This Sunday, the Israeli government approved a bill to block the Lebanese news channel Al-Mayadeen, a Hezbollah affiliate, from broadcasting in the country and signed an order to confiscate its equipment and block its websites.
Last May, the Israeli government adopted the same procedure with the Qatari channel Al Jazeera.
In a statement, Israeli Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi’s spokesman announced the order and recalled that in November, shortly after the war in Gaza (where some 40,000 people have already died), the security cabinet voted to shut down the satellite news station Al Mayadeen, but that measure expired in January.
The decision to block the station – both its channels and the work of its journalists in Israel – came after “the reappearance of terrorist representatives posing as journalists about fifteen days ago,” the statement said, appearing to allude to the presence of at least one Al-Mayadeen reporter in Majdal Shams, in the occupied Golan Heights, the day after a rocket killed 12 children on a soccer field.
The Al-Mayadeen website essentially recounts the Hezbollah-backed version of events: that it was an Israeli interceptor missile that struck Majdal Shams, not a Shiite missile. Both Israel and the United States claim that the blast was caused by an Iranian-made Falak-1 missile, part of the Lebanese group’s arsenal.
Al-Mayadeen condemned the decree on his English-language X account on Sunday, calling it “a blatant attack on freedom of expression and an attempt to hide the truth.”
Israel’s decision is based on the so-called “Al Jazeera law,” a temporary order that allows the Israeli government to shut down foreign media outlets it deems harmful to the security of the state.
“Al-Mayadeen has been covering and reporting on Israeli atrocities in Gaza, the occupied West Bank and other occupied Palestinian territories long before Operation Al-Aqsa Flood began on October 7, 2023,” X said in a post on social media, referring to the Hamas attack that killed 1,200 people and took nearly 250 hostages.
“These aggressive actions target the core purpose of journalism: uncovering the truth, informing the public and discrediting widespread misinformation about global issues,” he added.
Author: Lusa
Source: CM Jornal
I am Michael Melvin, an experienced news writer with a passion for uncovering stories and bringing them to the public. I have been working in the news industry for over five years now, and my work has been published on multiple websites. As an author at 24 News Reporters, I cover world section of current events stories that are both informative and captivating to read.