When Israel on Sunday ordered Al Jazeera to close its operations there, the network had one reporter covering a government meeting in West Jerusalem, another in an East Jerusalem hotel room, a third in northern Israel to cover clashes in the border with Lebanon and a quarter in Tel Aviv.
But the cameras stopped rolling when Walid al-Omari, head of the network’s office in Ramallah, in the West Bank, ordered everyone to go home. Israeli authorities invaded a room used by Al Jazeera at the Ambassador Hotel in East Jerusalem and confiscated broadcast equipment. Israeli television and Internet providers cut their channels and blocked their websites, although people could still find them online.
Al Jazeera, the influential Arab news network, says it will continue reporting and broadcasting from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. But his departure from Israel marks a new low in his long and tense history with a country that much of Al Jazeera’s audience in the Arab world and beyond views as an aggressor and an occupier.
The closure order, which lasts 45 days and can be renewed, was a pause that had been a long time in the making. Al-Omari said that shortly after the war between Israel and Hamas began in October, the network stopped using an office in West Jerusalem, saying far-right Israelis had used intimidation tactics against staff there.
The network has played a major role in amplifying stories about the killing and suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, increasing global outrage at Israel’s conduct. Many defenders of Al Jazeera argue that its work is so strong that Israel wants to intimidate and censor it.
But its focus on bloodshed in Gaza has also generated controversy, with some Arab analysts saying it encourages what it describes as legitimate armed resistance to Israel, and features comments from Hamas officials and fighters with little critical response. The network is partially funded and controlled by the Qatari government, allowing Hamas political leaders to live and operate in their country.
That makes it a compelling target for critics inside and outside Israel, who say it, at best, presents a one-sided view of the war. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Al Jazeera of inciting violence against Israel and harming Israel’s security.
“We knew it was a matter of time,” al-Omari said of the closure in an interview Tuesday. Israel’s government, he said, had long waged what it called “a war against Al Jazeera.”
Emotionally charged reports
Since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7 and the devastating Israeli military campaign in Gaza that followed, Al Jazeera has relied on its network of journalists in the territory – the strongest of any news outlet – to produce a steady stream heartbreaking news. and emotionally charged reports.
His broadcasts about the growing hunger crisis in Gaza fill the screens of many Arab homes. Their videos of dying parents hugging their dead children and bodies being pulled from the rubble flood social media.
With Israel and Egypt preventing other foreign news outlets from gaining access to Gaza, no outlet with Al Jazeera’s global audience can match the breadth of its coverage there.
Al Jazeera has seven correspondents stretching from northern to southern Gaza, according to its editor-in-chief, Mohamed Moawad, along with a large team of cameramen, producers and others. He said in an interview that Israel was “trying to delegitimize our coverage because we are the only organization that covers it from the inside.”
“They want to hide what is happening in Gaza,” he added.
Shuruq Asad, spokesman for the Palestinian Journalists’ Union, said that without Al Jazeera journalists in Gaza, “we could not have known anything, and they have paid for this with their lives.”
“Unfortunately, our badges, vests and helmets in Gaza did not provide us with any protection,” Hisham Zaqout, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Gaza, wrote in a WhatsApp message.
Israeli authorities did not specify their reasons for banning Al Jazeera except to say that it harmed Israel’s security. But given that the network can continue broadcasting from Gaza and that its mainly Arab audience can still watch the channel using virtual private networks or YouTube, many Israeli commentators called the move symbolic at best.
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel, which appealed the order to Israel’s High Court, said its limited practical effect “suggests that it was made to silence critical voices and mark the Arab media and its viewers as a fifth column.” .
Condemnation of human rights activists
Experts who follow the network say its combination of scathing images from Gaza and on-air comments that echo many of Hamas’s claims increase support for the group’s actions, not just sympathy for the Palestinians. This especially applies to their Arabic channel; It also has channels in English and other languages.
“The fact that it simply gives the main platform to Hamas, to Hamas officials, to Hamas spokespersons, etc., the fact that it cuts off any voice that is critical of Hamas, has basically made it so that on Al Jazeera, Hamas really be the spokesperson for the Palestinian people,” said Ghaith al-Omari, an analyst on Palestinian affairs at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a former adviser to Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority.
Al Jazeera rejects accusations that it is a mouthpiece for Hamas, saying in a statement that Israel’s ban is a “criminal act” that violates “the basic right of access to information.”
The closure of Al Jazeera’s operations has added fuel to accusations, denied by Israel, that Israel is trying to cover up the devastation in Gaza.
“Israel is trying to control the narrative and is trying to deprive even the Israeli audience of seeing the atrocities in Gaza,” said Jamil Dakwar, a law professor at New York University and founding attorney at Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Rights. Minority rights in Israel.
Sunday’s decision drew condemnation from human rights advocates. A US State Department spokesman, Matthew Miller, said on Monday: “We believe Al Jazeera should be able to operate in Israel, as it operates in other countries.”
Analysts who follow Al Jazeera’s coverage say the network differentiates itself from other Arabic-language channels by airing press conferences by Israeli officials and inviting Israeli analysts and officials to appear on air.
But in general, Al Jazeera tends to embrace views held by many Arabs, disseminating analysis “that glorifies the act of resistance” against what it describes as “aggression by the occupying settler army,” i.e. Israel, he said. Mahmoud Khalil, a media journalist. Professor of studies at Cairo University.
He added that Al Jazeera military analysts often exaggerated Palestinian successes on the battlefield and downplayed Israeli advances.
Al-Omari of the Washington Institute said the network had also eluded the worst of the October 7 attacks on Israel, helping to give rise to persistent denials among some Arabs of some of the bloodiest acts the Palestinian attackers had committed. over there. .
At the beginning of the war, Al Jazeera published on social media a video broadcast by Hamas that purported to show its attackers caring for children in an Israeli kibbutz they had attacked on October 7, omitting the context: they had killed the children’s mother. children. It attracted 1.4 million views on Facebook.
When asked about the video, Moawad said the network had also broadcast live footage of an Israeli military spokesman saying that Hamas attackers had taken women and children from the kibbutz.
“We broadcast unedited footage from both sides to ensure our viewers are aware of the events and have heard both sides,” he said in a statement.
Al Jazeera has been banned in other countries, including Arab states that accused the network of biased reporting and support for Islamist political movements (some of them violent) that those countries have repressed.
For many Arabs who distrust Islamist groups, Al Jazeera’s amplification of Hamas voices is a turnoff, said Cairo University’s Khalil.
Ms. Asad of the Palestinian Journalists Union said imbalances or omissions in coverage should not be grounds for a ban, which critics of the decision say puts Israel in the same category as other authoritarian governments that They have cracked down on hostile media. .
“No one has the right to shut down Israeli television or silence CNN or silence anyone,” he said.
The report was contributed by Adam Rasgon and Johnatan Reiss from jerusalem, Emad Mekay from Cairo and Iyad Abuheweila from Istanbul.