The Israeli government is shutting down Arab broadcaster Al Jazeera in Israel.
The cabinet voted on 5 May to ban Al Jazeera broadcasts and website, close their offices, confiscate broadcast equipment, and stop Al Jazeera reporting in Israel.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a post on X: “The government headed by me unanimously decided: the incitement channel Al Jazeera will be closed in Israel.”
In a statement he said: “Al Jazeera reporters harmed Israel’s security and incited against soldiers. It’s time to remove the Hamas mouthpiece from our country.”
Al Jazeera is one of few international media outlets to remain and report in Gaza throughout the war.
It is based in Qatar, founded by the former Qatari information minister, and part funded by the Qatari government which has played a major part in negotiations to reach a ceasefire in the Gaza war and hosts a number of key Hamas political leaders.
Al Jazeera’s English channel usually reports like other major western broadcast networks and is significantly staffed and led by journalists who have worked in major journalistic operations such as BBC, CNN, CBC and AP among others.
However its Arabic channel has often published verbatim video statements from Hamas and other militant groups in the region.
The Netanyahu government’s move came as Netanyahu again rejected the latest ceasefire proposals from Hamas and faced continuing protests inside Israel demanding a return of hostages taken in the Hamas attack on October 7.
There are also reports in Israeli media of concern from Mossad, the intelligence service, about the timing of the ban on Al Jazeera.
Israel has been widely lauded for decades in the west as a beacon of freedom and democracy and the extraordinary ban on Al Jazeera is believed to be the first time Israel has ever shuttered a foreign news outlet.
Its government has taken action against individual reporters in the past and been accused multiple times of targeting and killing individual journalists particularly in relation to Palestinian conflicts.
It has a critical and outspoken local media scene and even throughout the 7-month Gaza war public debate has continued about both the war and the unpopular right wing Netanyahu government.
The Netanyahu government move on Al Jazeera has been a threat since the beginning of the Gaza war when it passed emergency executive measures that would have enabled it to shut down Al Jazeera temporarily – but it refrained.
On April 2 Israel’s Knesset (parliament) passed a law aimed at giving the cabinet firmer legal footing to move against Al Jazeera and the cabinet says it had classified opinions from Shin Bet military intelligence, the Israeli Defence Force (IDF), and intelligence agency Mossad that support limiting Al Jazeera’s broadcasts in Israel.
That law is facing a constitutional legal challenge in the Israeli High Court of Justice from the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) which says it unnecessarily limits free speech. The ACRI said that while there was no arguing the fact that Al Jazeera ran a “pro-Palestinian” narrative, this was not a sufficient reason to shut down the network. In addition, the network provides content from Arab states and includes Israeli Arab perspectives that have been quoted numerously on mainstream Israeli media, indicating that its content was viewed as important, ACRI added. The NGO acknowledged that Al-Jazeera had included content that incited against Israel. Still, the severity of this incitement was no worse than incitement against Palestinians on mainstream Israeli websites, ACRI argued.
ACRI filed a request on 2 May for a temporary order barring the government from deciding to shut down Al Jazeera but the court denied the request, saying it would consider a temporary order after receiving the state’s preliminary position.
Al Jazeera broadcasts on multiple channels and media in multiple languages over 150 countries and territories, has 70 bureaus around the world, and claims a potential global reach in more than 430 million homes.
Since its founding in 1996 it has been recurrently criticised, closed or blocked – by the United States during its invasion of Iraq in 2003, Egypt during the Arab Spring protests in 2013, and by the governments of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain during a boycott of Doha in a years long political dispute that ended in 2021.
Israeli cabinet votes to shut down Al Jazeera – AP
Israel shuts down Al Jazeera broadcasts – The Guardian
Israel blocks Al Jazeera – BBC
Israel shuts down Al Jazeera – New York Times
Questions about shut down legality – Jerusalem Post
Mossad, IDF, Shin Bet issue first group message on Gaza war – Jerusalem Post
Israeli protesters demand ceasefire to release hostages
Why countries muzzle Al Jazeera – AP (2017)
Al Jazeera in the Arab world
Most popular news publishers on YouTube – UK Press Gazette
Al Jazeera website
Al Jazeera – Wikipedia
Al Jazeera coverage of Iran missile attack April 13
Gaza journalists win world press freedom prize 2024
