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Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

theguardian.com

161–170 of 1001 posts

Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#161

I'm not a fan of Al Jazeera myself but this sets a very bad precedent. Israel is winning the war but they are being very short sighted among the decisions they are making.

I wouldn't classify murdering 30k+ civilians (15k+ children), dropping bombs on entire families, being caught[0] executing civilians with drones in plain view, having israeli holocaust scholars and survivors describing israel's actions as "textbook-case of genocide"[1][2], the world seeing israel as an illegitimate pariah state, as "winning", but you do you. [0] "Note that this footage permits no room for "it was a m…

Winning is based on war aims. Israel's were the return of captives and removal of Hamas. It is further along in those aims than it was in the aftermath of the October 7 attacks; that's fairly defined as winning. (Taken to the extreme, Nazi Germany was winning WWII in 1940.)

> the world seeing israel as an illegitimate pariah state

Your other claims are true. This one is not.

Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#162
for anyone reading and wondering what qatar's intentions are with their media arm, they're the largest foreign donor of US institutions: https://tikva.so/qatar

it's not coincidental that these are where all the protests are, and suddenly college students have access to thousands of $ of camping gear...

they're also aggressively anti israel/jew: https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-793560

they employ high journalistic standards for everything but israel.

Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#164
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Israel lets more aid through now than before the October 7th atrocities. That aid is intercepted by Hamas and does not reach the intended recipients.

Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#165
post #20

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.

Yeah, I'm totally with you. At this point it's like the Hatfields and the McCoys. I don't care what was the last thing the other guy did - he did it to get back at you for the second to last thing you did. On the other hand, killing children is always wrong. Fucking stop it.

A man comes into your house. His 2-year old is in a baby carrier on his chest. He has a gun and is firing at you. Your wife and 5 year old son are behind you on the couch, and you have a gun too.

Do you shoot back?

Did you just hesitate? A bullet just scraped your wife on the side of the leg. Hesitated again? Son just got a bullet in his arm.

You fire three bullets. The baby is dead and so is the intruder.

Are you in the wrong here?

---

I'm not saying this is the same as what's happening in Israel and Gaza. But "always wrong", like many views on this conflict, is sorely lacking in nuance.

With thousands of Israelis and tens of thousands of Palestinians killed, ignoring nuance is disrespectful to their memories and will not lead to realistic progress.

Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#166
post #154
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other extreme, Are media that spread misinformation without any due process are just protected indefinitely? Like in this very recent case: https://honestreporting.com/damage-done-how-al-jazeeras-fake... Edit: haaretz link: https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/palestinians/2024-0...

All newspapers get things wrong some of the time. With the best of intentions and best of skills, it ... just happens because the world is just too complex to always be 100% accurate. Of course they should strive to be accurate all of the time, but we also need to be realistic. This applies even more to warzones. What matters is how often this happens and what the response is when it happens. As far as I know, Al Jaz…

> All newspapers get things wrong some of the time.

And what if there are no retraction? only if the backlash is big enough? Like in the case where there were no hundreds of dead in a direct bombing but a 50 dead in a failed PIJ rocked on hospital:

https://archive.is/r6noB

and the same version today:

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2023/10/16/israel-ha...

Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#167
post #8

Reporters Without Borders gathers data and produces some interesting graphics. They recently released their World Press Freedom Index https://rsf.org/en https://rsf.org/en/country/israel --- edit: they appear to keep a list of mirrored news sites to circumvent censorship https://github.com/RSF-RWB/collateralfreedom (was hoping they had data available for their index, but have not found it yet) --- edit: the index has…

The world is so focused on Israel that forget the rest.

Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#168
post #107
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We definitely did block or at least make them less available, as I recall prior to the invasion RT was commonly on when walking into a hotel room or in Youtube recommendation lists. Post invasion in US I never see it in any hotels or recommended on Youtube... was it censored or maybe just wildly boycotted, not sure... but seems appropriate as a response to me

RT was outright banned by the EU after they invaded Ukraine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RT_(TV_network)#Responses – it's also been dropped/banned by most mainstream platforms. I don't think you can compare Al Jazeera and RT, because one has been a firehose of bullshit that has literally advocates invasion of Ukraine, and the other does not. As far as I know, Al Jazeera is banned purely because they've been critica…

You'd might want to watch some arabic al jazeera. While Al Jazeera English pushes s the progressive post-colonialist narrative in the United States, Al Jazeera Arabic gears the Middle East for a war by pushing a Muslim Brotherhood idea of a Sharia state, Salafism and Jihad.

Both have the same aim, just as Qatar Airways sponsor your flights with oil money so you might fly through Qatar, Al Jazeera pays journalists so they can push Qatar's narratives to Western or Arabic audience. This is highly similar to RT in intent.

Looking from Israel standpoint, it's a news outlet that pushes your enemies propaganda arm videos unfiltered and also uses it to radicalize part of your population

Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#169
post #117
post #60

I don't feel good about this at all, but please keep in mind that there is still serious independent journalism in Israel. And it's doing very well. For example I can recommend pretty much anything published by Haaretz, or Barak Ravid. We should monitor the health of their domestic media should things start going un-democratic there. After all nothing can replace domestic media, this is painfully clear in the case of…

There are also many other foreign journalists in Israel. Other than Al Jazeera there are no restrictions on foreign media from operating in Israel. Certainly not western foreign media.

There absolutely are restrictions. No journalists are allowed in Gaza, which is at odds with almost every other conflict in the past hundred years.

The stated reason is "to keep journalists safe". But journalists have risked their lives in many conflicts to bring the news to people, its their choice to risk their life or not. Unless one were to believe that all journalists biased against israel, there is no reason to restrict all journalists. Why not let in Christiane Amanpour, or many other western trained and western paid journalists?

Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#170
post #159
post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that every news outlet that reports false claims by eyewitness accounts which turn out not to be true and aren't sufficiently loud about retractions should be banned by their host countries? Because I can think of quite a number of stories over the years, and even in terms of this current conflict in the Middle East, where there were falsehoods in the fog of war or even intentionally seeded that turned…

> that print things you don't like But that the whole point. It's not just that Israel "don't like it". It's false claims. > aren't sufficiently loud about retractions And what if there are no retraction? only if the backlash is big enough? Like in the case where there were no hundreds of dead in a direct bombing but a 50 dead in a failed PIJ rocked on hospital: https://archive.is/r6noB and the same version today: ht…

> in the case where there were no hundreds of dead in a direct bombing but a 50 dead in a failed PIJ rocked on hospital

Almost every news agency got this wrong to some degree [1]. What matters is whether they corrected their story as new information arose.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/18/business/media/hospital-b...

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