JERUSALEM/DOHA: Israeli officials seized Al Jazeera equipment on Sunday, hours after the nation’s cabinet approved a decision to shutter the Qatar-based TV news network’s operations in the Jewish state – an unprecedented step toward an international media outlet.
Video circulated online showed that the Inspectors from the communications ministry, accompanied by police, arrived at Al Jazeera offices in Jerusalem, removed equipment and cut off access. Al Jazeera’s broadcasts and access to its website have been blocked throughout Israel.
Al Jazeera condemned Israel’s move, calling it a “criminal act that violates human rights in access to information.” The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) has petitioned the move to Israel’s Supreme Court.
The network has criticised Israel’s military operation in Gaza, from where it has reported throughout the war.
“This is a dark day for the media and a dark day for democracy,” Israel’s Foreign Press Association said in a statement. “Israel joins a dubious club of authoritarian governments to ban the station.”
The association expressed concern that Israel’s government “may not be done” as the prime minister now has the authority to target other foreign media he deems to be “acting against the state.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet shut down the network for as long as the war in Gaza continues, saying it threatened national security.
“The incitement channel Al Jazeera will be closed in Israel,” Netanyahu posted on social media following a unanimous cabinet vote.
However, The several ministers from Benny Gantz’s National Unity Party abstained from Sunday’s vote and criticized its timing, underlining escalating tensions between the various factions of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.
The idea of shutting down the news channel has been circulating within Netanyahu’s cabinet, contained mostly of hard-right, nationalist and Jewish Orthodox parties, since the early days of war.
Al Jazeera was blamed by Israel for what were termed false reports that heavily relied on what was thought to be Hamas propaganda. In late March, the channel ran a story claiming that Israeli soldiers had raped and murdered women at Gaza’s Al Shifa hospital, which the Israel Defense Forces denied. It was later removed from all of Al Jazeera’s platforms.
