By Emmanuel Nduka
After ordering a shut down of Qatar’s Al Jazeera news network on Sunday, Israeli authorities on Monday moved to raid its offices within the country.
Israel’s extraordinary order, which includes confiscating broadcast equipment, preventing the broadcast of the channel’s reports and blocking its websites, is believed to be the first time Israel has ever shuttered a foreign news outlet operating in the country.
Al Jazeera went off Israel’s main cable and satellite providers in the hours after the order.
The news network has reported the Israeli-Hamas war nonstop since the militants’ initial cross-border attack Oct. 7 and has maintained 24-hour coverage in the Gaza Strip amid Israel’s deadly ground offensive that has killed and wounded members of its staff as well as their relatives.
In December, an Israeli strike killed an Al Jazeera cameraman as he reported on the war in southern Gaza. The channel’s bureau chief in Gaza, Wael Dahdouh, was wounded in the same attack. Dahdouh, a correspondent well-known to Palestinians during many wars, later evacuated Gaza but only after Israeli strikes killed his wife, three of his children and a grandson.
As of May 3, the Committee to protect journalists (CPJ) recorded the deaths of 97 journalists and media workers in the ongoing war. 92 were Palestinian, 2 Israeli, and 3 Lebanese.
While including on-the-ground reporting of the war’s casualties, its Arabic arm often publishes verbatim video statements from Hamas and other regional militant groups.
“Al Jazeera reporters harmed Israel’s security and incited against soldiers,” Netanyahu said in a statement. “It’s time to remove the Hamas mouthpiece from our country.”
Al Jazeera issued a statement vowing it will “pursue all available legal channels through international legal institutions in its quest to protect both its rights and journalists, as well as the public’s right to information.”
“Israel’s ongoing suppression of the free press, seen as an effort to conceal its actions in the Gaza Strip, stands in contravention of international and humanitarian law,” the network said. “Israel’s direct targeting and killing of journalists, arrests, intimidation and threats will not deter Al Jazeera.”
Meanwhile, the Foreign Press Association in Israel criticized the order.
“With this decision, Israel joins a dubious club of authoritarian governments to ban the station. his is a dark day for the media,” it said.
The New York-based Committee to Project Journalists similarly warned the move represented an “extremely alarming precedent for restricting international media outlets working in Israel.”
Israel has long had a rocky relationship with Al Jazeera, accusing it of bias. Relations took a major downturn nearly two years ago when Al Jazeera correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh was killed by Israeli fire during an Israeli military raid in the occupied West Bank.
Those relations further deteriorated following the outbreak of Israel’s military intervention in the aftermath of the Oct.7 attacks in Israel by Palestinian armed groups. Hamas’ military wing, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Popular Resistance Committees, and other Palestinian paramilitary organizations carried out a cross-border attack in southern Israel that killed 1,200 people and took 250 others hostage.
Since then, the Israeli military campaign in Gaza has killed over 34,000 people, according to local health officials there, who don’t break figures down into civilians and combatants.
