Shuttering Al Jazeera: More symbolic than anything - analysis

“In past generations, the Jews were accused of poisoning wells, of using the blood of children to bake matzah, of spreading diseases,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday night at the Holocaust Remembrance Day main ceremony at Yad Vashem. “Today, new plots of genocide and starvation in Gaza are being attributed to us.”

One of the central vehicles for spreading those lies is Al Jazeera, the Qatari-owned news channel with tens of millions of viewers worldwide. On Sunday, the cabinet, acting on a Knesset law passed last month, announced it would shut down the network in Israel.

Perhaps because the announcement and initial steps to implement the closure occurred on a Sunday, the reactions have been surprisingly muted.

Granted, the Foreign Press Association blasted the move as a “dark day for democracy,” and Haaretz editorialized that today it is Al Jazeera, and tomorrow it will be an Israeli media outlet critical of the government. There was not the outrage that one might have expected from various capitals worldwide, however, although US government spokespeople are sure to blast the move when asked about it this week at the daily State Department or White House briefings.

European and Arab capitals, however, may be reluctant to noisily blast Israel over the move since many of them have taken similar steps in the past.

Al Jazeera presenter Abdelkader Aiad works during a live newscast at a studio, in Doha, Qatar, May 5, 2024. (credit: Reuters/Arafat Barbakh)

For instance, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt have all banned Al Jazeera at various points in time. And wouldn’t it be rich if Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan – who holds a world record in arresting journalists and closing down critical media outlets – sounds off on the issue?

Precedent of banning press in Europe

There will be those who, justifiably, argue that Israel does not want to be compared in its treatment of the press to those countries. Then how about Europe?

In March 2022, shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine, the EU banned Russian government-owned RT (Russian Television) and the Sputnik news agency and radio broadcast service for, as EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said at the time, “systematic information manipulation and disinformation… as an operational tool in its assault of Ukraine.”

In other words, these Kremlin-funded media outlets that unabashedly put Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spin on the war were deemed propaganda tools spreading lies about the war in Ukraine. Replace RT and Sputnik with Al Jazeera, and the same could definitely be said about Al Jazeera and the war in Gaza. It is a propaganda tool in the service of Hamas, spreading lies and disinformation about the war in Gaza. If the EU could bar RT, then – using the same measuring stick – Israel can bar Al Jazeera.

Still, should it? Do the benefits outweigh the costs?

First, what are the costs? There is the possible cost to the free press. Democracy thrives on a free and critical press. Will this likely have a chilling effect on freedom of the press in Israel, as Haaretz argued? Is it, indeed, Al Jazeera today and Channel 13 tomorrow?

Probably not. Not everything is a slippery slope, and there are checks to ensure this doesn’t happen.In 2022, just before that year’s elections, then-prime minister Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid Party – in a thinly veiled attempt to financially choke the pro-Netanyahu Channel 14 news channel and perhaps even get its license revoked – petitioned the Central Elections Committee to declare it a propaganda platform. Supreme Court Justice Yitzhak Amit, the committee’s chairman, dismissed the petition.

In fact, there are similar checks inside the Knesset law enabling the shutting down of foreign media outlets that harm “in a real way” the country’s security to ensure that these powers will not be abused, including the need for the decision to be approved every 45 days and for the president or vice president of a district court to sign off on the measure.

The second cost, this one more significant, is the damage such a ban will have to Israel’s image as a liberal democracy with which citizens of other liberal democracies around the world can identify. The argument that Egypt and Saudi Arabia also ban Al Jazeera will not boost Israel’s cause, as those are not the types of regimes Israel wants to be lumped together with.

As to the argument that such a move is permissible since, after all, the EU bans Russian media outlets, that may resonate in the EU, but it will be a tougher sell in the US, whose government did not take similar actions against RT and which has a strong tradition of freedom of the press, protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

Here, it will be necessary for Israel to show, not in general terms but with concrete examples, where Al Jazeera has, as Netanyahu said in announcing the closing of the station, “harmed the security of Israel and incited against IDF soldiers.” Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi said the outlet “incites terrorism at a time of war.”

To fend off charges that the government is just trying to close down an unfriendly media outlet, it should provide an exhaustive list of where Al Jazeera has harmed the country’s security, incited against soldiers, and incited terrorism. It does not have to look too far for these examples, as the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) compiled a long list in a February report, updated in April, entitled: “Al Jazeera Arabic: the Qatari-owned TV Channel that Promotes Islamist Terrorism Worldwide.”

It will also be worth reminding US critics that while Washington might not have taken action against the RT news channel, Apple removed the RT app from its app store, YouTube blocked the channel, and cable distributor DirecTV, streaming service Sling TV, and the satellite TV provider Dish all dropped RT America, which led the English-language 24-hour news channel based in the US to close shop.

Then there is another question: Al Jazeera has tens of millions of viewers worldwide, both in Arabic and English, so does it really matter if the network is unavailable in Israel? What difference will it make? After all, how many Israelis turn to it as their primary news source?

First of all, many Arab Israelis do use it as a news source, let alone Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. But that is beside the point.

Closing Al Jazeera in Israel is mainly symbolic.

During his Yad Vashem speech, Netanyahu said vicious lies are being spread about the Jewish state – lies that are leading to the types of hateful protests seen on campuses in the US and cities around the world; lies that are leading to campaigns delegitimizing Israel; lies that are propelling those questioning Israel’s right to exist.

The question is, how do you fight back against those lies? One way is to battle those lies with the truth. But Israel does not have a media empire that can compete – at least not in the Arab world – with Al Jazeera and spread that truth.

Another way is to go after the propagator of those lies.

The move against Al Jazeera won’t stop it from spreading calumnies about Israel, but it sends a message that the Jewish state will not just sit back and let this happen without at least a symbolic battle. In so doing, it might dent Al Jazeera’s legitimacy, reducing it – at least in the mind of some viewers – from being seen as a legitimate news-gathering organization to a propaganda tool akin to RT.