Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: Government will 'shut down' Israel's Al Jazeera TV

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (Ronen Zvrun/Pool/AFP)

• Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the Israeli broadcast network Al Jazeera will be shut down.
• The decision comes after Israel's parliament passed a new national security law last month that gives key ministers the power to ban broadcasts by foreign channels deemed a national security threat.
• This follows a long-standing feud between the channel and the Israeli government amid Israeli criticism of the channel's coverage of the Gaza conflict.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Sunday that he has decided to shut down Al Jazeera, a Qatar-based news channel with which his government has had a longstanding feud.

The government has “unanimously decided to shut down the incitement channel Al Jazeera in Israel.” Prime Minister Netanyahu said on X (formerly Twitter).

In a separate joint statement with Prime Minister Netanyahu, Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi said, “Freedom of speech will no longer be a Hamas trumpet in Israel.”

“Al Jazeera will be shut down immediately and its equipment will be confiscated.”

Karhi issued an order to seize equipment “used to distribute the channel's content,” including editing and routing equipment, cameras, microphones, servers, laptops, radio transmitting equipment, and some mobile phones. .

Walid al-Omari, director of Al-Jazeera's office in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, said the decision followed a “campaign by far-right ministers seeking an easy victory.” I reacted.

The broadcaster said it had been informed of the “closure of offices of the Al Jazeera channel operating within Israel's borders” and the seizure of broadcasting equipment.

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Broadcasting to Al Jazeera's website will also be restricted, he said, adding that the restrictions do not legally apply to the Israeli-occupied West Bank. That is not the case in the Gaza Strip, where Al Jazeera continues to broadcast live coverage of the war between Israel and Hamas.

Sunday's decision comes after Israel's parliament overwhelmingly passed a new national security law last month that bans broadcasts by foreign channels deemed a national security threat and gives top ministers the power to shut down government institutions. This was done after it was approved.

Immediately after the law was passed, Prime Minister Netanyahu singled out Al Jazeera, which bills itself as “the Arab world's first independent news channel.”

Netanyahu's government had a long-running feud with Al Jazeera ahead of Israel's war with Hamas in Gaza.

This channel is broadcast in Arabic and English.

In response to the channel's coverage of the war, which began with Hamas' unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel that left more than 1,170 people dead, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli government officials. The feud has intensified amid Israeli criticism.

At least 34,683 people, mostly women and children, have been killed in the Gaza Strip in retaliatory attacks by Israel, which has vowed to destroy Hamas, according to the Hamas-run territory's health ministry.

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At least 97 journalists and media workers have been killed since the war began, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, making it “the deadliest period for journalists” since 1992, when the group began collecting data.

Israel announced in January that an Al Jazeera staff reporter and a freelancer killed in the Gaza airstrike were “terrorist agents.”

The following month, the station accused another of its journalists, who was injured in a separate attack, of being a Hamas “deputy company commander.”

Al Jazeera vehemently denies Israel's claims and accuses it of systematically targeting its employees in the Gaza Strip.