Wars, conflicts, domestic dust-ups, whatever you want to call them… they’re sensitive situations, easily made worse by even the most mild fluctuations in the political climate or the public temperament.
And while I’m completely aware there’s no enshrined rights protecting journalism on par with the First Amendment in Israel, this latest turn of events does the country’s government no favors… especially when it’s already on the losing end of a lot of battles in the court of public opinion.
Israeli authorities raided a Jerusalem hotel room used by Al Jazeera as its office after the government decided to shut down the Qatari-owned TV station’s local operations on Sunday, an Israeli official and an Al Jazeera source told Reuters.
Video circulated online showed plainclothes officers dismantling camera equipment in a hotel room, which the Al Jazeera source said was in East Jerusalem.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet shut down the network for as long as the war in Gaza continues, saying it threatened national security.
This is the sort of thing that happens almost everywhere when the domestic situation starts to get a bit war-ry. Having blacked its own eye several times — not the least of which was the apparent “targeted” killing of international aid workers providing food for Palestinians on the other side of Israel’s siege tactics — the Israeli government apparently won’t be allowing this particular non-Israeli news agency from criticizing it while enjoying the relative safety of a Jerusalem hotel room.
As usual, the excuse used for ejecting foreign journalists is a favorite of any country whose government wants to oust critics, dissidents, or unfriendly journalists: “national security.”
Certainly Al Jazeera’s coverage has been critical, but no more so than plenty of other news agencies. Its recent exposure of even more abuse of Israeli-crafted spyware by a questionable government customer couldn’t have helped, but Israel’s domestic news agencies have been doing this for years, helping contribute to the worldwide woes suffered (deservedly so!) by malware merchants like NSO Group and Candiru.
This decision to boot Al Jazeera was the result of a concerted effort that required a vote from the members of the Israeli government cabinet. According to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the vote was “unanimous.”
And it’s not as though Al Jazeera’s hands are completely clean, either. Accusations that its journalists cohabitate and collaborate with members of Islamic extremist groups have dogged the new outlet for years. There have been several accusations over the past several months that Al Jazeera journalists are not only embedded with Hamas, but apparently acting as operatives. (Of course, most of these accusations tend to come from governments irritated with Al Jazeera reporting, rather than sources with little to gain from silencing apparent critics.)
But there’s no reason to believe the journalists staying in Jerusalem were involved with anything more than providing ongoing coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict. And this ousting by the Israeli government hasn’t earned it any international accolades. Instead, it has been met with united criticism from other governments as well as news agencies around the world.
Given the circumstances of this ejection, it looks far more like the Israeli government wants to wrest control of the conflict narrative. If it had any genuine concerns about Al Jazeera, it had plenty of time to address them before it became the subject of international criticism for its actions and tactics in this latest flare-up in hostilities. The timing here says this is just opportunistic and completely unmoored from any legitimate national security concerns. But when all you have is a war, everything looks like a “national security threat.”
