In wartime the first victim is the truth, the second is freedom of the press and the third is memory. This case is a clear demonstration of this Al Jazeera which, according to today's newspaper headlines, Israel would like to ban.
In reality, on Monday the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, approved a law that allows the government to close a foreign broadcaster if it is considered “damage to state security”. That the main suspect is Al Jazeera (which is based in Qatar) is obvious given that Netanyahu has defined it as “a channel of terror”, even if it is not clearly indicated in the text of the law. For the Minister of Communications Shlomo Karhthe network would be nothing more than a “propaganda arm of Hamas” and it is “intolerable that a media outlet, with press credentials from the government press office and offices in Israel, would act from within against us in times of war” .
The law provides that by decree the Minister of Communications can close the Israeli offices of a broadcaster, confiscate the equipment and take the website offline. The notice will have duration of 45 days, renewable for another 45 days. A scandal? The idea that a government can close newspapers or television stations at will is certainly horrible, so much so that even the United States reacted to the news by calling it “deeply worrying“. Small problem: neither the US nor those who cry scandal today said anything when the European Union (I repeat: the European Union) banned two Russian networks shortly after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine.
The move of Netanyahu it is wrong, because it is not democratic. But the point is the hypocrisy of those who pretend to be scandalized today: in Europe we are not in a position to give lessons.
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