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Israel is censoring and killing journalists bravely covering their atrocities in Gaza – LifeSite

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Help Christians who escaped Gaza: LifeFunder

(LifeSiteNews) — Israel’s media shutdown has gathered pace in recent days, with the forcible closure of one news outlet and the confiscation of the equipment of another.

The Qatari-based Al Jazeera has been effectively barred from reporting in Israel, with its broadcasts officially banned on May 5. At the behest of the Israeli communications minister Shlomo Karhi, equipment was seized on May 21 from the Associated Press, whose live feeds from Gaza are widely used throughout world media.

AP’s vice president called the move “an abusive use by the Israeli government of the country’s new foreign broadcaster law.”

Karhi reversed the decision to shut down AP’s live newsfeed following “concern” expressed by the White House. The ban on Al Jazeera stands after months of attacks by the IDF, which has left many journalists – and some of their family members – dead.

READ: Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem visits war-torn Gaza, calls for ‘end’ to ‘nightmare’ conflict

Minister of censorship

Telecoms minister Karhi has sought since last October to shut down the offices of Al Jazeera, the Qatari-owned network whose coverage has been described by him as a “propaganda mouthpiece” for Hamas. On April 2, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dubbed Al Jazeera a “terror channel.”

Karhi also attempted to sanction the Israeli newspaper Haaretz for its “defeatist and false propaganda” against the State of Israel during wartime. The proposal to legalize the suppression of Israel media was, said the Times of Israel, part of wider measures laid out by Karhi which were dropped following protests concerning press freedom.

Karhi had initially drafted new legislation which would permit the seizure of equipment from Israeli news outlets and the arrest of journalists.

The initial draft, which was denied by Karhi despite being published by The Marker, “would have given the communications minister the ability to order the detainment of anyone whose media output he believed was undermining military morale, harming national security or inciting rebellion,” said the Times of Israel on October 16.

Karhi responded to the publication of his threats to shut down media by threatening to shut down the media which had published his threats:

The State of Israel has been accused of potentially perpetrating genocide by the International Court of Justice, with arrest warrants for the same charge being considered for Israeli government leadership by the International Criminal Court.

On May 5, Karhi realized his ambition to silence Al Jazeera. The Times of Israel reported:

Police seized Al Jazeera’s broadcasting equipment from its Jerusalem offices on Sunday afternoon and the Qatari news channel was pulled off the air in Israel, immediately after the government approved a decision to temporarily shutter the outlet on the grounds that it has harmed national security.

The decision saw Israeli access to Al Jazeera’s websites blocked, alongside orders to prohibit its broadcasts on Israeli television. The move was opposed by Mossad and Shin Bet, the Israeli national security service. It was welcomed by the economy minister, Nir Barkat, who referred to the Holocaust as he described the Qatari network as “the biggest engine of antisemitism in the world.”

Yet the silencing of reporting goes beyond the closing of offices and the confiscation of cameras. Israel has killed hundreds of journalists with air strikes and sniper fire since October 7.

READ: Palestinian insider shares the grim truth of what’s happening to Christians in Gaza

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reported this week, “As of May 22, 2024, CPJ’s preliminary investigations showed at least 105 journalists and media workers” have been killed by the Israeli military, including Israeli, Palestinian, and foreign reporters since October 7.

On October 27, Reuters reported that the IDF – the Israel Army – “ told international news organisations Reuters and Agence France Presse that it cannot guarantee the safety of their journalists operating in the Gaza Strip…”

In a letter to the press agencies, the IDF blamed Hamas for being “in the vicinity of journalists and civilians.”

A separate report by the CPJ documented the obstruction, censorship, death threats, and assaults and shootings of journalists including those from Germany and the UK’s BBC and Sky News. In addition, some journalists’ relatives have been killed by the IDF.

Death by hasbara?

On December 15 Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief, Wael Al-Dahdouh, was hospitalized following a drone strike on a school in Khan Younis which killed his cameraman.

On December 19, Israeli journalist Edy Cohen posted an online poll asking whether Dahdouh should be killed:

Cohen was described by the Jerusalem Post in 2021 as a “one-man hasbara machine.” The word “hasbara” is used to mean “public diplomacy,” according to Israeli sources. It is more commonly known as the worldwide propaganda efforts of the Israeli regime, which include infiltration, deception, and the silencing of critics of Israel – including the training of “secret agents” to “influence public opinion and policy makers abroad.”

The control of domestic media is also part of the hasbara strategy. This control extends to the intentional killing of journalists and their families.

On October 25, whilst reporting on Israeli missile strikes in Gaza, Wael Al-Dahdouh was informed that Israeli airstrikes had killed his wife, his 7-year-old daughter, his 15-year-old son, and his infant grandson.

He went back to work the next day.

As Max Blumenthal noted, “The targeted murder [of Dahdouh’s family] comes a day after Tony Blinken demanded Qatar suppress Al Jazeera’s coverage of Gaza.”

Reports confirmed that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken had announced the day before to “a group of American Jewish community leaders… that he asked the Qatari prime minister less than two weeks ago to tone down Al Jazeera’s rhetoric about the war in Gaza,” as Axios (and others) said.

That the journalist’s family was intentionally killed was admitted on Israeli television:

On January 7, Israel killed his eldest son, 27-year-old Hamza, who was also a journalist.

On the same day, two of Dahdouh’s nephews were killed when their car was bombed.

Israelis targeted

One Israeli journalist was forced into hiding by a “Kahanist” mob. The “ultra-orthodox” Israel Frey was called a “traitor” by an angry crowd, whose presence at his home saw him flee under police escort to an undisclosed location. His crime was to have dedicated a prayer “to the Gaza victims” of Israel’s assault, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

Torah Judaism, which represents Orthodox Jews who object to Zionism on religious grounds, reported that “anti-Zionist Jews are arrested by police” on October 13.

The moves against Al Jazeera and AP follow the introduction of new regulations introduced on October 20 by the Israeli government to “allow for the temporary shut down of news channels which ‘damage national security’.”

Speaking at the time, Anthony Bellanger, the head of the International Federation of Journalists said:

This is a clear attack on media pluralism and the public’s right to know. The whole world must be allowed to see what is happening in the ongoing conflict and we urge Israel to review its decision.

READ: How the ‘antisemitism industry’ became the biggest threat to freedom in the West

Bellanger stressed the move was about censoring media “critical” of the Israeli “narrative”:

We are deeply concerned at Israel’s attempt to censor media coverage of the ongoing Israel-Gaza conflict using national security as an excuse to restrict critical media that do not confirm its narrative of the ongoing war.

Following this, a new amendment to counter-terrorism law criminalized the viewing of pro-Palestinian social media by Israeli Arabs.

On November 8, the Israeli Parliament (Knesset) voted to make illegal the “consumption of terrorist materials,” carrying a maximum penalty of one year’s imprisonment. The amendment allows for the redefinition of what constitutes the material of “terrorist” groups by the minister of justice.

Progressive Jewish Israeli group the New Israel Fund condemned the new legislation as an example of an extremist agenda:

This new law is dangerous, driven by far right extremists intent on taking Israel backward. As our CEO, Daniel Sokatch, wrote recently, ‘the only secure future for Jews and Arabs in Israel is a shared future.’

A double standard

A piece in the New York Times on November 2 warned that Israel is “silencing internal critics,” saying Jewish and Palestinian academics had been targeted by an extremist Zionist faction led by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

This intense scrutiny and policing is in part the work of a task force established a few months ago to monitor so-called Palestinian incitement to terrorism on the internet, led by Itamar Ben-Gvir, an extreme right-winger and former supporter of the outlawed racist Kach movement, who is now Israel’s minister of national security.

The author, Michael Sfard, is a Jewish Israeli human rights lawyer. He says the laws show a stark double standard, ignoring calls from Israeli Jews who call for the destruction of Gaza. 

This, he says, includes members of the government:

The Israeli police and the task force are assigned to monitor extremist speech, and it seems that they have been primarily engaged in spying on Palestinian citizens of Israel. As far as I can tell, not a single Jewish Israeli who has issued calls to ‘erase Gaza’ or carry out a ‘second nakba,’ meaning ‘catastrophe,’ or other acts of terrorism against Palestinian civilians has been summoned by the police. In the weeks since the Oct. 7 attacks, Facebook and X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, have been filled with prominent public figures – politicians, retired generals, celebrities, media influencers and journalists – making such calls with impunity.

These calls from Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, National Security Minister Ben-Gvir, and Heritage Minister Bezalel Smotrich, along with others, have led to the move to issue arrest warrants for the Israeli leadership by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.

Israel’s battle for the narrative is deliberately restricting media coverage of its assault on Gaza and the resulting humanitarian crisis. This is not only about censorship and control of the airwaves. It includes the deliberate killing of anyone sufficiently courageous to bring the truth of Israel’s genocide to the world.

Help Christians who escaped Gaza: LifeFunder

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