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Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

theguardian.com

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Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#31

Post by siva7 »

dang wrote: post #12
x3n0ph3n3 wrote: post #9

@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…

I've been part of this but these are different than the typical political heated discussions on HN like in the trump era. These here tend to swift quickly into antisemitism.

Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#32

Post by akira2501 »

If you allow "national security" to be used as an excuse to "grant powers" which ultimately just "destroy freedom" then you will end up with leaders who intentionally do a bad job at security in order to access the power that grants them.

If your government cannot protect the country from journalists, then you should force them to resign, and call for new elections.

Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#33

Post by verdverm »

nkurz wrote: 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.

WW2 provides ample examples. Information is part of warfare

Russia is certainly jailing journalists. As example, Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter, is currently imprisoned: https://www.wsj.com/news/evan-gershkovich.

Nowadays, every country has an interest in preventing foreign influence operations across traditional and social media

Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#34

Post by rjtavares »

nkurz wrote: 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.

Russia Today was banned in Ukraine in 2014 and in some (most?) EU countries in 2022.

Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#35

Post by aunetx »

nkurz wrote: 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.

I believe RT (which is Russian but produced some interesting journalism once in a while) was banned in Europe (or at least it is in France). I don't even know what to think about it...

Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#36

Post by loceng »

verdverm wrote: 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…

FTL: "... while more than 100 journalists were killed in six months in Gaza by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) ..."

Anyone know where to find what the current accurate count of number of journalists killed in the Gaza bombardment to date?

Last I heard it was 170.

There are also journalists who lived but their whole family died in the strikes.

Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#37

Post by _Microft »

afavour wrote: post #15

I’m not sure about “dark day for the media” but it does feel like a dark day for Israel. Once you’ve established that the government can unilaterally ban a voice for reasons of “national security” you’ve essentially given them a free pass. As Americans living post-9/11 will know, “national security” is a deliberately elastic term that can cover anything required in the moment.

I think it's neither surprising nor necessarily bad. Just think of how Russia Today was spreading disinformation and propaganda about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Banning them from the EU was certainly in our interest.

Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#38

Post by ttul »

Netanyahu's ongoing corruption trial looms large over all of this. If he were to lose power, he would be far more vulnerable to conviction and potential imprisonment. So from this vantage point, the Al Jazeera ban could be seen as an act of desperation - muzzling a high-profile critic as a concession to far-right parties, even at the expense of free press principles, all in service of his own political and personal survival.

It paints a troubling picture of a leader whose decision-making is distorted by clinging to power at all costs. Undermining democratic norms to appease extremist coalition partners is a dangerous road that could lead Israel to more illiberal and authoritarian policies, especially toward Palestinians, the Arab media, and domestic dissent.

Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#39

Post by bob1029 »

dang wrote: post #12
x3n0ph3n3 wrote: post #9

@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…

> But abandoning discussion altogether is also not an option.

I don't see why not. Just because it's hard doesn't mean it shouldn't be an option.

This attitude toward moderation is a large reason I do not participate on this site like I used to.

Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#40

Post by RobotToaster »

nkurz wrote: 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.

Both Russia and Ukraine ban multiple news agencies, which hopefully doesn't indicate where this is heading.

Also the United Kingdom has added several of it's own citizens to sanctions lists for journalism within Ukraine/Russia.

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