Israel raids Al Jazeera’s offices after banning broadcaster

By Galit Altstein

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.

Inspectors from the communications ministry, accompanied by police, arrived at Al Jazeera offices in Jerusalem, confiscated equipment and cut off access. Al Jazeera’s broadcasts and access to its website have been been blocked throughout Israel.

Shlomo Karhi, Israel’s communications minister, posted a video clip of the raid on X, formerly Twitter, where the inspectors can be seen seen and heard naming the equipment they found.

Karhi has been a key advocate for the termination of the network’s activity within Israel. He’s also called Kan, Israel’s public broadcaster, biased and threatened to cut its budgets.

Al Jazeera denounced 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.

“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.”

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.

Gantz’s party said that while it supports shutting down Qatari-owned Al Jazeera, Israel’s war cabinet had agreed to postpone any decision at the request of security officials, including the head of Mossad, to avoid harming cease-fire negotiation efforts now under way in Egypt.

Israel and Hamas, through intermediaries, continue to work toward a deal that would involve the release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza and Palestinian prisoners in Israel. Qatar has been a dominant mediator since the war in Gaza broke out following Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks on Israel.

The idea of shutting down the news channel has been circulating within Netanyahu’s cabinet, comprised 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.

A law allowing foreign media outlets to be shuttered in Israel was approved by the nation’s parliament, the Knesset, in early April. It would give Israel’s premier the power to instruct the communications ministry to act against any foreign media entity deemed to be “harming the country,” pending the opinion of at least one security official and the approval of the cabinet or security cabinet.

The media outlet can then be subject to a range of actions, including:

• shutting down its offices in Israel

• confiscation of broadcast equipment

• prevention of broadcasts by the channel’s reporters

• removal of the channel from Israeli cable and satellite companies

• blocking of its websites in Israel

“Al Jazeera harmed Israel’s security, actively participated in the Oct. 7 massacre, and incited against IDF soldiers,” Netanyahu said when the law was passed. “It is time to remove the voice of Hamas from our country.”

White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre criticized the move at the time as “a concerning step.” The US supports the work of journalists around the world, including those working in Gaza, she said.