After Al Jazeera, Will Israel Target Its Own Media?

Israel is framing its decision to close down the Jerusalem bureau of Al Jazeera as a matter of security—suggesting that the network’s coverage of the war in Gaza includes regular incitement against the Jewish population that could lead to attacks on Israelis. But rights activists and media watchdogs are warning that the move could be part of a larger crackdown on press freedoms in the country—potentially targeting Israeli journalists and outlets as well.

One Israeli official, speaking two days after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet voted unanimously to shutter the station that provides the most intensive coverage of the devastating Israeli military campaign against Hamas in Gaza, said the decision was made on the recommendation of security officials and deliberations in a cabinet subgroup dealing with political and security affairs.

The official told Foreign Policy that Al Jazeera was “a favorite platform for Hamas, especially since the outbreak of the war, to incite public opinion against Israel and for carrying out attacks against its citizens.”

“Al Jazeera is not a media organization in the accepted sense of the word. It has a very extremist agenda in all its broadcasts,” the official said, describing it as an instrument of the Qatari government, which partially funds the network.

The network denies the allegations and is challenging the decision in an Israeli court, along with the Association for Civil Rights in Israel. “Sanctioning one of the biggest media channels in the world is a huge thing. It’s something done by dictatorships. Democracies don’t shut down media channels,” said Hagar Shechter, an attorney for the rights group.

Al Jazeera has said the closure is a “criminal act that violates human rights and the basic right to access information.” It charges that Israel is targeting and killing journalists as part of an effort to conceal its actions. The closure affects both English and Arabic broadcasts of Al Jazeera.

At least 92 Palestinian journalists have been killed during the war, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. That numbers includes two Al Jazeera staffers, according to the news organization’s Ramallah bureau. The network also alleges that Israel two years ago deliberately killed its Palestine correspondent, Shireen Abu Akleh. Israel denies targeting journalists. Its own probe determined her killing was an accident, most likely as a result of Israeli fire.

The closure comes amid other steps by the Netanyahu government that have raised concerns over freedom of expression in Israel, including the far-right coalition’s pushing of an amendment to the 2016 counterterrorism law that would lower the bar for the statements that could be construed as punishable incitement.

According to Haifa-based rights group Adalah, more than 150 Palestinian citizens of Israel and East Jerusalem residents, many of them students, have been indicted for incitement since the war began. Prominent human rights lawyer Michael Sfard said the social media posts that prompted action from law enforcement authorities ranged from “benign statements of support” for residents of Gaza to supporting or contextualizing Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack against Israel.

In one case, Hebrew University academic Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian was arrested at her home last month after the airing of a podcast episode in which she called Israel’s operations in Gaza a genocide and urged the elimination of Zionism. After she spent a night in jail under what her lawyers said were harrowing conditions, judges in two hearings found there were no grounds for the arrest and released her. Police said the case remains open.

Al Jazeera can still be accessed in Israel via YouTube and private satellite and will keep up its reporting on Gaza. Staffers at Israel’s leading media watchdog, The Seventh Eye, say that the ban appears not to be motivated by security and that its real purpose seems to be to serve the political interests of Netanyahu and his allies in the most right-wing coalition in Israeli history.

The step is seen by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel as the quiet continuation of the judicial overhaul that Netanyahu’s government had tried to implement before the war in Gaza—prompting mass protests. Government critics had described the overhaul as a thinly veiled attempt to weaken political oversight and make Israel less democratic.

Oren Persico, a staffer at The Seventh Eye, said the government is using the new law as a “signal of intent” to act against not just foreign networks but Israeli journalists and outlets as well. “This is the first step in something that could become a snowball,” he said. He noted that during the drafting of the law some legislators from Netanyahu’s Likud party and far-right allies called for the bill to be broadened to include Israeli outlets deemed harmful to state security.

The Kan public broadcaster, a kind of Israeli version of the BBC, is frequently criticized by members of Netanyahu’s government and already facing pressure. Avraham Hasson, the spokesperson for the communications minister, said the government wants to make sure the public network “serves the entire public and gives expression to all views in the nation and to the range of views.” He stressed that this is unrelated to Al Jazeera’s closure.

Eliyahu Revivo, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, took issue with Al Jazeera for “presenting one narrative”—referring to Jerusalem as occupied and to terrorists as martyrs—and for reporting live from Gaza “in a way that can harm army actions.”

“They cover things in a false and distorted way, and this increases the international pressure on us. They harm Israel’s standing,” he said.

But Yaakov Amidror, a retired major general who headed Israel’s National Security Council, said that in security terms “there was no need to close Al Jazeera. I think the world without Al Jazeera would be a better place, but it’s not in our power to stop its broadcasts. This step adds nothing.”

Al Jazeera said in a statement Sunday that Israeli allegations were baseless and that it adheres to professional standards. It has repeatedly rejected any allegations of bias and ties to Hamas.

Asked about Israeli accusations made to Foreign Policy that staffers are linked to terrorism, West Bank bureau chief Walid al-Omari responded: “I am leaving the lies to the liars and the incitement to the instigators.”

Al Jazeera’s coverage has been drawing Israeli ire for years but especially since the start of the war in Gaza. The station, by its own count, has 22 employees in Gaza—an area Israel has kept closed to independent foreign media coverage since Oct. 7.

In a sample of its coverage on a recent day, the network prominently aired an unedited video furnished by the press office of Hamas’s military wing. It showed a fighter winding wires to launch missiles, and then missiles sweeping through the sky. A similar video, this one with music, came from Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s media office. And it highlighted that the Palestinian resistance was still able to strike at Israel.

The network routinely refers to the Israel-Hamas war as an Israeli genocide, accuses Israel of deliberately targeting civilians, and airs graphic images in the aftermath of Israeli attacks. Israel accuses Hamas of using civilians as human shields, but the country has come under increasing criticism—including from allies—for the high death toll among civilians in Gaza.

Matti Steinberg, an independent researcher of Palestinian politics and a former senior advisor to Israel’s Shin Bet security service, said closing Al Jazeera was unjustified. “In my view, it’s to hide what’s going on in Gaza from people in Israel.”

“They have their own perspective, but when it comes to factual precision they are more accurate than the Israeli media,” he said.

Correction, May 13, 2024: A previous version of this story affiliated Matti Steinberg with the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies. He is an independent researcher.