The Shameful Shutdown of Al Jazeera in Israel

Democracy really does die in darkness.

In an appallingly authoritarian move, Israel has ordered Al Jazeera to shutter its offices in the country. The network, Israel says, poses a national security threat. This seems to be the first time Israel has shut down an international news network, and it is doing so in the midst of a war in Gaza — a war that Israel has made exceedingly difficult for foreign news outlets to cover. Al Jazeera is far from a perfect news source, to put it mildly. But they are also the foreign outlet doing the most in-depth, round-the-clock, on-the-ground coverage of this war. And whatever you think of their coverage or how their Qatari ownership influences it, it is profoundly undemocratic and, yes, authoritarian to shut down an entire news network because you’re unhappy with how they’ve covered your war. Israel’s arguments that Al Jazeera has put their soldiers at risk, is a Hamas mouthpiece, and is an “incitement network” simply do not justify their actions here.

Al Jazeera, like many news networks, is a bit of a mixed bag. Many, many of their journalists have reported bravely and admirably through this war and others. Al Jazeera’s coverage of this war has been non-stop, and while I can’t find numbers, the network does seem to have many more journalists on the ground in Gaza than any other foreign news outlet. Israel has been absolutely atrocious about giving journalists necessary access to cover this war, something dozens of the world’s most prominent journalists have publicly objected to. Government actions, and particularly wars, carried out without oversight are ripe for abuses. While camera phones and social media can create something of a check, there are real limitations: “citizen journalists” simply don’t have the credibility that institutional ones do; random social media videos can be said to be any number of things, and disinformation campaigns have been rampant during this war; and in the intensity of conflict, it’s not always possible to tell exactly what one is even seeing, which is why journalistic institutions check and double-check various claims and should only publish what they can confirm. During this war, Al Jazeera journalists have time and again been the only reporters around. Their work has been brave and essential.

This is not the first time Al Jazeera has been targeted by governments. In the past, others in the neighborhood, including Egypt, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia, have at various times banned the network for reasons similar to those Israel gave: threats to national security, pushing a Qatari agenda, trafficking in bias and misinformation.

Al Jazeera is a Qatari outlet, and while it claims total independence from the government, those claims have at times seemed shaky. Its coverage of this war has been exceedingly hostile to Israel (to be clear, some other outlets have been exceedingly deferential to Israel — bias is not confined to Al Jazeera) and the network has, in my opinion, sometimes been far too deferential and even sympathetic to Hamas, a pattern its engaged in with other fundamentalist groups over the years. I’ve been pretty stunned by the behavior of several Al Jazeera journalists on social media, who don’t seem beholden by many of the same rules of engagement as reporters at, say, the New York Times. I’ve observed many instances of Al Jazeera reporters sharing totally unverified information, using wildly incendiary language, and refusing to adhere to even the most basic standards of journalistic fairness — stuff that would get any reporter fired from a reputable outlet in the US (although probably not from a Fox News, or from an op/ed page). The network has at times veered into the flagrant antisemitic, including Holocaust denial.

Much more often, though, the issue seems to be clear bias rather than blatant bigotry. That said, the network’s center of gravity and its audience is not New York and New York liberals, it’s the Arab world, and their reporting, coverage, and perspective reflect all of that. What seems fair in my eyes is not the One True Definition of fairness, and what seems biased is also defined by where I sit in the world. I have bigger concerns about their transparency and accountability. Al Jazeera has gotten several big, important stories wrong in its coverage of this war, which is not all that unusual given the circumstances (I don’t think any outlet has been correct 100% of the time), but they are not always particularly great at issuing public corrections and retractions, which is a real problem. I’m not particularly confident in their fact-checking procedures or their corrections procedures. I would not make Al Jazeera my sole source of information about this war or anything else. But as one of many sources, they’re an important one. And again, they are a huge and sprawling network, employing hundreds of exceptionally honest, exceptionally talented, exceptionally brave reporters who have been on the front lines of the current conflict, and who have covered many important stories with depth and integrity.

Also: None of that is really material to the matter at hand. I present it only to say that I’m not making this argument because I’m a huge Al Jazeera fan with no qualms about their journalism; I’m making it as a matter of principle, not personal preference.

It is very, very easy and very, very common in moments of national crisis to cede one’s values in response to what feels like an acute threat. Those of us in the US have certainly seen this play out many times, from McCarthyism to Japanese internment to the “you’re with us or you’re against us” insanity of the post-9/11 era to the invasion of Iraq. Over and over again, the times when we suspend our principles out of fear wind up being among the ugliest and most regrettable moments in our histories.

Israel has become far less democratic since the rise of the broader Israeli right and the empowerment of Benjamin Netanyahu and his greater coalition of extremists, religious fundamentalists, and power-hungry autocrats. But Israel does still fancy itself a democracy even as it behaves less and less like one, and I imagine most people who care about its future, the wellbeing of its citizens, and the wellbeing of its neighbors very much hope it corrects from its current course. Banning a news network, even in the name of national security, is from the autocrat’s playbook, not the democrat’s.

Israel should also want to have the Arab world’s ear. Al Jazeera, for all its flaws, is a bridge — and the network does give Israeli spokespeople and the government their say. Shutting them down and raiding their offices may be a satisfying power play for reactionaries, but it doesn’t set the country on the path to what should be long-term goals: Regional normalization and peaceful coexistence.

Those goals, of course, may not be shared by Netanyahu, who seems primarily interested in staying out of jail and maintaining his grip on power. But what’s best for Bibi, it turns out, is often what’s very much not what’s best for his country.

You don’t have to like Al Jazeera to support the network’s right to work in Israel, and in any other self-styled free and open democratic country (and in autocratic ones, too). There are a great many news outlets around the world that I think are deeply biased, bordering on dangerous, and sometimes crossing that border. But I also overwhelmingly think it’s a mistake to hand leaders the power to shut news outlets down. And it’s especially dangerous to see Israel shutting down Al Jazeera in the middle of a war in which Al Jazeera journalists have had better access than reporters from any other international network — in part because of Al Jazeera’s round-the-clock coverage of the war, and in part because Israel will simply not let most foreign journalists into Gaza to do their jobs.

Israel is now beginning its incursion into Rafah. There are not enough journalists on the ground. War, always, is hell. But it stands to reason that things get much more hellish if no watchdogs are watching.

xx Jill