5/9/24, 10:03 AM Israel’s Shutdown of Al Jazeera Highlights Long-Running Tensions - The New York Times

Israel’s Shutdown of Al Jazeera Highlights

Long-Running Tensions
The network will keep covering the war in Gaza, but it will be harder for Israelis
to watch. Israel calls the network a security threat, while Al Jazeera says Israel
wants to conceal its brutality.

By Vivian Yee, Emma Bubola and Liam Stack

Vivian Yee reported from Cairo, Emma Bubola from London and Liam Stack from Jerusalem.
May 9, 2024 Updated 10:01 a.m. ET

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When Israel ordered Al Jazeera on Sunday to shut down operations there, the
network had a reporter covering a government meeting in West Jerusalem,
another in an East Jerusalem hotel room, a third in northern Israel to cover clashes
on the border with Lebanon and a fourth in Tel Aviv.

But the cameras stopped rolling when Walid al-Omari, the network’s bureau chief
in Ramallah, in the West Bank, ordered all of them to go home. Israeli authorities
descended on a room used by Al Jazeera in the Ambassador Hotel in East
Jerusalem, confiscating broadcast equipment. Israeli television and internet
providers cut off its channels and blocked its websites, though people were still
able to find it online.

Al Jazeera, the influential Arab news network, says it will continue reporting and
broadcasting from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. But its departure from Israel
marks a new low in its long-strained history with a country that much of Al

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Jazeera’s audience in the Arab world and beyond sees as an aggressor and an
occupier.

The shutdown order, which lasts 45 days and can be renewed, was a break long in
the making. Mr. al-Omari said that soon after the Israel-Hamas war began in
October, the network stopped using an office in West Jerusalem, saying that far-
right Israelis had used intimidation tactics against the staff there.

The network has played a major role in amplifying stories of the killing and
suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, heightening worldwide 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 cheerleads for what it portrays as legitimate armed resistance to
Israel, and presents commentary from Hamas officials and fighters with little
critical pushback. The network is backed by the government of Qatar, which allows
Hamas political leaders to live and operate in its country.

That makes it a compelling target for critics in Israel and beyond who say it is, at
best, presenting 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 question of time,” Mr. al-Omari said of the shutdown in an
interview on Tuesday. Israel’s government, he said, had long pursued what he
called “a war against Al Jazeera.”

Emotionally charged reporting

Since the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel and the devastating Israeli military
campaign in Gaza that followed, Al Jazeera has relied on its network of journalists
in the territory — the most robust of any news outlet — to produce a steady stream
of harrowing and emotionally charged reporting.

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The main headquarters of Al Jazeera in Doha, Qatar. Karim Jaafar/Agence France-Presse —

Getty Images

Its broadcasts about Gaza’s spiraling hunger crisis fill the screens in many Arab
households. Its videos of agonized parents clutching their dead children and bodies
being pulled from the rubble flood social media.

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With other foreign news media blocked by Israel and Egypt 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 north to southern Gaza,

according to its managing editor, Mohamed Moawad, along with a large team of
camera people, producers and others. He said in an interview that Israel was
“trying to delegitimize our coverage because we are the only organization covering
it from inside.”

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“They want to conceal what’s happening in Gaza,” he added.

Shuruq Asad, spokeswoman for the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate, said that
without Al Jazeera’s journalists in Gaza, “we couldn’t have known anything, and
they have paid for this with their lives.”

She cited the two Al Jazeera journalists killed there, among at least 92 Palestinian
journalists killed since the war began.

The network office of the late Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in Ramallah on
Sunday. She was fatally shot in the West Bank in 2022. Nasser Nasser/Associated Press

“Unfortunately our badges, vests and helmets in Gaza did not provide any
protection for us,” Hisham Zaqout, an Al Jazeera correspondent in Gaza, wrote in a
WhatsApp message.

Israeli authorities did not specify their reasoning for barring 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 view the

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channel using virtual private networks or YouTube, many Israeli commentators

called the move symbolic at most.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel, which appealed the order with Israel’s
High Court, said its limited practical effect “suggests that it was made to shut down
critical voices and to mark Arab media and its viewers as a fifth column.”

Condemnation by rights activists

Experts who track the network say its mix of searing footage from Gaza and on-air
commentary echoing many of Hamas’s claims boosts support for the group’s
actions, not just sympathy for Palestinians. That applies especially to its Arabic-
language channel; it also has channels in English and other languages.

“The fact that it just gives the primary platform to Hamas, Hamas officials, Hamas
spokesmen, et cetera, the fact that it cuts off any voices that are critical of Hamas
— it has basically made it such that on Al Jazeera, Hamas is really the spokesman
for the Palestinian people,” said Ghaith al-Omari, a Palestinian affairs analyst at
the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a former adviser to Mahmoud
Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president.

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 to
access of information.”

The closure of Al Jazeera’s operations has added fuel to allegations, denied by

Israel, that Israel is attempting to hide the devastation in Gaza.

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Palestinians carrying aid in early April amid widespread hunger because of the war.
Mahmoud Issa/Reuters

“Israel is trying to control the narrative, and it is trying to deprive even the Israeli
audience from seeing the atrocities in Gaza,” said Jamil Dakwar, a law professor at
New York University and a founding attorney of Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab
Minority Rights in Israel.

Sunday’s decision drew condemnation from rights advocates. A spokesman for the
U.S. State Department, Matthew Miller, said on Monday, “We think Al Jazeera
ought to be able to operate in Israel, as they operate in other countries.”

Analysts who follow Al Jazeera’s coverage say the network differentiates itself
from other Arabic-language channels by broadcasting Israeli officials’ news
conferences and inviting Israeli analysts and officials to appear on air.

But in general, Al Jazeera tends to embrace views held by many Arabs,

broadcasting analysis “that glorifies the act of resistance” against what it portrays
as “aggression by the occupation settler army,” that is, Israel, said Mahmoud
Khalil, a media studies professor at Cairo University.

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He added that Al Jazeera’s military analysts often exaggerated Palestinian

battlefield successes and downplayed Israeli gains.

Mr. al-Omari, of the Washington Institute, said the network had also elided the
worst of the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, helping to give rise to persistent denials
among some Arabs of some of the bloodiest acts that Palestinian attackers had
committed there.

The aftermath of overnight Israeli strikes on Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on
Monday. Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Early in the war, Al Jazeera posted to social media a video released by Hamas that
purported to show its assailants taking care of children at an Israeli kibbutz they
had attacked on Oct. 7, leaving out the context: They had killed the children’s
mother. It attracted 1.4 million views on Facebook.

Asked about the video, Mr. Moawad said that the network had also aired live
footage of an Israeli military spokesman saying that Hamas attackers had taken
women and children from the kibbutz.

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“We air and broadcast footage from both sides without editing to ensure our
viewers are up-to-date with the developments and have heard both sides,” he said
in a statement.

Al Jazeera has been banned in other countries, including Arab states who accused
the network of biased reporting and support for Islamist political movements —
some of them violent — that those countries have suppressed.

For many Arabs wary of Islamist groups, Al Jazeera’s amplification of Hamas

voices is a turnoff, said Mr. Khalil, of Cairo University.

Ms. Asad, of the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate, said that imbalances or

omissions in coverage should not be grounds for a ban, which critics of the decision
said put Israel in the same category as other authoritarian governments that have
cracked down on unfriendly news media.

“No one has the right to close Israeli television or to silence CNN or to silence
anybody,” she said.

Reporting was contributed by Adam Rasgon and Johnatan Reiss from Jerusalem, Emad Mekay from Cairo,
and Iyad Abuheweila from Istanbul.

Vivian Yee is a Times reporter covering North Africa and the broader Middle East. She is based in Cairo. More
about Vivian Yee

Emma Bubola is a Times reporter based in London, covering news across Europe and around the world. More
about Emma Bubola

Liam Stack is a Times reporter covering the Israel-Hamas war from Jerusalem. More about Liam Stack

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