All: if you're about to comment in this thread, please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and make sure your post is in the intended spirit of the site. If it isn't, please edit it until it is; or simply remember that the internet is usually wrong and refrain from posting.
The intended spirit is curious, respectful conversation in which we learn from each other. Yes, that is hard when emotions run strong, but hard != impossible, and it's what the site rules ask: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
"and block its websites." So this keeps Israelis from reading Al Jazeera.
Now that's new. Israel started Internet censorship in 2017.[1] Initially it was limited to "terror group websites, online illegal gambling, prostitution services, hard drug sales". At the time, "due to warnings from rights groups that the law poses a slippery slope toward additional censorship, the final version of the legislation dictates that rights groups may appeal the decisions."
Then, in 2021, there was the "Facebook bill", authorizing very broad censorship.[2] That does not seem to have passed. It was first proposed in 2016, almost passed in 2018 [3], tried in 2021, and tried again in 2022. It doesn't seem to have passed.
But something new happened recently. Wikipedia has a note at Censorship in Israel: "This article needs to be updated. The reason given is: New ban issued by the knesset on foreign media channels. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (April 2024)"[4]
The Knesset gave the government the authority to ban foreign media on April 1, 2024.[5]
This isn't just about preventing outside media from reporting from Israel. It keeps Israelis from viewing media the government doesn't like. Haarez has good coverage.[6]
The US White House press secretary issued a weak statement condemning Israel's action, but it was on April 1st and the costumed Easter Bunny overshadowed that statement.[7]
> The US White House press secretary issued a weak statement condemning Israel's action, but it was on April 1st and the costumed Easter Bunny overshadowed that statement.[7]
Armando Iannucci's career has twice now been upstaged by the increasing ridiculousness of reality in politics.
One of the reasons he says he stopped making his first series, The Thick of It, was that UK politicians became parodies of themselves. There was nothing left to make fun of. Then the same thing happened to his American incarnation, Veep.
That's correct and IMHO its the right thing to do when shooting begins because when people shoot each other this is no longer a discussion and the press is part of the warfare. Remember all the Russian media and social media accounts claiming that its American hysteria that they will invade Ukraine? They denied and mocked anyone who claimed that they will invade up until the tanks rolled in.
Personally, I'm critical of the Israeli government but I think it's in their right to try to control information flow as they are in process of driving people from their homes and mass killing people in retaliation of a terrorist attack that claimed the lives of over thousand innocent people.
I really dislike glorification war and pretending that it has rules or honour or something like that. People are taking lives en masse and its more than normal to try to control the information flow when doing it.
If you believe that RT is an organisation that is not interested in the truth, but is set up purely to disrupt and disturb, then a government can reasonably want to prevent its operation.
Adding plausible noise to information causes people to have to do much more work to discern between what is true and what is not, time that many people do not have.
A reluctance to ban a bad-faith organisation is good: a moral society should thoroughly debate why it might undertake a repressive thing. But you cannot wish away the effects of corrosive and coercive behaviour because the act of banning a such an organisation is repressive.
A poor but useful analogy is use of violence in society. Violence is a bad thing, but to absolutely forswear it in all situations is something that very few governments will do, for reasons that seem quite justified to me.
Yes. Which I find abhorrent as an European, and has made me realize even more than our countries are much less democratic than we officially paint them as.
Do you have examples for Europe blocking Russia? Because all I have seen is DNS providers omitting certain sites (i.e RT), but their apps still work (plus URLs when using other DNS). An nothing of that coming from the nation states as all seems to be due to the activities of private companies doing these things.
The main difference would be that Al Jazeera is from Qatar and not Gaza, this would be the equivalent of the EU banning Armenia because they are friendly with Russia.
Apartheid South Africa also tried to ban news media. It's a sign of extreme desperation and signals political vulnerability. Hopefully, Israel will get elections soon, and center- or left-leaning coalition government will pursue different foreign and military policies that a significant majority of Israelis prefer over the absurdity of the militarists and militant settlers.
Nearly every democratic country has previously or is currently censoring the media in some ways, including the US[1] and EU[2]. Single factor analysis is one of the worst kinds of analysis. If we only consider this one factor, then there is basically no country that is not like Apartheid South Africa. Apartheid South Africa was not exceptional or notable because it did what nearly every other country has or is currently still doing, i.e. censoring media. It was notable because people of specific races had fewer legal rights than others.
Furthermore, as far as I'm aware, the majority of Israelis want the IDF to go into Raffah[3] and are not opposed to the attemts to eliminate Hamas.
After rt.com et al were blocked in the EU they also kept working for a few more week/months before I had to use a mirror/VPN to read the new paper of "the enemy".
Side note: I though being able to read the news of the enemy was testimony to the moral high ground of a "modern free and democratic society". No more moral high ground if you are trying to shape the perception of the public with censorship.
It does not provide source data, just the calculated results presented. There is also a methodology link, which points to different pages, depending on the year selected
Do these numbers distinguish between journalists killed while doing journalism vs journalists killed as collateral damage not in the capacity of a journalist vs combatants who were journalists prior to picking up a gun and joining the war?
I feel like its very hard to draw any conclusions from these numbers without distinguishing between those cases (other than of course that war is a tragedy and innocents generally pay the price of war).
I find it difficult to tell how their reports translate to objective numbers. For example, the United States’ ranking fell from 45 to 55 in the last year. Here are the reports for those years:
As far as I can tell, the only negative differences between these two reports are that a reporter was killed while investigating a murder by the murder suspect (who is now in jail and on trial), and that Biden “has come under criticism for failing to press US partners like Israel and Saudi Arabia on press freedom.” Falling ten places is a significant change (and is called out in the preface to the whole report)—are these two things really enough to justify such a change, or is the ranking sourced from more data not present in the report?
Here’s another story about Reporters Without Borders, about the first time I dug into one of their publications. In 2018, I read a report they published listing the six most dangerous countries for journalists: India, Yemen, Mexico, Syria, Afghanistan, and the United States. It described how in Mexico journalists are executed by cartels and organized crime, how journalists in Yemen die in prison due to mistreatment, how in Syria journalists were killed in airstrikes and taken hostage by Islamic militants, how in India Hindu nationalist mobs would run down journalists with trucks… and how in the US, four journalists were murdered by a stalker angry at a 2011 story the newspaper had published (subsequently jailed, tried, and found guilty of mass murder); and two more were killed by a falling tree. Somehow these two cases were enough to warrant the United States being called out with the other five countries. And it made the headlines everywhere, of course, because it was the midst of Donald Trump’s presidency.
It's a ranking, so presumably part of the US dropping is due to other countries improving. There is another major negative change noted though - more newspaper closures and huge layoffs at news organizations. It also sounds like the Sociocultural section might be partially based on polling of trust in media, which could have dropped, but I don't know where to look into that more.
The 2018 report you're talking about is here: https://rsf.org/sites/default/files/worldwilde_round-up.pdf. The list is not the most dangerous countries for journalists, but the most deadly - a straightforward measure of how many journalists were killed in each country. They publish this every year and the US is usually not on it, but this year someone murdered 4 journalists because of their reporting. I'm not sure how they could make this more objective, and I can't think of any metric that would include murders committed by angry men in cartels or angry men with SUVs in India but not angry men with shotguns in America.
Obviously the falling tree is not reflective of the journalistic climate in the country, but if they had been the only two the US would not have been listed. The mass shooting is what put it within the same neighborhood as Mexico and India.
I don't know how to interpret the front page saying "More than 100 journalists killed in six months in Gaza" directly above a "real time" abuse barometer saying that 12 journalists have been killed worldwide in 2024.
Probably different measuring / classifications at play too. For example, they may be including independent journalists in one set vs only recognized outlets in another.
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edit, they have the following note in the barometer
> Journalists are listed only if RSF has established that their death or imprisonment was linked to their journalistic activity. The list does not include journalists who were killed or imprisoned for reasons unrelated to their work or when the link to their work has not yet been confirmed.
Netanyahu's ongoing corruption trial looms large over all of this. If he were to lose power, he would be far more vulnerable to conviction and potential imprisonment. So from this vantage point, the Al Jazeera ban could be seen as an act of desperation - muzzling a high-profile critic as a concession to far-right parties, even at the expense of free press principles, all in service of his own political and personal survival.
It paints a troubling picture of a leader whose decision-making is distorted by clinging to power at all costs. Undermining democratic norms to appease extremist coalition partners is a dangerous road that could lead Israel to more illiberal and authoritarian policies, especially toward Palestinians, the Arab media, and domestic dissent.
It was a very strange day yesterday: the whole week coverage had been building up to a meeting in Cairo, Hamas signalled they were going to accept the cease fire.
Saturday AM EST, it was reported that Hamas confirmed they were going to accept the deal. By noon Saturday EST, the "Israel-Hamas War"...idk what to call it, live blog? collection-of-news headline?...was gone for the first time in months.
Israel reporting (not just Haaretz) reported huge, multiple, protests (it was at night there, early afternoon EST) due to Israel rejecting a cease fire. Piecing it together from Twitter natsec people, standard blob, certainly not polarized against israel, Israel didn't even send a delegation to the talks, and the far right Israeli leader said Bibi promised him they wouldn't accept "a rushed deal" (i.e. the cease fire), and people were irate. An irate Israeli TV reporter revealed the anonymous "diplomatic source" promising no deal Friday night was Bibi himself.
The blogs are back up now, with a sort of hurried framing that the talks fell apart because Hamas wanted a permanent cease fire (no mention of any of the above -- I assume that'd complicate it too much for, it needs to be a nice little set piece of Israel vs. Hamas.
It's really, really strange watching the coverage the last week, in America, without any attachment to either "side". I guess its easier to push the A vs. B framing on a new subject, our college kids, rather than trying to explain how any of this makes any sense at all.
> Israel reporting (not just Haaretz) reported huge, multiple, protests (it was at night there, early afternoon EST) due to Israel rejecting a cease fire.
Correcting you on this - the protests were not because Israel "rejected a cease fire".
For one thing, these are the same protests that happen every Saturday for the last few weeks of the war, continuing the "tradition" of protests that happened every Saturday for the ~10 months before the war.
For another, Israel didn't "reject" the ceasefire deal, Hamas did, or at least that's the way it is being talked about by Israel itself. There are many reasons to think Israel (and specifically Netanyahu) may have tried to tank the deal, but Hamas are the ones that eventually walked away.
I share similar view. Israel response is guided by prime minister’s personal political ambitions, while war is ongoing, the leader has more power and less of a chance to be replaced.
He's playing with the same rulebook of Slobodan Milošević - He's trying to make apparent to everybody that if he goes down, his own country will go down with him.
Frankly, it feels like the only hope for an end to this conflict is in the hands of the internal Israeli political opposition. I wouldn't be surprised if he's not stopped, we're gonna see the same... "approach" used with Palestinian people applied to whatever internal resistance is left.
How big a share of Palestinian media consumption does Al Jazeera have? As in, do the residents of Gaza treat it as the main news source?
The reason for asking is because a poll[0] of Palestinians says “90% believe that Hamas did not commit any atrocities against Israel civilians during its October the 7th offensive. Only one in five Palestinians has seen videos showing atrocities committed by Hamas.”
So is it Al Jazeera’s fault that Palestinians have not seen the evidence and seem not to think 10/7 was all that problematic? One assumes that if such deliberate distortion/omission was normal practice at Al Jazeera, Israel would be able to clearly point to it. But the justification for the ban is a pretty vague concern about national security.
I think they do, as long as their internet connections are up. At least the Gazans I follow on social media seem to be perfectly aware of the world news. Graffiti tags on refugee tents in Rafah thanking American students for their solidarity seems to support that.
I’ve also read in the past that Al Jazeera is a rather popular media outlet among Palestinians in Gaza.
> Pan-Arab satellite TVs, especially Qatar's Al-Jazeera, are popular. [1]
I know that Shireen Abu Akleh—an Al Jazeera journalist murdered by IDF in 2022—was a superstar among Palestinians, including Palestinans in Gaza.
Wow, I did not know until now that 90% (!!!) of Palestinians "believe that Hamas did not commit any atrocities against Israel civilians during its October the 7th offensive," and "only one in five Palestinians has seen videos showing atrocities committed by Hamas." Are they really so misinformed?
If that's true, it makes sense to ask whether Al Jazeera has been purposely feeding misinformation to the Palestinian population during the war. And it makes sense to ask if that is in any way related by Al Jazeera's funding by Qatar, where the leaders of Hamas live: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/qatar-hamas-israel-1.699941...
Hamas has been in power since 2006 and had reeducated the youth akin to what the hitler youth did. Its no surprise many tow the company line. Majority of people in gaza are under 18 where all they know is that sort of indoctrination.
> did not know until now that 90% (!!!) of Palestinians "believe that Hamas did not commit any atrocities against Israel civilians
I know some Palestinians, and yes, they seem extremely misinformed, clueless about what Hamas did.
I was surprised after October 7 when they seemed to have had no idea about what had happened. They apparently only knew that IDF had started bombing. I might even guessed 95% instead of 90% "believe that Hams did not ...".
Al Jazeera lies by omission -- by not mentioning what Hamas did, and, if it does, then downplaying the numbers.
The Israeli newspapers lie by omission, too: they don't let their readers know how many civilians Netanyahu and IDF has killed in Gaza. Al Jazeera and right wing Israeli newspapers manipulate the Palestinians and Israelis, respectively.
> ask whether Al Jazeera has been purposely feeding misinformation to the Palestinian population during the war
> The reason for asking is because a poll[0] of Palestinians says “90% believe that Hamas did not commit any atrocities against Israel civilians during its October the 7th offensive. Only one in five Palestinians has seen videos showing atrocities committed by Hamas.”
I think they have more pressing matters on their mind than getting informed at the moment, such as trying not to starve, finding dead relatives in the rubble of destroyed apartments, and similar things.
Moreover, I think the people of Palestine might be a bit biased against Israel. And I don't think that's an information issue, I think it's a completely natural response to Israel killing tens of thousands of civilian, 70% of whom women and children.
I think if you ask Ukrainian civilians what they think of Russians you'll hear some falsehoods and unreasonable stuff too. That's a completely natural response, and the Ukrainian media is not to be blamed for that.
I don't feel good about this at all, but please keep in mind that there is still serious independent journalism in Israel. And it's doing very well. For example I can recommend pretty much anything published by Haaretz, or Barak Ravid. We should monitor the health of their domestic media should things start going un-democratic there. After all nothing can replace domestic media, this is painfully clear in the case of Russia.
It's worth noting Qatar is the main benefactor of Al Jazeera, while also having funded Hamas for years, and hosting the Hamas leaders in their country. Al Jazeera in English is extremely different from al Jazeera in Arabic where journalism takes a back seat on any item somehow connected to Israel and especially Hamas. Like many of these seemingly weird decisions, there's more to it than "Israel bad".
> having funded Hamas for years, hosting the Hamas leaders in their country
Qatar did both of those things at the request of the US and Israel. Qatar serves as an intermediary between the US/Israel and Hamas, just as it served as an intermediary for talks between the US and the Taliban.
> Like many of these seemingly weird decisions, there's more to it than "Israel bad".
The motivation here is clearly to stop information about what is happening in Gaza from reaching the outside world. Al Jazeera is the only major international news agency with a significant presence on the ground there.
There are also many other foreign journalists in Israel. Other than Al Jazeera there are no restrictions on foreign media from operating in Israel. Certainly not western foreign media.
There are indeed restrictions on western foreign media.
"Like all foreign news organizations operating in Israel, CNN’s Jerusalem bureau is subject to the rules of the Israel Defense Forces’s censor, which dictates subjects that are off-limits for news organizations to cover, and censors articles it deems unfit or unsafe to print. ... the military censor recently restricted eight subjects, including security cabinet meetings, information about hostages, and reporting on weapons captured by fighters in Gaza. In order to obtain a press pass in Israel, foreign reporters must sign a document agreeing to abide by the dictates of the censor."
There absolutely are restrictions. No journalists are allowed in Gaza, which is at odds with almost every other conflict in the past hundred years.
The stated reason is "to keep journalists safe". But journalists have risked their lives in many conflicts to bring the news to people, its their choice to risk their life or not. Unless one were to believe that all journalists biased against israel, there is no reason to restrict all journalists. Why not let in Christiane Amanpour, or many other western trained and western paid journalists?
> Israel’s military can continue barring foreign journalists from accessing the Gaza Strip, the High Court said Monday, citing ongoing security concerns after months in which only Gazans or correspondents accompanied by the army have been able to report from inside the enclave.
If you allow "national security" to be used as an excuse to "grant powers" which ultimately just "destroy freedom" then you will end up with leaders who intentionally do a bad job at security in order to access the power that grants them.
If your government cannot protect the country from journalists, then you should force them to resign, and call for new elections.
Isn't that just a crime in and of itself? Wouldn't that entitle the government to just arrest and charge that particular person with these crimes? I think that stands a chance of ending well, or at least, justly.
I’m not sure about “dark day for the media” but it does feel like a dark day for Israel.
Once you’ve established that the government can unilaterally ban a voice for reasons of “national security” you’ve essentially given them a free pass. As Americans living post-9/11 will know, “national security” is a deliberately elastic term that can cover anything required in the moment.
Is Qatar a belligerent in the war? Belarus has allowed Russia to use their territory as a point from which to launch both ground assaults and missiles into Ukraine. Hard to say the same about Qatar and Hamas. If Al Jazeera were an Iranian publication the comparison might be more similar.
Israeli news reports and analysts say Qatar has sent more than $1 billion to Gaza over the past decade.
Qatar sent that aid through fuel to the Gaza Strip's Hamas government, which in turn sold it and paid partial salaries. In the past, the money was sent via suitcases stuffed with cash.
Israel allowed these transfers to Hamas. Supporters of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu say the payments his government approved helped keep the status quo in the Gaza Strip and Hamas from escalating attacks on Israel.
We definitely did block or at least make them less available, as I recall prior to the invasion RT was commonly on when walking into a hotel room or in Youtube recommendation lists. Post invasion in US I never see it in any hotels or recommended on Youtube... was it censored or maybe just wildly boycotted, not sure... but seems appropriate as a response to me
>The EU has banned many Russian and Belarussian news sources since the invasion of Ukraine.
I read Clark's Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia (<https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002RI9PMM/>) right after hearing about YouTube shutting down Russian state media channels. I was surprised to learn in the book of the extent of the freedom of the press in late 18th-century Prussia. A British visitor wrote that people were as free to speak as back home, citing a work that was very critical of the king in the context of Poland. During the Napoleonic wars, despite the existential threat to Prussia from France, at least four newspapers that celebrated Revolutionary France as the next step in human freedom were allowed to publish.
It's always preferable to counter propaganda with free speech. Even liars deserve the opportunity to speak. This is especially true when there is no formally declared war between US/Europe outside Ukraine and Russia.
Censorship occurs on most of the major platforms, targeting specific topics or phrases, instead of outright banning channels; arguably to be as discrete as possible and not spook the herd, and where Twitter-X is going to allow the most information to flow - arguable more lies, but arguably also more truth.
I agree this is not good for Israel. A democracy is partly measured by its ability to tolerate voices it does not approve of. Israel should be stronger than this. I agree that using national security as an excuse is a slippery slope.
This is mostly a symbolic move that will make very little difference. Likely it will push Al Jazeera to be more anti-Israeli but I'm sure they can make up (pun intended) for their lack of physical presence in the region. People that want to consume that content in Israel will have no problem (many already get this via satellite).
A by the way is that this can still be challenged in the courts. If Al Jazeera chooses to go to the supreme court I imagine there's a pretty good chance that the decision will get overturned. They might intentionally decide not to do that because that outcome will put Israel in a positive light.
The only justification would be if they are broadcasting government secrets.
Clearly they're not doing that, just criticizing the government.
The obvious next step is outlawing any speech criticizing the government (or rather 'speech that is a threat to national security'), then you've got the same laws as in Russia.
There's plenty of Israeli media attacking the government day in and out. Haaretz, Yedioth, etc.
They were not closed because they're "criticizing the government". They were closed because they're acting on behalf of a foreign agent and spreading propaganda (I think the actual language "is harmed national security"). Qatar is not a free country, it funds Al-Jazeera, it hosts the Hamas leadership.
I know that people in general seems to react strongly negative to government censorship, but I can not avoid seeing it through the light of recent trends of post-truth online censorships that blasted the internet during the last decade. Popularity of censorship is something that seems to go in wave, and outside the US there seems to be more acceptance to government censorship as comparative to platform censorship. In smaller countries the distinction becomes a bit blurry if it is the government doing the censorship, or the ISP's doing it voluntarily, or the dominant market platform making the same decision.
In my own industry I commonly hear people talk about self regulation in order to keep governments from interfering. This has benefits, but it also makes the action of the industry a dialog between government and private sector. Voluntarily removing undesired content is technically not censorship ordered by the government, but it is also not completely separated from the wishes of the government.
Honestly, I kind of think censorship would be a positive thing when applied to people lacking education. Where to draw the line is the issue, but at the least maybe people who didn't finish highschool or get a GED or equivalent shouldn't be exposed to conspiracy theories that they then act on.
Yes, propaganda is acceptable during a war, and censorship is a part of that. But Europe is not at war with Russia. They are simply giving material support to one of the belligerents. Outside the context of a declared war, censorship should not happen in so-called democratic societies.
> As Americans living post-9/11 will know, “national security” is a deliberately elastic term that can cover anything required in the moment.
One of the genuine cultural differences between the US and Israel is that while Americans prefer greater liberty (even if it means less security), Israelis prefer greater security (even if it means less liberty). Which is to say, both cultures appreciate both values, but they have different priorities.
Israel is a country where you will have your bags searched before entering shopping malls or train stations. That Israelis' privacy is violated on a daily basis by other Israelis is popular. There is a sense that the privacy violations are genuinely needed, result in genuine protection, and are not abused by those in power.
I should note that "there is a sense that the privacy violations are genuinely needed, result in genuine protection, and are not abused by those in power" also describes modern Russia, for example.
I think there are limits - when it's a state-run agency that's peddling straight propaganda and not making an effort to produce news content, I don't see why you would let them operate within your borders: looking at you RT.
I think it's neither surprising nor necessarily bad. Just think of how Russia Today was spreading disinformation and propaganda about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Banning them from the EU was certainly in our interest.
If we had to ban every media that has said a half truth, we'd have no media at all.
It wasn't in the interest of freedom. Everyone reading it would know it was the russian spin. But now we are not allowed to know what the russians think. After all thinking of them as humans like us is not something we want right?
> I’m not sure about “dark day for the media” but it does feel like a dark day for Israel.
I would never expect any theocracy to be a bastion of democracy. Israel can't really realize its goals and be free at the same time. Those goals are not compatible.
Lets not forget that the British Govt banned Russia Today from broadcasting in the UK a few years back. Such is their planning and manipulation of events on the global stage!
Russian government literally assassinated or tried to assassinate several people in British territory. That the Russian government's propaganda arm hadn't been given the boot after these spectacular acts of bad faith demonstrates that the UK government perhaps has slightly more dedication to press freedom than you're suggesting.
Readit News
The intended spirit is curious, respectful conversation in which we learn from each other. Yes, that is hard when emotions run strong, but hard != impossible, and it's what the site rules ask: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
Now that's new. Israel started Internet censorship in 2017.[1] Initially it was limited to "terror group websites, online illegal gambling, prostitution services, hard drug sales". At the time, "due to warnings from rights groups that the law poses a slippery slope toward additional censorship, the final version of the legislation dictates that rights groups may appeal the decisions."
Then, in 2021, there was the "Facebook bill", authorizing very broad censorship.[2] That does not seem to have passed. It was first proposed in 2016, almost passed in 2018 [3], tried in 2021, and tried again in 2022. It doesn't seem to have passed.
But something new happened recently. Wikipedia has a note at Censorship in Israel: "This article needs to be updated. The reason given is: New ban issued by the knesset on foreign media channels. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (April 2024)"[4] The Knesset gave the government the authority to ban foreign media on April 1, 2024.[5]
This isn't just about preventing outside media from reporting from Israel. It keeps Israelis from viewing media the government doesn't like. Haarez has good coverage.[6]
The US White House press secretary issued a weak statement condemning Israel's action, but it was on April 1st and the costumed Easter Bunny overshadowed that statement.[7]
[1] https://www.timesofisrael.com/to-tackle-online-crime-israel-...
[2] https://www.timesofisrael.com/proposed-censorship-bill-more-...
[3] https://www.timesofisrael.com/how-israel-nearly-destroyed-fr...
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Israel
[5] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/israels-knesset-approve...
[6] https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-05-05/ty-article/is...
[7] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/press-briefings/202...
Wow you can't make this stuff up
One of the reasons he says he stopped making his first series, The Thick of It, was that UK politicians became parodies of themselves. There was nothing left to make fun of. Then the same thing happened to his American incarnation, Veep.
Also, I think a few other Arab countries like Egypt have blocked/banned Al Jazeera.
Personally, I'm critical of the Israeli government but I think it's in their right to try to control information flow as they are in process of driving people from their homes and mass killing people in retaliation of a terrorist attack that claimed the lives of over thousand innocent people.
I really dislike glorification war and pretending that it has rules or honour or something like that. People are taking lives en masse and its more than normal to try to control the information flow when doing it.
Adding plausible noise to information causes people to have to do much more work to discern between what is true and what is not, time that many people do not have.
A reluctance to ban a bad-faith organisation is good: a moral society should thoroughly debate why it might undertake a repressive thing. But you cannot wish away the effects of corrosive and coercive behaviour because the act of banning a such an organisation is repressive.
A poor but useful analogy is use of violence in society. Violence is a bad thing, but to absolutely forswear it in all situations is something that very few governments will do, for reasons that seem quite justified to me.
Yes. Which I find abhorrent as an European, and has made me realize even more than our countries are much less democratic than we officially paint them as.
Not really. Top Russian officials, say Dmitri Medvedev, are still shitposting on twitter:
> Macron preparing to go to kyiv? But he's a zoological coward!
Most Russian news websites are still up, say vesti.ru
And Russia is active participant in a war, while Quatar is not bombing anyone.
https://truthout.org/articles/media-and-the-end-of-apartheid...
EDIT: Haaretz is a good and honest news source that has been extremely critical of the current leadership. Also recommended documentary film: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gatekeepers_(film)
Furthermore, as far as I'm aware, the majority of Israelis want the IDF to go into Raffah[3] and are not opposed to the attemts to eliminate Hamas.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Censorship
[2]: https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-rt-sputnik-eu-access-bans-pro...
[3]: https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/poll-75-of-jewi...
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Side note: I though being able to read the news of the enemy was testimony to the moral high ground of a "modern free and democratic society". No more moral high ground if you are trying to shape the perception of the public with censorship.
Deleted Comment
https://rsf.org/en
https://rsf.org/en/country/israel
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edit: they appear to keep a list of mirrored news sites to circumvent censorship
https://github.com/RSF-RWB/collateralfreedom
(was hoping they had data available for their index, but have not found it yet)
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edit: the index has a download button in the bar at the top of the map
https://rsf.org/en/index
It does not provide source data, just the calculated results presented. There is also a methodology link, which points to different pages, depending on the year selected
Nobody is immune not even the bureau chief of Al Jezeera.
2023-10-28: Wife, 15-year-old son, 7-year-old daughter, a grandson and seven other relatives killed in strike on refugee camp.
2023-12-15: Wounded by missile during filming, cameraman fatally wounded and bled to death with ambulances cut off.
2024-01-07: Eldest son, a journalist, killed in air strike.
2024-01-08: Two nephews killed.
2024-01-16: Evacuted to Egypt/Qatar with family. Probably would have been dead by now or with more dead family members if he remained.
Anyone know where to find what the current accurate count of number of journalists killed in the Gaza bombardment to date?
Last I heard it was 170.
There are also journalists who lived but their whole family died in the strikes.
I feel like its very hard to draw any conclusions from these numbers without distinguishing between those cases (other than of course that war is a tragedy and innocents generally pay the price of war).
At least until the war has subsided and independent orgs can gain access.
https://web.archive.org/web/20230817030548/https://rsf.org/e...
https://web.archive.org/web/20240505202537/https://rsf.org/e...
As far as I can tell, the only negative differences between these two reports are that a reporter was killed while investigating a murder by the murder suspect (who is now in jail and on trial), and that Biden “has come under criticism for failing to press US partners like Israel and Saudi Arabia on press freedom.” Falling ten places is a significant change (and is called out in the preface to the whole report)—are these two things really enough to justify such a change, or is the ranking sourced from more data not present in the report?
Here’s another story about Reporters Without Borders, about the first time I dug into one of their publications. In 2018, I read a report they published listing the six most dangerous countries for journalists: India, Yemen, Mexico, Syria, Afghanistan, and the United States. It described how in Mexico journalists are executed by cartels and organized crime, how journalists in Yemen die in prison due to mistreatment, how in Syria journalists were killed in airstrikes and taken hostage by Islamic militants, how in India Hindu nationalist mobs would run down journalists with trucks… and how in the US, four journalists were murdered by a stalker angry at a 2011 story the newspaper had published (subsequently jailed, tried, and found guilty of mass murder); and two more were killed by a falling tree. Somehow these two cases were enough to warrant the United States being called out with the other five countries. And it made the headlines everywhere, of course, because it was the midst of Donald Trump’s presidency.
The 2018 report you're talking about is here: https://rsf.org/sites/default/files/worldwilde_round-up.pdf. The list is not the most dangerous countries for journalists, but the most deadly - a straightforward measure of how many journalists were killed in each country. They publish this every year and the US is usually not on it, but this year someone murdered 4 journalists because of their reporting. I'm not sure how they could make this more objective, and I can't think of any metric that would include murders committed by angry men in cartels or angry men with SUVs in India but not angry men with shotguns in America.
Obviously the falling tree is not reflective of the journalistic climate in the country, but if they had been the only two the US would not have been listed. The mass shooting is what put it within the same neighborhood as Mexico and India.
Here's the latest one of these, which as usual does not feature America: https://rsf.org/sites/default/files/medias/file/2023/12/Bila....
Sorry I might have missed this.
I live in India, and I've never heard of nationalist mobs running down journalists (plural?!) with trucks.
Do you have any links to share? Google doesn't give me anything.
Probably different measuring / classifications at play too. For example, they may be including independent journalists in one set vs only recognized outlets in another.
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edit, they have the following note in the barometer
> Journalists are listed only if RSF has established that their death or imprisonment was linked to their journalistic activity. The list does not include journalists who were killed or imprisoned for reasons unrelated to their work or when the link to their work has not yet been confirmed.
https://rsf.org/en/barometer?type%5Btue%5D=tue&annee_start=2....
It paints a troubling picture of a leader whose decision-making is distorted by clinging to power at all costs. Undermining democratic norms to appease extremist coalition partners is a dangerous road that could lead Israel to more illiberal and authoritarian policies, especially toward Palestinians, the Arab media, and domestic dissent.
Saturday AM EST, it was reported that Hamas confirmed they were going to accept the deal. By noon Saturday EST, the "Israel-Hamas War"...idk what to call it, live blog? collection-of-news headline?...was gone for the first time in months.
Israel reporting (not just Haaretz) reported huge, multiple, protests (it was at night there, early afternoon EST) due to Israel rejecting a cease fire. Piecing it together from Twitter natsec people, standard blob, certainly not polarized against israel, Israel didn't even send a delegation to the talks, and the far right Israeli leader said Bibi promised him they wouldn't accept "a rushed deal" (i.e. the cease fire), and people were irate. An irate Israeli TV reporter revealed the anonymous "diplomatic source" promising no deal Friday night was Bibi himself.
The blogs are back up now, with a sort of hurried framing that the talks fell apart because Hamas wanted a permanent cease fire (no mention of any of the above -- I assume that'd complicate it too much for, it needs to be a nice little set piece of Israel vs. Hamas.
It's really, really strange watching the coverage the last week, in America, without any attachment to either "side". I guess its easier to push the A vs. B framing on a new subject, our college kids, rather than trying to explain how any of this makes any sense at all.
https://text.npr.org/1248276817
Correcting you on this - the protests were not because Israel "rejected a cease fire".
For one thing, these are the same protests that happen every Saturday for the last few weeks of the war, continuing the "tradition" of protests that happened every Saturday for the ~10 months before the war.
For another, Israel didn't "reject" the ceasefire deal, Hamas did, or at least that's the way it is being talked about by Israel itself. There are many reasons to think Israel (and specifically Netanyahu) may have tried to tank the deal, but Hamas are the ones that eventually walked away.
Frankly, it feels like the only hope for an end to this conflict is in the hands of the internal Israeli political opposition. I wouldn't be surprised if he's not stopped, we're gonna see the same... "approach" used with Palestinian people applied to whatever internal resistance is left.
The reason for asking is because a poll[0] of Palestinians says “90% believe that Hamas did not commit any atrocities against Israel civilians during its October the 7th offensive. Only one in five Palestinians has seen videos showing atrocities committed by Hamas.”
So is it Al Jazeera’s fault that Palestinians have not seen the evidence and seem not to think 10/7 was all that problematic? One assumes that if such deliberate distortion/omission was normal practice at Al Jazeera, Israel would be able to clearly point to it. But the justification for the ban is a pretty vague concern about national security.
[0] https://www.pcpsr.org/en/node/969
Does Gaza have sufficient connectivity for its population to have a real news source?
I’ve also read in the past that Al Jazeera is a rather popular media outlet among Palestinians in Gaza.
> Pan-Arab satellite TVs, especially Qatar's Al-Jazeera, are popular. [1]
I know that Shireen Abu Akleh—an Al Jazeera journalist murdered by IDF in 2022—was a superstar among Palestinians, including Palestinans in Gaza.
1: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-14631745
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If that's true, it makes sense to ask whether Al Jazeera has been purposely feeding misinformation to the Palestinian population during the war. And it makes sense to ask if that is in any way related by Al Jazeera's funding by Qatar, where the leaders of Hamas live: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/qatar-hamas-israel-1.699941...
Thank you for sharing this here.
I know some Palestinians, and yes, they seem extremely misinformed, clueless about what Hamas did.
I was surprised after October 7 when they seemed to have had no idea about what had happened. They apparently only knew that IDF had started bombing. I might even guessed 95% instead of 90% "believe that Hams did not ...".
Al Jazeera lies by omission -- by not mentioning what Hamas did, and, if it does, then downplaying the numbers.
The Israeli newspapers lie by omission, too: they don't let their readers know how many civilians Netanyahu and IDF has killed in Gaza. Al Jazeera and right wing Israeli newspapers manipulate the Palestinians and Israelis, respectively.
> ask whether Al Jazeera has been purposely feeding misinformation to the Palestinian population during the war
Of course they do
I think they have more pressing matters on their mind than getting informed at the moment, such as trying not to starve, finding dead relatives in the rubble of destroyed apartments, and similar things.
Moreover, I think the people of Palestine might be a bit biased against Israel. And I don't think that's an information issue, I think it's a completely natural response to Israel killing tens of thousands of civilian, 70% of whom women and children.
I think if you ask Ukrainian civilians what they think of Russians you'll hear some falsehoods and unreasonable stuff too. That's a completely natural response, and the Ukrainian media is not to be blamed for that.
Qatar did both of those things at the request of the US and Israel. Qatar serves as an intermediary between the US/Israel and Hamas, just as it served as an intermediary for talks between the US and the Taliban.
> Like many of these seemingly weird decisions, there's more to it than "Israel bad".
The motivation here is clearly to stop information about what is happening in Gaza from reaching the outside world. Al Jazeera is the only major international news agency with a significant presence on the ground there.
"Like all foreign news organizations operating in Israel, CNN’s Jerusalem bureau is subject to the rules of the Israel Defense Forces’s censor, which dictates subjects that are off-limits for news organizations to cover, and censors articles it deems unfit or unsafe to print. ... the military censor recently restricted eight subjects, including security cabinet meetings, information about hostages, and reporting on weapons captured by fighters in Gaza. In order to obtain a press pass in Israel, foreign reporters must sign a document agreeing to abide by the dictates of the censor."
https://theintercept.com/2024/01/04/cnn-israel-gaza-idf-repo...
https://theintercept.com/2023/12/23/israel-military-idf-medi...
The stated reason is "to keep journalists safe". But journalists have risked their lives in many conflicts to bring the news to people, its their choice to risk their life or not. Unless one were to believe that all journalists biased against israel, there is no reason to restrict all journalists. Why not let in Christiane Amanpour, or many other western trained and western paid journalists?
https://www.timesofisrael.com/high-court-says-israel-can-kee...
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If your government cannot protect the country from journalists, then you should force them to resign, and call for new elections.
Once you’ve established that the government can unilaterally ban a voice for reasons of “national security” you’ve essentially given them a free pass. As Americans living post-9/11 will know, “national security” is a deliberately elastic term that can cover anything required in the moment.
The USA seems to not have followed through (as far as I know - as Russian news sites seem to be available).
Israeli news reports and analysts say Qatar has sent more than $1 billion to Gaza over the past decade.
Qatar sent that aid through fuel to the Gaza Strip's Hamas government, which in turn sold it and paid partial salaries. In the past, the money was sent via suitcases stuffed with cash.
Israel allowed these transfers to Hamas. Supporters of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu say the payments his government approved helped keep the status quo in the Gaza Strip and Hamas from escalating attacks on Israel.
https://www.npr.org/2023/11/02/1210110109/qatar-israel-gaza-...
I read Clark's Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia (<https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002RI9PMM/>) right after hearing about YouTube shutting down Russian state media channels. I was surprised to learn in the book of the extent of the freedom of the press in late 18th-century Prussia. A British visitor wrote that people were as free to speak as back home, citing a work that was very critical of the king in the context of Poland. During the Napoleonic wars, despite the existential threat to Prussia from France, at least four newspapers that celebrated Revolutionary France as the next step in human freedom were allowed to publish.
It's always preferable to counter propaganda with free speech. Even liars deserve the opportunity to speak. This is especially true when there is no formally declared war between US/Europe outside Ukraine and Russia.
Yes it did. And that was a dark day for Europe.
rt.com, enter… loads instantaneously.
sputnikglobe.com, enter… loads instantaneously.
Please don’t lie.
Edit: it was not a lie, my apologies.
One of the most ineffectual bans I have ever seen.
This is mostly a symbolic move that will make very little difference. Likely it will push Al Jazeera to be more anti-Israeli but I'm sure they can make up (pun intended) for their lack of physical presence in the region. People that want to consume that content in Israel will have no problem (many already get this via satellite).
A by the way is that this can still be challenged in the courts. If Al Jazeera chooses to go to the supreme court I imagine there's a pretty good chance that the decision will get overturned. They might intentionally decide not to do that because that outcome will put Israel in a positive light.
Clearly they're not doing that, just criticizing the government.
The obvious next step is outlawing any speech criticizing the government (or rather 'speech that is a threat to national security'), then you've got the same laws as in Russia.
They were not closed because they're "criticizing the government". They were closed because they're acting on behalf of a foreign agent and spreading propaganda (I think the actual language "is harmed national security"). Qatar is not a free country, it funds Al-Jazeera, it hosts the Hamas leadership.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/al-jazeera/
"Mixed for factual reporting due to failed fact checks that were not corrected and misleading extreme editorial bias that favors Qatar."
In my own industry I commonly hear people talk about self regulation in order to keep governments from interfering. This has benefits, but it also makes the action of the industry a dialog between government and private sector. Voluntarily removing undesired content is technically not censorship ordered by the government, but it is also not completely separated from the wishes of the government.
One of the genuine cultural differences between the US and Israel is that while Americans prefer greater liberty (even if it means less security), Israelis prefer greater security (even if it means less liberty). Which is to say, both cultures appreciate both values, but they have different priorities.
Israel is a country where you will have your bags searched before entering shopping malls or train stations. That Israelis' privacy is violated on a daily basis by other Israelis is popular. There is a sense that the privacy violations are genuinely needed, result in genuine protection, and are not abused by those in power.
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but you had no say in the matter; so if a future ban is not in your interest, what will you do?
no, the government should not stifle the market of ideas. that is not in our interest in the long run.
It is not in my interest, to become more like authorian russia for the sake of fighting them.
It wasn't in the interest of freedom. Everyone reading it would know it was the russian spin. But now we are not allowed to know what the russians think. After all thinking of them as humans like us is not something we want right?
Do you believe Al Jazeera is spreading misinformation? Even if Israel says so? Even if the USA starts saying so as well?
I don't know where we can draw a line here.
I would never expect any theocracy to be a bastion of democracy. Israel can't really realize its goals and be free at the same time. Those goals are not compatible.
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https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/mar/18/will-ofcoms-de...
Notice a pattern with the British Govt? They get their "independent" depts and businesses to do their dirty work for deniability!
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