtails the freedom of the press.
"This is a dark day for the media"
“This is a dark day for the media,” read a statement from the Foreign Press Association in Israel. “With this decision, Israel joins a dubious club of authoritarian governments to ban the station.”
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) has petitioned the Supreme Court, requesting to cancel the order.
“There is a wide variety of effective measures Israel has at its disposal in order to protect its national security from media outlets who are accused of incitement long before closing down a network,” said Hagar Shechter, a lawyer at ACRI who is a signatory to the appeal.
“The complete shutting down of a network is undemocratic and is reserved for dictatorships,” Shechter told The Media Line. “It may well be that Al Jazeera expresses a narrative that is uncomfortable for Israelis to hear, but during times of war, there is even greater importance to hear different narratives.”
Journalists from Israel sometimes rely on Al Jazeera for their reports on the Arab world. The network reports and stories are often quoted by Israeli media outlets, also as a window for Israelis to see and hear Arab sentiment on pressing issues, including the current war.
Earlier in the war, Israel shut down the Al Mayadeen network associated with the Lebanon-based Hizbullah terrorist organization, claiming that the network was causing “substantial harm to national security.”
Israel accuses the Qatari news channel of bias against it. Relations between Al Jazeera and Israel have always been tense but took a turn for the worse two years ago when a prominent journalist from the network, Palestinian-American Shireen Abu Akleh, was killed by Israeli soldiers in the West Bank, an incident the Israeli military later apologized for. During the current war, a cameraman for the network was killed by an Israeli airstrike, and several other staffers were wounded. Al Jazeera and other networks have accused Israel of deliberately targeting journalists, a claim Israel denies.
Not everyone is opposed to the move.
“This is long overdue,” Weinberg told The Media Line. “The network hosts the most antisemitic, anti-Western, radical Islamic preachers who poison the minds of millions against Israel and the West.”
Israel is not the first country to clash with Al Jazeera. In 2013, Egypt stopped the English broadcasting of the channel, accusing it of incitement and detaining several of its journalists. Iraq also closed the station that same year. In 2017, Saudi Arabia blocked the network’s website, claiming it was favoring Iran as a regional power.
“Israel should ask other dictatorships how well it worked out for them when they banned Al Jazeera,” said Omary.
Throughout the years, several US officials have also criticized the network for having an anti-US bias, but no major move has ever been taken against it.
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Netanyahu is making very silly mistakes.
A small one, perhaps.
At least he isn't making the mistake of trying to negotiate with murderous terrorists.
gee, funny how autocrats have a problem with a free press...
Same as some folks here, if they don't like it, they don't want others to read it.
So says someone who deletes alternate views on a consistent basis
gee, funny how far left radicals want to negotiate with murderous, raping terrorists.
But what if he continues this and is able to shut down other media?
For example, what if Netanyahu succeeds in shutting down our beloved Newstalkers?
(Don't laugh-- that would be no joke!
)
If he did it, it would be in Israel only. he has no control over the press in the US.
@!@ ... he's using the Qataris as go-betweens who happen to own al-Jazeera.
A free press and freedom of speech is a highly over rated and frequently abused commodity in some parts of the world.
“A free press and freedom of speech is a highly over rated and frequently abused commodity in some parts of the world.”
A free press and freedom of speech cannot be overstated as essential in calling out abuses in any part of the world.
A free and honest press and freedom of speech cannot be overstated as essential in calling out abuses in any part of the world.
Fixed it for ya.
“…honest…”
It is incumbent upon the consumer of information to distill fact from fiction and determine the truth.
To rely on any forum, any pundit, or any source without the slightest suspicion is intellectually lazy and does nothing but lead us further down the rabbit hole.
To add any adjective one chooses is to subtract from the original point.
‘Ya’ have not ‘fixed’ a single thing.
Or the rest of the world.
Since he never tried to shut down Ha'aretz, it's not likely that he would try to shut down the Newstalkers.
bibi won't be safe from criminal prosecution in israel, or from arrest for his war crimes in gaza and the west bank in the US ...
I'm almost afraid to ask........Exactly what could the US arrest BiBi for?
It would appear that Hamas is guilty of multiple and ongoing war crimes.
What war crimes has Netanyahu committed?
he refuses to surrender to terrorists and is trying to protect Israelis.
So he is the antithesis of Biden.
... or his arse and for nie on 2 decades his arse has come first.
Anything we want to!
(Don't underestimate the power of a country like the U.S....)
I guess far left radicals would prefer him to simply surrender Israel to the terrorists.
I don't associate with far left radicals and mostly because they are extremely difficult to tell apart from far right radicals who are equally disdainful.
Then why attack him?
Cuz he's a puppet of the extreme right in Israel?
LOL!
Why would any self-respecting Israeli choose to negotiate with terrorists who are sworn to the destruction of Israel and proven time and time again their word means absolutely nothing?
“Al Jazeera glorifies Hamas and aids it by reporting on Israeli troop movements,” said David M. Weinberg, senior managing fellow at the Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy. “It constantly seeks to drum up terrorism against Israelis during Ramadan, calling daily for West Bank Palestinians to rise up against Israel in sympathy with the Hamas in Gaza"
Al Jazeera incites violence against Irael and the Jews. It is not a legitimate news organization.
al jazerra is closer to being unbiased than any US right wing media source, or russian media source, that you can name...
approaching redundancy
Apparently most Americans weren't aware of that:
On April 12, 2016, Al Jazeera America signed off for the final time; its final program to air on the network was a live three-hour retrospective film titled "Your Stories" that aired twice from 3PM until the shuttering. Antonio Mora and Richelle Carey, the first two anchors to appear on air when it launched August 20, 2013, were the last two anchors to appear as the network signed off the air at 8:59 p.m. ET.
Shortly afterwards, a slide was shown with the Al Jazeera logo above a simple message that read "Al Jazeera America is no longer available. Thank you for watching" with the network's English web address shown below it, and the channel space initially created by Newsworld International in 1994 subsequently folded and ceased to exist.
Silly me for posting an extensive link as to its history.
it was probably invisible to the true believers on the right...
I like al jazerra as much as the BBC, PBS, and NPR...
Why do you suppose that Secretary of State Antony Blinken asked Qatari Prime Minister to “turn down the volume” of Al Jazeera’s Gaza coverage?
Partisan politics?
Blinken acted because it covered both sides of the story-- given equal exposure to both the Israeli side and the Hamas side of the story-- and Blinken was biased?
I do not know, Secretaries of State are a mysterious bunch who more often than not opt for maybe over yes or no.
I could never figure Hillary out, either.
I don't know how the qatari pm would be involved with any al jazerra decisions, but maybe blinken thought the negotiations would progress better that way. bibi is a autocratic crook and we need to crack the whip until he's forced to resign by his fragile coalition of religious extremists.
Who do you think owns Al Jazeera?
New organizations like CNN actually had reporters literally engaging in the 10/7 attacks. That Al-Jazeera has also crossed the line isn't a surprise.
Contoversies:
On April 28, 2015, Matthew Luke, Al Jazeera America's former Supervisor of Media and Archive Management, filed a US$15 million lawsuit against his former employers over unfair dismissal. Luke alleged that he had been unfairly dismissed by the network after he had raised concerns with the human resource division that his boss, Osman Mahmud, the Senior Vice-President of Broadcast Operations and Technology, discriminated against female employees and made anti-Semitic remarks. [60]
In an unrelated development, two female Al Jazeera America employees—Diana Lee, the Executive Vice-President for Human Resources, and Dawn Bridges, the Executive Vice President for Communications, had resigned that week.
Is there something in this and subsequent posts (4 and 5) by you in which al Jazeera could not be exchanged with FOX?
And of course there was this:
On June 11, 2015, Shannon High-Bassalik, AJAM's former senior vice president of programming and documentaries, filed a multi-million lawsuit against the channel; alleging a biased pro-Arab coverage and the mistreatment of employees. AJAM has responded that they would contest the lawsuit in court. [67]
And this:
On November 8, 2015, it was reported that Al Jazeera America's general counsel, David W. Harleston, did not have a license to practice law.
Also:
Harleston had previously dealt with several lawsuits involving DirecTV and Al Gore , several wrongful termination cases by former employees, and the departure of the company's chief executive, Al Shihabi. [68]