It doesn't seem so long ago that Israel claimed to be "the only democracy in the Middle East"!
Accusations about Israeli censorship of the media went mainstream in the US recently when the New York Times published an opinion piece headlined: The Israeli Censorship Regime is Growing. That Needs to Stop. <https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/17/opinion/gaza-journalists-censorship-israel.html?searchResultPosition=1> (https://www.juancole.com/2024/04/government-journalists-covering.html) Israel champions itself as a democracy and a bastion of press freedom in the region. Its actions tell a very different story. The high rate of journalists’ deaths and arrests, including a slew in the West Bank <https://cpj.org/reports/2023/05/deadly-pattern-20-journalists-died-by-israeli-military-fire-in-22-years-no-one-has-been-held-accountable/#accused-of-terrorism>; laws allowing its government to shut down foreign news outlets deemed a security risk, which the prime minister has explicitly threatened to use against Al Jazeera <https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/4/1/israeli-pm-netanyahu-revives-push-to-shut-down-al-jazeera>; and its refusal to permit foreign journalists independent access to Gaza all speak to a leadership that is deliberately restricting press freedom. That is the hallmark of a dictatorship, not a democracy. Governments and military regimes the world over like to say that censorship — including outside of war settings — is necessary to protect national security. In fact, the opposite is true. Without independent witnesses to war, atrocities can be enacted with impunity on all sides. Israel must open Gaza to journalists, and Israel’s allies must insist on it. Justice and democracy depend on it. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/17/opinion/gaza-journalists-censorship-israel.html Israel is Silencing Internal Critics https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/02/opinion/israel-free-speech-hamas-palestine.html -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#30092): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/30092 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/105750766/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
