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![Al Jazeera was one of the first networks to broadcast worldwide in Arabic from within Israel. The photo was taken at the network's West Jerusalem office.](https://scpr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/f5a16a3/2147483647/strip/true/crop/200x300+0+0/resize/200x300!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.npr.org%2Fprograms%2Fatc%2Ffeatures%2F2008%2Fmar%2Faljazeera200-2b8496d16abf6cc5c46c14d0b8644adcb18c8c44.jpg)
Al Jazeera was one of the first networks to broadcast worldwide in Arabic from within Israel. The photo was taken at the network’s West Jerusalem office.
The Arabic television news network Al Jazeera is facing a de facto boycott from the Israeli government, which calls it a “tool of Hamas.” Al Jazeera has criticized the boycott as anti-democratic and an affront to basic press freedom.
Twelve years ago, Al Jazeera caused a stir when it began sending reporters to Israel. For decades, Arab media largely boycotted Israel. Al Jazeera broke new ground and was the first Arab network to broadcast Israel.
That’s no longer the case, says Walid O’Malley, Al Jazeera’s Jerusalem bureau chief.
“Last month, they refused to appear on Al Jazeera. [are] trying to blackmail us. Maybe they want us to change our coverage,” O’Malley says.
Although Israel has not issued an official notice of boycott, the de facto policy has further strained relations between the Israeli government and one of the first news networks to broadcast in Arabic from within Israel to the rest of the world.
Israeli officials today accused the network of acting as a propaganda arm for the Islamic extremist group Hamas, which Israel and Western countries list as a terrorist organization.
A senior Israeli official, who asked that his name not be used, said Al Jazeera’s Arabic-language broadcasts “have become a tool of Hamas. They are collaborating with Hamas to incite terrorism.”
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesperson Aleye Mekelle said that even though Al Jazeera broadcasts pro-Hamas messages 24 hours a day, “a two-minute statement from a spokesperson does not really make a difference.”
“Since it’s used as a fig leaf, we decided it’s best not to use it for the time being,” Mekel said.
He said the government is still communicating with Al Jazeera about new English-language news, but not with the Arabic side. Mekelle said the government’s problems with the network had increased during recent Israeli military attacks inside the Hamas-held Gaza Strip, following Palestinian rocket attacks on the southern Israeli town of Sderot and the port city of Ashkelon. .
Al Jazeera, he says, ran gruesome photos of Palestinian civilians killed in Gaza without bothering to seek Israeli opinion or cover the bloodshed in Gaza in context.
Mekelle also accused Al Jazeera Arabia of staging some of its coverage of the Gaza power outage after Israel cut electricity supplies to the strip earlier this year.
“They have fabricated events for dramatic effect,” he says.
Al Jazeera’s O’Malley called the accusations outrageous and wrong. He said Israel’s removal of the network was a dangerous violation of press and freedom of speech.
Al Jazeera has faced formal and unofficial boycotts and sanctions in the past. The US-backed Iraqi government forced Al Jazeera out of the country in 2004. In the past, U.S. forces in Iraq have detained Al Jazeera journalists and accused them of colluding with rebel groups. Several authoritarian Arab governments, including Saudi Arabia, continue to ban the network’s reporters from operating in their countries.
O’Malley argues that Israeli media consistently presents a sanitized view of the violence in Gaza and too often uncritically supports the Jewish state and its policies.
Meanwhile, a senior Israeli government official confirmed that the government is considering other punitive measures against Al Jazeera Arabic, including possible restrictions on visas and government press passes.
Copyright 2022 NPR. For more information, please visit https://www.npr.org.
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