Caitlin Johnstone: Israel’s War on Journalism

Israel continues to attack Al Jazeera, kill journalists and bomb news agencies for the same reason the mafia kills witnesses. They want to commit their crimes in the dark.

Protect Journalists in Palestine – Stop the Israeli-American Impunity March in San Francisco in May. (Peg Hunter, Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0)

By means of Caitlin Johnstone
CaitlinJohnstone.com.au

Listen to Tim Foley as he reads this article.

IIsrael has continued its war on journalism with a new attack on Al Jazeerathis time with a raid on the West Bank branch’s office and an order to close it for 45 days.

The closure came despite the fact that the office was legally under Palestinian authority, in accordance with the Oslo Accords.

The move comes as Israel and Hezbollah continue to engage in heavy fighting and move closer to the brink of full-scale war. At the same time, Israel continues to carry out daily massacres in Gaza and violence against Palestinians in the West Bank becomes increasingly brutal.

Israel continues to attack Al JazeeraThey kill journalists and bomb news agencies for the same reason the mafia kills witnesses. They want to commit their crimes in the dark.

Journalist Jonathan Cook writes about the news:

“After Al Jazeera’s office in Gaza was destroyed and much of its staff there was killed,

after Al Jazeera was banned from broadcasting in Israel,

after admitting to executing Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh (after lying that Palestinians did it),

Israeli forces have now raided Al Jazeera’s offices in the West Bank city of Ramallah, which it claims is controlled by the Palestinian Authority, and have shut down the channel’s operations.

This is the latest attack on journalism by Israel: more than 170 journalists have been killed in the past year, most of them Palestinians, and all foreign correspondents have been banned from reporting from Gaza.

When will the US and UK designate Israel a terrorist state?

When will Western media organizations and Western journalists speak out in solidarity with their terrorized colleagues in occupied Palestine?”

Israel hates the truth.

Israel hates the truth for the same reason everyone hates the truth at some point: because the truth about them is ugly.

During the Iraq War/GWOT, the US relentlessly attacked Al Jazeera, bombing its facilities, killing its Baghdad correspondent and jailing its cameraman in Guantanamo. Israel has repeated this pattern. All journalists must condemn these violent attacks on press freedom. https://t.co/vDNMic2Vlu

— jeremy scahill (@jeremyscahill) September 22, 2024

The more I live and learn, the more I am convinced that it all comes down to seeing. Clear perception is what moves things toward health, and the lack of clear perception is what keeps things dysfunctional.

The clearer the perception, the more things move out of dysfunction and toward health. This is true whether you are talking about your own personal psychology or the largest power dynamics in the world.

This is why such ugly governments as Israel and the United States constantly attack the press, produce propaganda, manipulate stories, engage in online information operations, employ censorship, and obstruct visibility through government secrecy.

The truth about them is so ugly that they will do anything to prevent the truth from becoming visible.

Caitlin Johnstone’s work is entirely reader-supported. If you enjoyed this piece, please share it with others and follow her on Facebook. TwitterSoundcloud, YouTube, or throw some money in her tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon, or Paypal. If you want to read more, you can buy her books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff she publishes is to subscribe to the mailing list on her website or on Substack, then you will get an email notification for everything she publishes. For more information about who she is, where she stands, and what she is trying to do with her platform, click here. All works are co-written with her American husband Tim Foley.

This article is from CaitlinJohnstone.com.au and is republished with permission.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect his or her own. Consortium news.

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