The Israeli government decided on Sunday to close the office of the Qatari channel Al-Jazeera in Israel, quickly leading to the cutting of its television signal and the seizure of part of its equipment.
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Black screen for Al-Jazeera in Israel. The Israeli government decided on Sunday, May 5, to close the office of the Qatari channel, quickly leading to the cutting of its television signal and the seizure of part of its equipment.
Late Sunday afternoon, the television channels of Israeli operators on which Al-Jazeera was usually broadcast, in Arabic and English, displayed a black screen and a laconic message: “In accordance with the decision taken by the government, the broadcast of the Al-Jazeera channel was suspended.
The decision applies for a renewable period of 45 days, according to official documents.
Approved “unanimously” by the government, it notably involves “the closure of the channel’s offices in Israel, the seizure of its broadcasting equipment, the ban on transmission by its journalists, the withdrawal of the channel from satellite operators and cable, blocking of its websites, etc.,” said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office.
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“Al-Jazeera correspondents have undermined Israel’s security and incited violence against Israeli soldiers,” explained Benjamin Netanyahu. “The time has come to eject the Hamas megaphone from our country.”
Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi immediately signed the necessary orders, one ordering the seizure of the channel’s equipment, including “cameras, microphones, editing tables, computer servers, computers, transmission equipment and mobile phones “.
Shlomo Karhi accused the channel of “threatening the security” of Israel and assured that “there would be no freedom of expression for Hamas trumpets in Israel.”
“Provocative campaign” vs. “terrorist agents”
AFP journalists noted that the channel’s office in Jerusalem was closed and a video posted on social networks shows police entering a room in a hotel in East Jerusalem, used for its live broadcasts by the channel, and enter material.
This decision aims “to obscure the truth, Al-Jazeera being one of the main media to expose the truth about what this catastrophic war is causing to civilians (…) especially in the Gaza Strip”, declared to the AFP director of the channel’s bureau in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Walid al-Omari.
“This decision completes the provocative campaign to which Al-Jazeera has been the subject since the start of this war and well before on the part” of Israel, he added.
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For several years, Israeli authorities have publicly criticized Al-Jazeera’s coverage of news in Israel and the Palestinian Territories where the channel has correspondents. The Israeli army has repeatedly accused journalists from the Qatari channel of being “terrorist agents” affiliated with the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas and its ally Islamic Jihad.
The channel denies these accusations and accuses Israel of systematically targeting its employees in the Gaza Strip. At least two of its journalists have been killed there since the war began on October 7.
“Israel joins the dubious club of authoritarian governments”
Major development between the channel and Israel: the death of its American-Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh during an Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank, in May 2022. Al-Jazeera accuses Israel of having deliberately killed her.
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Another face of Al-Jazeera, its bureau chief in Gaza Waël al-Dahdouh has lost at least five members of his family, including his wife and three of their children, since the start of the war in Gaza. He was also injured in an Israeli strike in December that killed one of his colleagues.
The channel said on Sunday that the Israeli decision “violates human rights and basic access to information.” “Israel joins the dubious club of authoritarian governments which have banned this channel,” adds the International Press Association in Jerusalem, which warns against similar measures against other media.
At the beginning of April, the Israeli Parliament passed a law to prohibit the broadcast in Israel of foreign media that undermine state security – a text targeting the Qatari channel – which allows the Prime Minister to ban the broadcast of the media targeted and close its offices.
Benjamin Netanyahu has in the past accused Al-Jazeera of being “a propaganda organ of Hamas and of having actively participated” in the bloody attack carried out on October 7 by the Palestinian movement in southern Israel.
This attack resulted in the death of more than 1,170 people, according to an AFP report based on official Israeli data. The vast military operation carried out in retaliation by Israel in the Gaza Strip left 34,683 dead, mostly civilians, according to a latest report from the Hamas Ministry of Health.
With AFP