OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)
The hard-line Israeli occupation government has ordered the local offices of Qatar’s Al Jazeera satellite news network to close Sunday following months of closure threats against the channel by premier Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right ministers.
The Israeli order, which includes confiscating broadcast equipment, preventing the broadcast of the channel’s reports and blocking its websites, was issued in the midst of ongoing Qatari mediation efforts to end the war on the Gaza Strip.
According to the Associated Press (AP), Al Jazeera went off Israel’s main cable provider in the hours after the order. However, its website and streaming links across multiple online platforms still operated Sunday.
For its part, Al Jazeera has strongly denounced the Israeli government’s decision to close its news operations in Israel as a “criminal act” and warned that the country’s suppression of the free press “stands in contravention of international and humanitarian law.”
“Al Jazeera Media Network strongly condemns and denounces this criminal act that violates human rights and the basic right to access of information. Al Jazeera affirms its right to continue to provide news and information to its global audiences,” the network said in a statement on Sunday.
“The Network vehemently rejects the allegations presented by Israeli authorities suggesting professional media standards have been violated. It reaffirms its unwavering commitment to the values embodied by its code of ethics,” it said.
The statement comes after Netanyahu’s cabinet voted unanimously to close Al Jazeera’s operations in Israel, weeks after Israel’s parliament passed a law allowing the temporary closure of foreign broadcasters considered to be a threat to national security during the months-long genocidal war on Gaza.
Netanyahu announced the decision on X, formerly Twitter. “The government headed by me unanimously decided: the incitement channel Al Jazeera will be closed in Israel,” he posted in Hebrew.
Following the decision, the Israeli police sent plain-clothes officers to raid Al Jazeera’s office in Occupied Jerusalem.
In another X post, Israeli communications minister Shlomo Karhi said he had signed the orders against Al Jazeera, which would be effective immediately.
The network has reported the Israeli war on Gaza nonstop since the al-Qassam Brigades of Hamas launched its cross-border operation on October 7, 2023 and has maintained 24-hour coverage of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza that has killed and wounded members of its own staff.
