On September 22 at roughly 3 a.m, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) raided the Al Jazeera bureau in Ramallah, Palestine. The raid and subsequent closure of the bureau are two of many instances in Israel’s extensive history of journalistic censorship.
Even though Ramallah is in Palestine, the order to close the bureau came from Israeli military authority. It cited Al Jazeera’s “incitement of terrorism” as the reason for the 45-day shutdown.
Ramallah bureau journalists present at the scene were told to take their personal belongings and leave their cameras behind before being escorted out. Jivara Budeiri, a journalist for the bureau, observed that the Israeli soldiers were accompanied by engineers, who she believes were there to destroy the bureau’s online archives.
No one from the Al Jazeera team was injured during the raid, but journalists were unable to report on it, as they were threatened with lasers on the military squad’s weapons if they moved.
The closure order is a direct violation of the 1993 Oslo Accords, which divided the West Bank into three different areas.
Palestine reigns over Area A, which is where Ramallah is located. Israel reigns over Area C, and the two have joint ownership over Area B. This is not the first time that Israel has illegally occupied and policed Area A territories.
In 2023, Israel set a record number of approvals for new ‘settlement’ homes in occupied Palestine, totaling 12,855 units. This year, authorities approved the appropriation of almost 5 square kilometers of land, which is the largest single appropriation of Palestinian land since the Oslo accords. As these settlements grow, so does Israeli dominance and military control.
Settler violence and IDF military raids have increased in the past two years. Before October 7, 2023 was already the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank since the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) began tracking casualties in 2008. Since October 7, over 630 Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem have been killed.
This year, the IDF has continuously targeted civilians in the West Bank. On October 3, Israel carried out an airstrike on the Tulkarem refugee camp, killing 18 Palestinians.
Al Jazeera reports on human rights violations and military actions in the West Bank and Gaza, and some suspect that Israel hopes to stop the exposure of its war crimes—which include this attack on a civilian population—by closing the news outlet’s Ramallah branch. This objective, however, has been unsuccessful. This week, Al Jazeera released two documentaries about Israel’s internationally recognized war crimes in Gaza.
Starving Gaza, an Al Jazeera Fault Lines documentary, was released on Sunday, September 29. It shows Israel’s deliberate starvation of Palestinians by blocking humanitarian aid—and how the U.S. kept sending arms despite overwhelming evidence of the war crime.
Investigating war crimes in Gaza, a feature length film made by Al Jazeera’s Investigative unit (I-Unit), came out 3 days ago. Using “the medium of photos and videos posted online by Israeli soldiers themselves,” and interviews with military, human rights, and international law experts, the I-Unit exposes both war crimes and the complicity of western governments in the Gaza genocide. Additionally, by identifying the IDF soldiers who posted or are in the videos, the I-Unit provides an easier pathway for them to be tried at the International Criminal Court.
On September 22, the day of the raid on the Ramallah bureau, the U.S. presidential election was 43 days away, and it has been speculated that Israel’s decision to shut down the bureau for 45 days was calculated and intentional. Since Israel declared “war” against Palestine, many Americans have become disillusioned with the U.S. government’s active funding of the apartheid state’s genocidal campaign in Gaza and the West Bank.
As Israel continues its onslaught against Palestinians, its grip has tightened around other adjacent countries, including Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iran, which have all been subjected to air strikes, lootings, explosives and shootings by the IDF since October 7. U.S. funding of such extensive violence across the Middle East has greatly influenced the presidential choice of countless American voters. Without the Ramallah bureau’s coverage on the genocide in Gaza, crucial insight into Palestine will be lost, which could influence the outcome presidential election and the continued U.S. funding of the Israeli apartheid state.
Although Al Jazeera has proved that cracking down on press freedoms won’t stop the exposure of Israel’s crimes, Israel’s persecution of journalists doesn’t start—or end—at the Ramallah raid.
In December 2023, less than three months into the genocide, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said it was “the most dangerous situation for journalists” ever documented by the organization.
Since October 7, Israel has killed at least 138 journalists and media workers, including seven Al Jazeera reporters and contributors. Palestinian journalists have been repeatedly threatened by the IDF, bombed in areas where no fighting is taking place, and subject to psychological torture after being arrested.
The psychological torture, however, is not limited to those who have been arrested. In the past year, Israel has both bombed the families of many Palestinian journalists and forced others to evacuate.
In October 2023, Israel killed the wife, son, daughter and grandson of Wael Al-Dahdouh, the bureau chief of Al Jazeera Gaza. Israel continued its torture in January and killed Dahdouh’s oldest son, Hamza Al-Dahdouh, who was also a journalist.
Before Palestinian photographer Motaz Azaiza left Gaza, he reported that Israeli drones were hovering above his home and that he was receiving death threats from unknown numbers. In his departure announcement on Instagram, he wrote that he had to evacuate for many reasons, including some that were unknown to the public.
While Al-Dahdouh and Azaiza now reside in Qatar, Palestinian journalists still struggle to survive while reporting on the genocide. On Monday, Wafa Aludaini—a well-known journalist who spoke English and worked with international news outlets—was killed in a direct attack on her home. Plestia Alaqad, a Palestinian journalist who escaped Gaza last November, is stuck in another warzone after moving to Lebanon to complete her education.
Two of Gaza’s youngest journalists, 9-year-old Lama Abu Jamous and 11-year-old Sumayya Wushah, continue reporting instead of enjoying their childhood (something children in Palestine are rarely able to do). Among others, Bisan Owda—who won the journalism Emmy award for Outstanding Hard News Feature Story despite backlash—also remains in the Gaza Strip.
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Israel and its military are no stranger to journalistic censorship.
On May 5, the Knesset, Israel’s legislature, unanimously voted to ban Al Jazeera from operating inside the “country”—a decision that has been upheld to this day. Israel is so comprehensive in its censorship that the IDF has a unit called the Israeli military censor, which is dedicated to censoring any internal media coverage that may endanger the “security of the state.”
The Israeli military censor is an extension of the Emergency Regulations of 1945, a law first made by the British Mandate authorities in Palestine that granted the government and law enforcement more power to suppress resistance. In 1951, 3 years after the British Mandate ended, the Knesset adopted the Emergency Regulations’ policy on detention, search and seizure, curfews and censorship in the name of “national security.”
According to +972 Magazine, the military censor banned the highest number of articles from internal news outlets in over a decade in 2023, fully censoring 613 articles and partially censoring 2,703. On average, the military blocked information from being published from Israel over nine times a day.
Israel’s censorship extends far beyond its borders, contaminating countless Western news outlets through biased external review. As reported by The Intercept, every CNN journalist covering Israel and Palestine is required to submit their work prior to publication for review by CNN’s Jerusalem bureau. Because the news outlet’s Jerusalem bureau is located in Israel, it follows the Israeli military censor, thus subjecting CNN to the same censorship that is reserved for Israel-based publications.
While the censorship policy has been in place long before October 7 under the guise of “accurate reporting,” it begs the question: if CNN has its work reviewed in the name of objectivity and accuracy, then why isn’t there a bureau in Palestine? Why has no independent media had access to Gaza since the beginning of the genocide?
In addition to censorship, the IDF and Israeli settlers have consistently detained and assaulted journalists. Israel detained 130 journalists in 2022 in what was described as “a brazen violation of all international laws and norms that guarantee the freedom of opinion and expression.” That same year, Palestinian photojournalist Hazem Nasser was interrogated while doing his job and charged with incitement for unrelated reasons.
Since October 7, Israeli authorities have arrested 66 journalists in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. 43 remain under arrest, including Nasser, who was arrested again on July 24. Nasser is one of 10 unreleased prisoners currently being held under “administrative detention,” a policy where military commanders can detain individuals indefinitely, without charge, “on the grounds of preventing them from committing a future offense.”
In May 2023, a year after Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was killed while wearing a press vest and covering a raid on the Jenin Refugee Camp in the West Bank, the CPJ published a report on Israel’s “deadly pattern” of targeting and killing journalists.
Journalists are protected as civilians under international law, and deliberately targeting them is a war crime. However, between 2001 and 2023, IDF soldiers killed at least 20 journalists—crimes that, according to the report, “no one has ever been charged or held accountable for.”
According to the International Federation of Journalists, the mortality rate for journalists in Gaza is 10%, significantly higher than any other occupational group. The CPJ has verified the murders of 5 journalists who the Israeli military deliberately targeted after October 7: Issam Abdallah, Hamza Al Dahdouh, Mustafa Thuraya, Ismail Al Ghoul, and Rami Al Refee. The deaths of more than 10 journalists who were killed by the Israeli military are still under review.
During the raid on Al Jazeera’s Ramallah bureau, IDF soldiers were filmed tearing down a memorial poster of Shireen Abu Akleh, who was shot in the head by an IDF soldier almost three years ago. The Israeli military has demonstrated a complete disregard for human life and journalistic integrity in the name of silencing news coverage on the genocide in Palestine.
As Palestinians struggle to survive, Israel continues to target, censor, torture and detain journalists who document its crimes in the West Bank and Gaza. And, despite the United Nations referring to Gaza as Israel’s “live-streamed genocide,” the apartheid state continues without consequence or international intervention.
