Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahdouh works in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on December 12, 2023. (Photo by Mahmud HAMS / AFP) (Photo: Mahmud Hams/AFP via Getty Images)
“After murdering multiple Al Jazeera journalists, Israel is now moving to expel the news organization entirely,” said one advocacy group.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged Monday to “immediately” move to ban Al Jazeera from broadcasting from Israel after the Knesset approved legislation that gives the country’s government the power to shut down the operations of foreign media outlets deemed a threat to national security.
In a social media post, Netanyahu called the Qatari-owned network a “terrorist channel” and said he would use the new law to halt its activities in Israel.
“I welcome the law promoted by Communications Minister Shlomo Karai with the support of coalition members led by coalition chairman Ofir Katz,” wrote Netanyahu.
Under the new law, the Israeli communications minister can ban foreign outlets with the prime minister’s permission. The measure, which also gives Israeli authorities the power to confiscate a foreign media outlet’s equipment, passed the Knesset in an overwhelming 71 to 10 vote.
The law’s passage comes days after Al Jazeera broadcast video footage of Israeli soldiers gunning down two unarmed Palestinians in northern Gaza, one of whom was waving a piece of white fabric in a gesture of surrender. The footage showed Israeli bulldozers subsequently burying the two bodies under the sand of the beach where the killings took place.
“Israel continues to act as a rogue, authoritarian state with total impunity.”
Al Jazeera has a bureau in Jerusalem and offices in the West Bank and Gaza, and it has covered Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip closely and critically, regularly reporting and broadcasting footage and eyewitness accounts of Israeli atrocities. Al Jazeera is one of the few international media outlets to broadcast live from Gaza during Israel’s latest war on the Palestinian enclave.
The outlet’s correspondents have been among the dozens of journalists killed, wounded, or detained by Israeli forces in Gaza since October 7.
Wael Dahdouh, Al Jazeera‘s Gaza bureau chief, was wounded by an Israeli missile attack in December. Israeli forces have killed five members of Dahdouh’s family—including his son, Hamza, who was also an Al Jazeera journalist.
“After murdering multiple Al Jazeera journalists, Israel is now moving to expel the news organization entirely,” Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East wrote in response to the new law’s passage. “Israel continues to act as a rogue, authoritarian state with total impunity.”
Al Jazeerareported Monday that the Netanyahu government has been threatening to shutter the outlet and other publications for months under the guise of wartime security.
In a statement ahead of Monday’s vote, the Association for Civil Rights expressed opposition to the proposed crackdown on foreign media outlets, arguing that the measure’s “real purpose is not security-related but political: to allow the government to impose sanctions on foreign broadcasting tools whose broadcasts are not to its liking.”
“In addition to the grave infringement on freedom of expression and freedom of the press, it also prohibits the court from overturning a non-proportional decision, effectively tying the court’s hands from intervening in decisions regarding the closure of media outlets,” the group said. “This is a direct continuation of the judicial overhaul, harming the courts and media outlets, all while cynically using war and security justifications.”
Protesters gathered outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London on Tuesday. Photo: Free Assange UK Campaign/X
The UK High Court has granted WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange provisional permission to appeal his extradition to the US, on grounds including the risk of the death penalty.
The UK High Court has granted provisional permission to journalist and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to appeal his extradition to the US. The ruling was handed down by judges Dame Victoria Sharp and Justice Jeremy Johnson in London on March 26, as supporters of Assange gathered outside the court to demand his freedom.
The US has sought to extradite Assange to prosecute him on 18 charges, 17 of which are under the draconian Espionage Act, for the publication of classified documents on WikiLeaks exposing war crimes and human rights abuses committed by US forces, including in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The extradition was approved by the UK Home Office in 2022, protracting an already difficult legal battle for the imprisoned journalist. Assange has been held at the Belmarsh high security prison for five years without a trial or conviction.
In its decision, the Court has granted Assange permission to appeal against his extradition, with the matter adjourned till May 20. However, the appeal will proceed only if the US and the UK are unable to provide the Court with assurances regarding Assange’s treatment following an extradition.
The US and the UK have until April 16 to file these assurances. This will also pave the way for further submissions to be made before a final decision is reached.
In the meantime, the temporary permission to appeal has been granted on three out of nine grounds including: a) that extradition may be “incompatible with the right of freedom of expression” under the European Convention on Human Rights; and b) that the applicant (Assange) might be “prejudiced on grounds of nationality” which is related to whether or not he will be protected under the First Amendment of the US Constitution given that Assange is not a citizen.
The third ground of appeal upheld by the Court for now is “inadequate speciality protection/death penalty protection”, which bars extradition under the UK’s 2003 Extradition Act.
In the application, Assange’s legal team noted that despite the fact that none of the charges leveled by the US as part of the extradition request carry the death penalty, the accusations made against him could lead to additional charges of aiding and abetting treason, which would be capital offenses.
They further highlighted statements made by US officials, including by Donald Trump, former president and potential Republican candidate for the upcoming US election, calling for the death penalty for Assange.
During the two-day “permission hearing” held in February ahead of the March 26 decision, the US prosecution admitted that there were no assurances that Assange would not be handed the death penalty.
The US now has three weeks to provide the Court with “satisfactory assurances” that Assange will be permitted to rely on the First Amendment (protecting free speech), that he will not be prejudiced at trial (including sentence) because of nationality (his status as non- US citizen), that he will be afford the same protections under the First Amendment as a US citizen, and that the death penalty will not be imposed.
This is not the first time that such proposals have been made in Assange’s case. In fact, despite a lower court acknowledging Assange’s risk of suicide in 2021, his extradition was approved based on “diplomatic assurances” given by the US.
These included that Assange would not be subject to brutal Special Administrative Measures (SAMs), that he would not be kept at the ADX Florence maximum security prison, and that he could serve a custodial sentence in Australia, his country of origin. However, these protections would not apply if Assange was deemed to have committed a “future act” that could necessitate SAMs.
The entirely unilateral nature of these assurances raised alarm, especially given that these actions would be at the discretion of US prison authorities and not subject to judicial review.
“The UK remains intent on extraditing Assange despite the grave risk that he will be subjected to torture or ill-treatment in the US,” Simon Crowther, Legal Adviser at Amnesty International, said in response to Tuesday’s ruling.
“While the US has allegedly assured the UK that it will not violate Assange’s rights, we know from past cases that such ‘guarantees’ are deeply flawed — and the diplomatic assurances so far in the Assange case are riddled with loopholes.”
Meanwhile, the Court dismissed critical grounds for appeal raised by Assange’s team, in particular that the extradition was for a political offense, and as such prohibited under the UK-US Extradition Treaty. Assange’s lawyers had argued in February that espionage was universally accepted as a political offense, given that it was an offense directed at the state.
“These were the most important revelations of criminal US state behavior in history,” Assange’s lawyer, Mark Summers, had told the Court regarding the materials published by WikiLeaks. This included the “Collateral Murder Video” in which a US Army Apache helicopter had killed 11 unarmed civilians in Baghdad in 2007.
Addressing the press outside the court, Assange’s wife, Stella, stated that the decision was “astounding”. She pointed out that though the Court had recognized the violation of Julian Assange’s rights, “what the Courts have done have done [is] to invite a political intervention from the United States to send a letter saying ‘it’s all okay’. Five years into this case, the US has managed to show the Court that their case remains an attack on press freedom, an attack on Julian’s life.”
“What the Courts have not agreed to look at is the evidence that the US has plotted to assassinate Julian, to kidnap him, because if it acknowledged that then of course he cannot be sent to the US.”
The Court astonishingly justified its refusal to admit this new evidence, of a plot by the US’ Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to kidnap and assassinate Assange, stating that “on the face of the allegations…the contemplation of extreme measures against the applicant (whether poisoning for example or rendition) were a response to the fear that the applicant might flee to Russia”.
“The rationale for such conduct is removed if the applicant is extradited. Extradition would result in him being lawfully in the custody of the US authorities, and the reasons (if they can be called that) for rendition or kidnap or assassination then fall away”.
Meanwhile, Assange’s brother, Gabriel Shipton, reiterated that the fact that the Court had sought political assurances from the US revealed the political nature of the case itself.
Stella Assange added, “Julian is a political prisoner, he is a journalist, and he is being persecuted because he exposed the true cost of war in human lives. This case is a retribution, it is a signal to all of you, that if you expose the interests that are driving war they will come after you, they will put you in prison and they will try to kill you.”
“The Biden administration should not issue assurances, they should drop this shameful case that should have never been brought,” she said, calling people to pressure the US government and to support House Resolution 934.
The text, which is in the US Congress, states that “regular journalistic activities, including the obtainment and publication of information, are protected under the First Amendment and that the federal government should drop all charges against and attempts to extradite Julian Assange.”
“If Julian goes down for this, every serious journalist around the world is going to be slightly more cautious about exposing war crimes, corporate greed…We need the maximum pressure all across the US on the Biden administration, on the candidates in the forthcoming election, to say ‘Drop the charges against Julian Assange,’” MP and former Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn told Democracy Now.
If the UK High Court does not grant Assange the permission to appeal, he will have exhausted his options within the country’s legal system, and will have to approach the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), immediately seeking an interim measure against the extradition under Rule 39 (“risk of irreparable harm”) pending a full hearing of the case. The ECHR’s verdict will be binding on the UK.
Pro-Palestinians in New York City join “Shut down colonial feminism” rally in front of Senator Kristen Gillibrand’s office, U.N. Women office and New York Times building on Friday, January 12, 2024. (Photo: Selcuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Now more than ever, Americans deserve objective, diverse, trustworthy, and contextualized coverage of Gaza.
Rather than providing the kind of objective, fact-based reporting integral to an informed citizenry, our mainstream press bombards us with explicit and implicit biases, false narratives, dehumanization, and misdirection, serving to stifle public dissent and justify, rationalize, and conceal the systematic oppression and extermination of the people of Gaza.
As dependable propaganda tools for Israel’s aggression, our news censors truth not only by what they choose to cover and how they spin it—but what they deliberately omit. This orchestrated disinformation campaign helps ensure the ongoing and unconditional support of the U.S. government and its continued role as Israel’s dutiful genocidal benefactor.
This isn’t war. It’s mass murder. But this isn’t what most Americans are watching, reading, and hearing on the news.
How does a Palestinian-American with family in the region reconcile the disconnect between “reality” and the “story” our press is “telling”?
Consider a day in the life in Gaza: Palestinian schools, hospitals, universities, places of worship, and heritage sites are being systematically destroyed. Civilians, nearly half children, are being murdered on a mass scale (over 30,000 dead, nearly half children). The calculated deprivation of food and water is literally starving families to death. Babies are being born into a living hell, with screams of terror, the ear-piercing explosions of limb-searing U.S.-made bombs, and the painful moans of their parents among the first sounds they hear. The electricity powering the oxygen machines keeping sick patients alive cut off, leaving them to struggle to gulp each of their final breaths. Amputations of children’s limbs without anesthesia with barbed wire have become obscenely routine. Broken, but alive, Palestinian bodies riddled with shrapnel require each piece to be pulled from their flesh. Hungry children are found dead with single Israeli sniper shots to the head because they made the mistake of seeking out food from an aid truck. The deliberate decimation of Gaza’s telecommunications infrastructure has left families unable to communicate with one another, or with the world, allowing daily atrocities to become increasingly invisible and unreported.
American Media’s Israel Bias and Censoring Journalists
Quantitative analyses conducted by The Intercept, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, and an independent collective of U.S. journalists, writers, and media makers of coverage in The York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times lay bare our news media’s dramatic pro-Israel bias. The litany of press failings are disturbing in their sheer scope and intention. Findings included the systematic undermining of Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim perspectives and the invocation of inflammatory language that reinforces Islamophobic and racist tropes. Misinformation spread by Israeli officials is commonly printed along with consistent failures to scrutinize Israel’s indiscriminate killing of civilians in Gaza. Israeli deaths are disproportionately emphasized, and more humanizing language is used to describe them than Palestinians. This is to name just a few.
Case-in-point: In what’s now being called the Flour Massacre, at least 112 Palestinians in Gaza were killed and hundreds more injured after Israeli forces opened fire on civilians while waiting for food from desperately needed aid trucks. Leading news media descriptions referred to the slaughter as “food aid deaths,” “food aid-related deaths,” “chaotic incident,” and “reported killed in crowd near Gaza aid convoy.”
Do these headlines properly convey the massacre of starving civilians?
Sadly, censored journalists who speak out are paying the price. The Los Angeles Times recently banned 38 journalists from covering Gaza for at least three months after they signed an open letter criticizing Western newsrooms for their biased reporting on Israel and their role in dehumanizing rhetoric that has served to justify ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
But it’s not just print that is to blame. The Guardian reported the accounts of six CNN staffers from multiple newsrooms, including more than a dozen internal memos and emails, finding that daily news decisions are shaped by a flow of directives from the CNN headquarters in Atlanta that have set strict pro-Israel guidelines on coverage. Every story on the conflict must be cleared by the Jerusalem bureau—which has close ties with Israel’s military—before broadcast or publication.
Holding Media Accountable, Supporting Journalists, and Promoting Independent News
There is no shortage of ways people can help bring this nightmare to an end. Among them should include pressure campaigns on the corporate media to commit to journalistic integrity and truth. Outlets like CNN and The New York Times have a unique opportunity to educate millions by providing rigorous, evidence-based reporting that could serve to end the ongoing genocide—rather than enable it.
Petitions to hold CNN and The New York Times accountable deserve support. But petitions aren’t enough. Direct actions (including protests, boycotts, and sit-ins) and strategies that target these institutions’ advertisers, revenues, and reputational interests are also required.
Israel’s ongoing genocidal annihilation of Palestinians in Gaza will be reviled by history—rendering the once solemn rallying cry “Never again!” cruelly hollow.
Finally, independent, non-corporate news serves as dependable sources of fact-based information and a powerful check on the official narratives of their corporate counterparts. Now more than ever, Americans deserve objective, diverse, trustworthy, and contextualized coverage of Gaza. Thankfully, these alternatives exist, and need our support, from Pacifica radio to a long list of independent news sites.
Israel’s ongoing genocidal annihilation of Palestinians in Gaza will be reviled by history—rendering the once solemn rallying cry “Never again!” cruelly hollow. “Never again” is not meant to be a phrase of remembrance, but a call to action. Let’s not let the corporate media forget it.
Stella Assange speaks to the media outside the Old Bailey on January 4, 2021 in London. (Photo: Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty Images)
“This could very well be the final hearing for Julian,” said Stella Assange on the eve of the critical U.K. High Court session.
Stella Assange, the wife of Julian Assange, said Monday that the jailed WikiLeaks founder will likely die if he is extradited from Britain to the United States, where he could imprisoned for the rest of his life for publishing classified documents including numerous files exposing U.S. war crimes.
Assange’s final appeal is scheduled to be heard on Tuesday by the U.K. High Court. The Australian publisher’s supporters are calling it “Day X,” and his wife told the BBC that it “could very well be the final hearing for Julian.”
“There’s no possibility for further appeal in this jurisdiction,” she explained, adding that Assange could still seek an emergency injunction from the European Court of Human Rights.
Assange said her husband—who is 52 years old and suffers from physical and mental health problems including heart and respiratory issues—is very weak and “in a very difficult place.”
Live from the Royal Courts of Justice where Julian Assange's most crucial court hearing takes place this week – Tuesday 20 and Wednesday 21 Feb, with latest news and developments, interviews and more
Imprisoned in London’s notorious Belmarsh Prison since April 2019, Assange could be sentenced to as many as 175 years behind bars if convicted of all the Espionage Act and Computer Fraud and Abuse Act charges against him.
WikiLeaks published a series of document dumps inculding “Collateral Murder” video—which shows a U.S. Army helicopter crew killing a group of Iraqi civilians—the Afghan War Diary, and the Iraq War Logs, which revealed American and allied war crimes.
In 2016, The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found that Assange had been arbitrarily deprived of his freedom since his first arrest on December 7, 2010, including house arrest, imprisonment in London, and nearly seven years of political asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in the British capital.
Nils Melzer, the U.N.’s top torture official from 2016 to 2022, repeatedly said that Assange’s treatment amounted to torture.
Alice Jill Edwards, the current U.N. special rapporteur on torture, is imploring the U.K. government to decline Assange’s transfer to the U.S. because she says his health is likely to be “irreparably damaged” by extradition. Edwards cited conditions in U.S. prisons including the use of prolonged solitary confinement and excessive sentences as causes for concern.
— Stella Assange #FreeAssangeNOW (@Stella_Assange) February 19, 2024
Countless human rights defenders, press freedom advocates, and elected officials around the world have called on the U.S. to drop charges against Assange and for the U.K. to refuse his extradition.
“All eyes are on the U.K. High Court during this fateful hearing, but it remains to be seen whether the British judiciary can deliver some form of justice by preventing Assange’s extradition at this late stage,” Rebecca Vincent, campaigns director at Reporters Without Borders, said in a statement Monday.
“Regardless, none of this is inevitable—it remains within the U.S. government’s power to bring this judicial tragedy to an end by dropping its 13-year-old case against Assange and ceasing this endless persecution,” Vincent continued. “No one should face such treatment for publishing information in the public interest.”
“It’s time to protect journalism, press freedom, and all of our right to know,” she added. “It’s time to free Assange now.”
People protest outside the Houses of Parliament in London, to step up demands for the release from prison of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, June 24, 2023
Assange’s appeal against extradition to the US set to begin
WIKILEAKS founder Julian Assange’s appeal against extradition to the United States will be heard in the High Court on Tuesday in a final leg of the legal battle for free journalism.
Mr Assange, who exposed US war crimes in Iraq and leaked thousands of military secrets, will face court on Tueday and Wednesday.
He is wanted by US authorities on 18 counts, relating to WikiLeaks’ publication of hundreds of thousands of classified documents.
Mr Assange has been in Belmarsh prison since he was removed from the Ecuadorian embassy in 2019 where he was given political asylum for nearly seven years.
If Mr Assange is denied permission to appeal, he will be at risk of extradition to the US and prosecution under the century-old 1917 Espionage Act, and faces a 175-year prison sentence.
