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The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) called on Israeli authorities to stop harassing and obstructing Al Jazeera after armed Israeli forces raided the Qatari broadcaster’s office in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah during a live broadcast early Sunday morning, ordered its closure for 45 days, and forced its staff to leave.
“CPJ is deeply alarmed by Israel’s closure of Al Jazeera’s office in the occupied West Bank, just months after it shuttered Al Jazeera’s operations in Israel after deeming it a threat to national security,” said CPJ’s program director, Carlos Martínez de la Serna, in New York. “Israel’s efforts to censor Al Jazeera severely undermine the public’s right to information on a war that has upended so many lives in the region. Al Jazeera’s journalists must be allowed to report at this critical time, and always.”
Al Jazeera aired footage of the raid, during which soldiers confiscated documents and equipment from the office. Soldiers seized the microphone from Al Jazeera’s West Bank bureau chief Walid al-Omari while he was live on air with correspondent Givara Budeiri outside the building. Al Jazeera said the forces also removed a poster of Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian American correspondent murdered by Israeli forces in 2022, from the building.
In May, the Israeli cabinet voted to ban Al Jazeera’s operations in Israel after the country’s parliament passed a law authorizing the shutdown of foreign channels’ broadcasts if the content was deemed to be a threat to the country’s security during the ongoing war.
Until Sunday the broadcaster had continued to operate from Ramallah, a Palestinian city in the West Bank under Israeli military occupation; it still operates in Gaza, where the Israeli military has killed numerous Al Jazeera staff and freelancers since the start of the Israel-Gaza war in October 2023.
Read more about the Israeli forces’ raid on Al Jazeera’s West Bank office and watch CPJ’s CEO Jodie Ginsberg speak with ABC News about the implications of the raid.
Global press freedom updates
- Egypt violates own law by adding 2 years to Alaa Abdelfattah’s prison term
- Iranian Kurdish journalist Fardin Mostafaei detained in undisclosed location
- CPJ concerned by Russia’s arrest in absentia of exiled journalist
- Russia fines 11 journalists, restricts 2 outlets with anti-state laws
- Belarus detains journalist Yauhen Nikalayevich ahead of trial
- Turkey investigates Kurdish journalist for ‘spreading disinformation’ over crime reporting
- Azerbaijani columnist Bahruz Samadov detained on treason charges
- Taliban ban live political broadcasts, step up censorship
- Taliban jams Afghanistan International broadcasts in Kabul
- Hong Kong denies work visa to photojournalist Louise Delmotte
Spotlight
On Monday, CPJ announced its new Climate Crisis Journalist Protection Initiative at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York. The initiative will ensure that journalists reporting on climate issues are able to do so freely and safely by providing climate journalists with assistance, safety training, and other forms of support.
CPJ has raised nearly one-third of the funds needed for the $1 million initiative, which CPJ CEO Jodie Ginsberg unveiled today at the 2024 Clinton Global Initiative meeting. The annual meeting is a venue for civil society groups to publicly commit to action on global problems.
“Journalists probe political corruption and the organized crime networks exploiting natural resources. They report on environmental devastation and the innovations and policies to stop it,” said Ginsberg at the meeting. “Such reporting is becoming increasingly dangerous. Climate change is the issue of our time and one that requires journalists to be able to report freely and safely. This initiative will help ensure that.”
CPJ has long documented climate-related attacks on journalists and has published safety advice on covering extreme weather events, flash floods, and wildfires. In 2001, CPJ established its journalist assistance program to dispense emergency grants to journalists in distress worldwide. In 2023, CPJ provided assistance to 719 journalists from 59 countries.
Read more about our Climate Crisis Journalist Protection Initiative.
What we are reading (and watching)
- Gaza war deadliest conflict on record for journalists — Hala Gorani, NBC News
- Asal Abasian: Exiled Iranian journalist, writer, queer feminist activist — PEN America
- A plan to fund high school newspapers seeks to revive student journalism — Claire Fahy, New York Times
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