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Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

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Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#141
post #18

How much precedent is there for this? Are there parallels for other countries? Does the US prohibit any news agencies from operating in our borders? Does Europe? Does Russia? Does China? I presume North Korea does, but I don't actually know. These aren't designed to be leading questions. I don't know the answers, and rather than searching, I figured someone else here might know offhand.

RT and PressTV are banned in quite a few western countries.

Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#142
post #79
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU has banned many Russian and Belarussian news sources since the invasion of Ukraine. The USA seems to not have followed through (as far as I know - as Russian news sites seem to be available).

Is Qatar a belligerent in the war? Belarus has allowed Russia to use their territory as a point from which to launch both ground assaults and missiles into Ukraine. Hard to say the same about Qatar and Hamas. If Al Jazeera were an Iranian publication the comparison might be more similar. Israeli news reports and analysts say Qatar has sent more than $1 billion to Gaza over the past decade. Qatar sent that aid through…

Since when is the entire Europe a party in the war on Ukraine?

Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#143
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Words are not knifes. People eventually will adapt to lies and weird things. And truth will find a way. I really see it differently that both ends are equally bad. After all, on the same night that the BBC announced 500 dead after the "bombing" at a hospital in Gaza, which turned out to be a Hamas missile that fell and killed at most 50 there... crowds took to the streets and created a threat to Israeli embassies a…

Correction: a PIJ rocket, not a Hamas rocket.

Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#145
post #120

How big a share of Palestinian media consumption does Al Jazeera have? As in, do the residents of Gaza treat it as the main news source? The reason for asking is because a poll[0] of Palestinians says “90% believe that Hamas did not commit any atrocities against Israel civilians during its October the 7th offensive. Only one in five Palestinians has seen videos showing atrocities committed by Hamas.” So is it Al Jaze…

> do the residents of Gaza treat it as the main news source?

Does Gaza have sufficient connectivity for its population to have a real news source?

Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#146
post #18

How much precedent is there for this? Are there parallels for other countries? Does the US prohibit any news agencies from operating in our borders? Does Europe? Does Russia? Does China? I presume North Korea does, but I don't actually know. These aren't designed to be leading questions. I don't know the answers, and rather than searching, I figured someone else here might know offhand.

RT was heavily censored in the USA and is banned in several European countries. Press censorship is pretty much the norm in 'western democracies' similar to everywhere else.

> RT was heavily censored in the USA

Really?

I am a long way away, but I thought the constitution prevented that

Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#147
post #12

@dang -- you're not going to get the polite, respectful conversation on this topic that I think you're hoping for. Instead, you're going to get criticisms on the legitimacy of each organization involved in this conflict. I don't understand why you even want this topic on HackerNews.

Having spent entire days moderating previous threads on this topic, I know what kind of conversation we're likely to get. But abandoning discussion altogether is also not an option. > I don't understand why you even want this topic on HackerNews. I don't think I'd say 'want' (what I want is to spend Sunday afternoons working on something else), but the issue is the principles by which we moderate the site. If you loo…

This point inadvertently exposes an aspect of information management which is sorely unaddressed and inadequate to purposes of understanding within a commonwealth:

That situations conflict which are already well understood to history are regurgitated as mysteries, and the knowledge system is practically useless to providing coherent access to previous experience and context.

When a mod has to write:

> If you look at and the links back from there, you should find more than enough (indeed, frequently repeated) explanations of the relevant points. If you (or anyone) want to familiarize yourself with those answers and still have a question I haven't addressed, I'd be happy to try.

Why has a new thread been created?

Why isn't this article and the attending thread of comments already situated within existing paths of discourse helping readers to assess the long prevailing (say 100 years) of understanding on the topic and identify, explore and integrate the outlying views? Why hasn't all the redundant and trivial junk of the previous thread been sifted and gleaned into salient regards for the situation?

Does any media apparatus help with us with knowing how what's happening today relates to what we understood yesterday and the days before?

Why is all news manifest as a reverse chronological list of forgettery, de-contextualized factoids and rediscovery of precedents among initiates?

Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#148
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this some kind of rhetorical question? Qatar is the main funder of Hamas regime. And hosting Hamas leadership. They fund Hamas more than Iran, according to Israeli intelligence (which may be wrong but that’s the source we have)

> Qatar is the main funder of Hamas regime Iran is Hamas' main backer. Qatar funded Hamas with Israel's consent, so it's not really fair to hold this against Doha. (Their continuing to host Hamas' leadership is fair to criticise.)

In July 2017, former CIA director David Petraeus revealed that Qatar has hosted the Hamas leadership at the request of US.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatar_and_state-sponsored_terr...

Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#149
post #24

Is there anyone else who doesn't support either side of this conflict? They've been fighting each other for over 100 years. They both want the same piece of land. It's on them to figure it out. People around the world don't need to 'pick a side'. We can protest for both sides to sort their shit out, and not drag the rest of us into it.

I'd say quite a lot of people are not particularly invested in any "side" but are repulsed by obvious war crimes. What makes this situation uniquely toxic is how America and most of its allies vehemently insist on total impunity for the crimes of one side.

I think it's less the impunity and more the active supporting. The US is building a floating pier and air-dropping aid instead of simply pressuring Israel's government to let trucks through.

Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#150
"and block its websites." So this keeps Israelis from reading Al Jazeera.

Now that's new. Israel started Internet censorship in 2017.[1] Initially it was limited to "terror group websites, online illegal gambling, prostitution services, hard drug sales". At the time, "due to warnings from rights groups that the law poses a slippery slope toward additional censorship, the final version of the legislation dictates that rights groups may appeal the decisions."

Then, in 2021, there was the "Facebook bill", authorizing very broad censorship.[2] That does not seem to have passed. It was first proposed in 2016, almost passed in 2018 [3], tried in 2021, and tried again in 2022. It doesn't seem to have passed.

But something new happened recently. Wikipedia has a note at Censorship in Israel: "This article needs to be updated. The reason given is: New ban issued by the knesset on foreign media channels. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (April 2024)"[4] The Knesset gave the government the authority to ban foreign media on April 1, 2024.[5]

This isn't just about preventing outside media from reporting from Israel. It keeps Israelis from viewing media the government doesn't like. Haarez has good coverage.[6]

The US White House press secretary issued a weak statement condemning Israel's action, but it was on April 1st and the costumed Easter Bunny overshadowed that statement.[7]

[1] https://www.timesofisrael.com/to-tackle-online-crime-israel-...

[2] https://www.timesofisrael.com/proposed-censorship-bill-more-...

[3] https://www.timesofisrael.com/how-israel-nearly-destroyed-fr...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Israel

[5] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/israels-knesset-approve...

[6] https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-05-05/ty-article/is...

[7] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/press-briefings/202...

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