Colleague Wael Al-Dahdouh during the burial of his journalist son, who was targeted by the occupation forces, with the late colleague Mustafa Thuraya (Al-Jazeera)

In an article on the Seventh Eye website, Israeli writer Sharol Cohen describes the decision to close Al Jazeera’s office in Israel as “a lesson in populism,” referring to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Although this measure is considered a propaganda event, it sets a dangerous precedent, as he put it.

Based on historical precedents, it is not difficult to understand the Israeli decision to close the Al Jazeera office. There were indications of this decision, which coincided with the intensity of the political and military confusion in Tel Aviv. Israel has always tried to obscure the facts and invent its own narrative, which it is certain that the entire world rejects with the persistence of a media that conveys the field and political reality and nothing more.

Israeli narratives no longer hold up well to the realities of media development, the effects of the expansion of free, professional and objective media, and the severity of the unprecedented crimes it commits in its war on Gaza. Al Jazeera Network met the necessities of free and professional media and the strength of its professional reporting of facts on the ground, in contrast to those narratives that Israel wants to prevail.

The Israeli Parliament (the Knesset) issued what was known as the “Al Jazeera Law,” which gives the government temporary powers to prevent foreign news networks from operating in Israel, if the security services deem them harmful to national security. The law was passed by a majority of 71 votes to 10 in the second and third readings during a session. For the Knesset, what was meant by implication and insistence was Al Jazeera Channel, without ambiguity in the naming.

For a long period, and in the absence of an effective and influential free media, Israel benefited from the dominance of its misleading narratives by the strength of the dominance of a large part of the subservient Western media, and by the strength of its influence on international organizations and institutions, on Western public opinion, and necessarily on international resolutions. The severity of Israeli crimes - as embodied in Gaza - continued to be tempted by global silence, media misinformation, and the weakness of international law and its enforcement tools.

With the precedents of history itself, Israel, its theorists, and its politicians sought to silence all of Palestinian history - in the words of the late thinker Roger Garaudy - and it was not difficult for it to silence the media by banning, closing, liquidating, and killing as well, and by issuing special laws that contradict the narrative of democracy and freedom of media and expression that it adopts.

An Israeli soldier threatens journalists while working in a settlement in the West Bank (social networking sites)

Hostility to the media

In theory, Israel adopts the principles of democracy, freedom of expression, and free and pluralistic media, but in October 2023 it issued a law stipulating the closure of every media outlet that threatens the so-called security of Israel, and proceeded to issue a special law for Al Jazeera, in a dangerous precedent at the world level, according to the expression of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate. Which considered that it "comes in the context of a systematic official policy targeting the Palestinian, Arab and international media, and coincides with the systematic targeting of killing journalists and destroying their media institutions."

Reporters Without Borders, for its part, called for "the repeal of the Israeli law that allows the government to close foreign media outlets in Israel, targeting Al Jazeera."

The world understood the nature of Israeli law in the context of the many parallel battles that it and its Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, are waging on the sidelines of its war on Gaza, starting with the leveling of accusations against the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, and presidents, leaders, thinkers, and countries who rejected its narratives, then most international humanitarian organizations, to Al-Jazeera, and Gaza journalists. And the world. The target was anyone who monitors and publishes the opposite of these narratives from the field, and the Al Jazeera law came in this context.

In addition, Israeli writer and political researcher Reeve Oppenheimer said on the X platform (formerly Twitter): “We must question the timing of the Al Jazeera Law. The law is very bad. It is not necessary to grant powers to close the media in the hands of politicians.” The writer adds on the Israeli “Seventh Eye” website:

“For the first time, a government minister can directly order a restriction on the broadcasting of television channels... Even before the “Al Jazeera Law” was passed, we were all living in a country where anti-democratic tools were being used en masse.”

By Israeli writer Reev Oppenheimer

For his part, the head of the Reporters Without Borders office in the Middle East, Jonathan Dagher, considered that “Israel is using all possible means in an attempt to silence Al Jazeera, due to its coverage of the reality of the fate of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza,” and called on Israel to “end its aggressive harassment of Al Jazeera.”

Journalists working in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank are surrounded by great risks as a result of Israeli (French) restrictions and attacks.

Against customs and laws

The Israeli measures, most recently the “Al Jazeera Law”, blatantly violate international conventions that guarantee freedom of journalistic work and the right to information, including the text of Article 79 of the Additional Protocol annexed to the 1949 Geneva Convention on International Humanitarian Law, which stipulates that journalists who perform their duties in armed conflicts must be respected and protected from all forms of violence. Intentional forms of attack.

International humanitarian law grants journalists the same protection as civilians, as long as they do not participate in hostilities, and the same applies to situations of unarmed conflict under customary international law.

Article 34 of Chapter 10 of the International Committee of the Red Cross Study on Customary Rules of International Humanitarian Law of 2005 affirms that “civilian journalists working on professional assignments in areas of armed conflict must be respected and protected as long as they do not take direct efforts in hostilities.”

UN Security Council Resolution No. 1738 of 2006 stipulated the condemnation of deliberate attacks against journalists, media employees and individuals associated with them during armed conflicts, as well as considering media facilities and equipment as civilian objects that may not be the target of any attacks or reprisals.

The 2002 Johannesburg Declaration on National Security and Freedom of Access to Information stressed the right to access information, as a necessary right to ensure the enjoyment of the right to freedom of opinion and expression. This is also confirmed by major international conventions such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenants on Civil, Economic and Social Rights.

But Israel continually violates all international norms and conventions regarding freedom of the media and the necessity of protecting journalists and respecting their work, and this applies to the media and its institutions.

The Israeli occupation constantly targets Palestinian and foreign journalists who do not agree with its narratives (Al Jazeera)

Targeting the truth or Al Jazeera?

The recent Israeli measures did not come in isolation from historical precedents targeting journalistic work and those responsible for it. According to the Washington-based Freedom Forum Foundation, the number of journalists killed by Israeli forces during its ongoing aggression against Gaza exceeds the number of journalists killed in World War II (1939-1945), the Vietnam War (1955-1975), and the Korean War (1950-1953), in addition. To it is the Ukrainian war that has been ongoing since February 24, 2022, and all the other wars that broke out over the past decades.

For comparison, Israel had killed - as of mid-February - 140 journalists in Gaza alone - according to the government media office in Gaza - while 69 journalists were killed during World War II, 63 journalists in the Vietnam War, 17 journalists in the Korean War, and 17 during the Russian-Ukrainian war. In an investigation published on February 11, 2024, the French website Media Part confirmed that

“Never have so many journalists been killed in such a short time, not in the two world wars, not during the wars in Vietnam, Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan, not even in Ukraine.”

Via the French Media Part website

Reporters Without Borders had filed a complaint regarding war crimes committed against Palestinian journalists in Gaza. It considered that the scale, seriousness, and repeated nature of the crimes targeting journalists fall within the scope of war crimes, and require an investigation by the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, especially since Israel has already prevented journalists from entering Gaza.

In the midst of its “war on journalists” - as described by Reporters Without Borders - Israel is targeting Al Jazeera as the most professional, influential, widespread and followed channel, and its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu justified this targeting by saying that it “exposed Israel to danger” and that it “actually participated in the October 7 attack.” October, and incited against our soldiers,” he said.

Al Jazeera described this measure in a statement as being “part of a series of systematic Israeli violations to silence Al Jazeera,” and considered the accusations a “dangerous and ridiculous lie.”

Although journalists enjoy immunity under international laws in their endeavor to convey the facts of politics and the field - including war crimes and genocidal attacks in Gaza to the world - as described by countries and recognized international organizations - Israel continues to describe journalists and their institutions as terrorists, and thus they become a target for soldiers. Israeli army.

Thus, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz tweeted, saying, “If journalists had prior knowledge of the October 7 massacres, they are no different from terrorists, and should be treated as such,” justifying the killing of Al Jazeera journalists Hamza al-Dahdouh and Mustafa Soraya on January 7. January 2024, accusing them of being “terrorist agents.” Thus, every camera, every sound, every report, and every piece of information sought by the journalist becomes terrorist tools and acts from the Israeli perspective.

From this Israeli perspective - and before the war on Gaza - the late Al Jazeera correspondent Sherine Abu Aqla was targeted on May 11, 2022, by bullets from the occupation forces while she was covering their storming of the Jenin camp. The United Nations body acknowledged that the Israeli forces used “unjustified lethal force.” In targeting the late woman, international human rights organizations described the killing of the late Sherine Abu Aqla as a “planned assassination.”

Al Jazeera channel took the largest part of the Israeli targeting, as it was the most effective and capable of investigating the truth, but Israel was also pursuing everyone who reported that truth. On November 21, 2023, Al-Mayadeen channel’s correspondent and her cameraman were killed by an Israeli bombing in southern Lebanon, and on October 13 Last October, Reuters TV cameraman Issam Abdullah was killed, and 5 journalists were injured, including Al Jazeera cameraman Issam Mawasi, in direct Israeli targeting.

In its recent wars on Gaza, Israel destroyed, by direct targeting, all the offices and headquarters of international media institutions in the Gaza Towers. The Freedoms Committee of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate documented hundreds of attacks against journalists in the West Bank, with beatings, dragging, and targeting with live and rubber bullets. Israel is still arresting 44 Palestinian journalists, including 29. Journalists imprisoned before October 7, 2023.

These facts highlight that Israel considers the “foreign” media that contradicts its narratives - especially the Palestinian and Arab media - an enemy. Despite the apparent media pluralism in Israel, the media remains under the supervision and control of the political and security elite that dominate the official institutions and the existential space of Israeli society, and the hostile media is classified accordingly - including Al Jazeera - according to its whims and perceptions, the severity of its internal problems and its military confusion.

In this context, the Arab representative in the Israeli parliament, Sami Abu Shehadeh, asks, “Why is Israel afraid of Al Jazeera? Because this is the reaction of the criminal who is afraid that the truth will be revealed. Fear of the truth is the real problem in Israel, and this (decision) will not change the facts.” “The solution is not to silence Al Jazeera, the solution is to stop the war and its crimes.”

Source: Al Jazeera