When Israel ordered Al Jazeera on Sunday to close operations there, the network had one reporter covering a government meeting in West Jerusalem, another from a hotel room in East Jerusalem and a third in northern Israel covering the border with Lebanon of the conflict, a fourth journalist covers the conflict in northern Israel. In Tel Aviv.
But when Walid Omari, the station’s bureau chief in Ramallah, the West Bank, ordered everyone to go home, the cameras stopped rolling. Israeli authorities raided a room used by Al Jazeera at the Ambassador Hotel in East Jerusalem and confiscated broadcast equipment. Israeli television and internet providers cut off its channels and blocked its website, but it can still be found online.
Al Jazeera, the influential Arab news network, said it would continue reporting and broadcasting from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. But its departure from Israel marks a new low in its long history of tensions with a country that much of Al Jazeera’s audience in the Arab world and beyond sees as an aggressor and occupier.
this close commandValid for 45 days and renewable, this is a breakthrough that’s been a long time in the making. Omari said the network stopped using an office in West Jerusalem shortly after the war between Israel and Hamas began in October, saying Israeli far-right elements used intimidation tactics against staff there.
The network has played an important role in amplifying stories of Palestinian killings and suffering in Gaza, fueling worldwide outrage over Israel’s actions. Many defenders of Al Jazeera believe its work is so powerful that Israel wants to intimidate and censor it.
But its focus on the bloodshed in Gaza has also sparked controversy, with some Arab analysts saying it cheered what it portrayed as legitimate armed resistance to Israel and published comments from Hamas officials and fighters with little criticism. The network is partially funded and controlled by the Qatari government, which enables Hamas political leaders to live and operate in Qatar.
That makes it a high-profile target for critics inside and outside Israel, who say it offers, at best, a one-sided view of the war. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Al Jazeera of inciting violence against Israel and undermining Israel’s security.
“We knew it was a matter of timing,” Omari said of the shutdown in an interview Tuesday. He said the Israeli government has long been engaged in what he called a “war against Al Jazeera.”
Emotional reporting
Since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7 and subsequent devastating Israeli military operations in Gaza, Al Jazeera has relied on a steady stream of news from its network of journalists in the region, the strongest of all news outlets. Produce harrowing reporting. and emotionally charged reporting.
The screens of many Arab households are filled with broadcasts about Gaza’s growing hunger crisis. Social media was awash with videos of distressed parents holding their dead children and bodies being pulled from the rubble.
with other foreign news media blocked by israel Since Al Jazeera does not have access to Gaza, coverage in Egypt cannot match the global audience.
Al Jazeera has seven reporters stretching from northern to southern Gaza, as well as a host of cameramen, producers and other personnel, said Mohammed Moawad, the station’s editor-in-chief. He said in an interview that Israel was “trying to delegitimize our reporting because we are the only organization reporting on this from within.”
“They want to hide what is happening in Gaza,” he added.
Shurouk al-Assad, spokesman for the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, said that without Al Jazeera’s journalists in Gaza, “we wouldn’t have known anything, and they paid the price with their lives.”
“Unfortunately, our badges, vests and helmets in Gaza do not provide us with any protection,” Hisham Zaqout, Al Jazeera’s Gaza correspondent, wrote in a WhatsApp message.
Israeli authorities did not specify their reasons for banning Al Jazeera, saying only that it harmed Israel’s security. But given that the network can continue to broadcast from Gaza and that mainly Arab viewers can still watch the channel using virtual private networks or YouTube, many Israeli commentators called the move symbolic at best.
The Israel Civil Rights Association appealed the order to Israel’s High Court, saying it had limited practical effect and “suggests that the order is intended to silence critical voices and label Arab media and their audiences as a fifth column.”
Rights activist condemnation
Experts who track the network say its combination of searing footage from Gaza and on-air commentary that echoes many of Hamas’s claims has bolstered support for the group’s actions and not just sympathy for Palestinians. This applies especially to its Arabic channel; it also has channels in English and other languages.
“The fact that it just provides the main platform for Hamas, Hamas officials, Hamas spokesmen, etc., it actually cuts off any voice that is critical of Hamas – it basically makes Hamas on Al Jazeera said Qais Omari, a Palestinian affairs analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a former adviser to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
Al Jazeera denied accusations that it was a Hamas mouthpiece and said in a statement that the Israeli ban was a “criminal act” that violated the “fundamental right to access information.”
The shutdown of Al Jazeera’s operations has fueled accusations that Israel is trying to cover up the disaster in Gaza, which Israel denies.
“Israel is trying to control the narrative and even trying to make the atrocities in Gaza invisible to Israeli audiences,” said Jamil Dakwar, a law professor at New York University and a founding attorney at Adalah, an Arab legal center that represents minorities in Israel. right.
Sunday’s decision was made condemn From Rights Advocates. “We believe Al Jazeera should be able to operate in Israel just as they do in other countries,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said on Monday.
Analysts who follow Al Jazeera’s coverage say the network distinguishes itself from other Arabic-language channels in that it broadcasts press conferences by Israeli officials and invites Israeli analysts and officials to appear on the show.
But media outlet Mahmoud Khalil said that overall, Al Jazeera tends to accept the views of many Arabs, airing analysis that “glorifies acts of resistance” against what it describes as “aggression by occupying settler forces”, i.e. Israel. Research Professor at Cairo University.
He added that Al Jazeera’s military analysts often exaggerate Palestinian battlefield victories and downplay Israeli gains.
The network also ignored the worst attack on Israel on Oct. 7, leading some Arabs to continue to deny that Palestinian attackers had committed some of the bloodiest acts in Israel, said Mr. Omari of the Washington Institute. .
Early in the war, Al Jazeera posted on social media video Message released by Hamas aimed at showing attackers take care of children They attacked an Israeli kibbutz on October 7 but ignored the context: they killed the mother of her children. It attracted 1.4 million views on Facebook.
Asked about the video, Moawad said the network also showed live footage of an Israeli military spokesman saying Hamas attackers had taken women and children from the kibbutz.
“We are airing footage from both sides without editing to ensure our viewers are informed of the latest developments and that both sides are heard,” he said in a statement.
Al Jazeera has been banned in other countries, including Arab states, which accuse the network of biased reporting and support for Islamist political movements, some of them violent, that have been suppressed by those countries.
Cairo University’s Mr. Khalil said Al Jazeera’s amplification of Hamas’s voice was irksome to many Arabs wary of Islamist groups.
Ms Assad of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate said imbalanced coverage or omissions should not justify a ban, and critics of the decision said it put Israel in the same category as other authoritarian governments that have cracked down on unfriendly news media . .
“No one has the right to shut down Israeli television, silence CNN or silence anyone,” she said.
Report contributors: Adam Rasgon and Jonathan Rice from Jerusalem, Emad Maykay from Cairo, and Iyad Abukhwila From Istanbul.
