'Will pursue legal action until the end': Al Jazeera English news director after Israel bans its operations

By Team Asianet Newsable | First Published May 7, 2024, 9:32 PM IST

Al Jazeera is prepared to exhaust all legal avenues in challenging Israel's prohibition on its operations within the country, affirmed the TV network's news director in an interview with AFP.

Al Jazeera is prepared to exhaust all legal avenues in challenging Israel's prohibition on its operations within the country, affirmed the TV network's news director in an interview with AFP. The decision to cease Al Jazeera's broadcasts in Israel came after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government voted on Sunday to shut it down, citing its coverage of the Gaza war.

Al Jazeera English news director Salah Nagm stated on Monday that the network would exhaust every legal avenue available, emphasizing, "If there is a possibility of challenging that decision, we are going to pursue it until the end."

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Following a unanimous decision by the cabinet, which Prime Minister Netanyahu described, Al Jazeera's Jerusalem offices were closed, its equipment confiscated, and its team's accreditations revoked.

"The equipment which was confiscated, the loss that we suffered from stopping our broadcast, all of that is subject matter for legal action," Nagm told AFP.

On Sunday, the Israeli government announced an initial 45-day validity for the order, open to extension. Shortly after, screens across Israel broadcasting Al Jazeera's Arabic and English channels displayed a blank screen, accompanied by a message in Hebrew stating their suspension in the count

Israel's battle with Hamas is still being covered live by Al Jazeera from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which are not affected by the shutdown.

Al Jazeera swiftly condemned Israel's decision as "criminal," asserting on social media platform X that it "violates the human right to access information." However, Najm sought to downplay the ban's effects on Al Jazeera's war coverage and the public's ability to access its content, even with its website now inaccessible in Israel.

"It's an action from the 60s rather than the 21st century to take such a decision of shutting down," he said, elaborating that the channel could depend on alternative sources for information even without "people on the ground."

The news director highlighted, 'I know people with VPNs can access us online anytime,' referencing virtual private networks that establish secure internet connections, enabling users to browse the internet as if they were in another country.

The decision followed Israel's parliament passing a new national security law last month, granting senior ministers the authority to ban foreign channel broadcasts if deemed a security threat.

In his statement on Sunday, Netanyahu charged that "Al Jazeera correspondents have harmed the security of Israel and incited against IDF (Israeli military) soldiers".

Najm questioned which Al Jazeera broadcasts the Israeli government considered a security threat, denouncing the ban as an "arbitrary decision." Amidst the Gaza war, Al Jazeera's office in the Palestinian territory was bombed, resulting in the tragic loss of two of its correspondents.

"Al Jazeera has lost a few people, their families have suffered so that's really different from other conflicts in this sense," Nagm said.

Al Jazeera's Gaza bureau chief, Wael al-Dahdouh, was injured in an Israeli strike in December that claimed the life of the network's cameraman. Tragically, Dahdouh experienced profound personal loss when his wife, two of their children, and a grandson were killed in October during a bombardment of central Gaza's Nuseirat refugee camp.

Further heartbreak struck in January when Dahdouh's eldest son, also an Al Jazeera staff journalist, lost his life along with another journalist in Rafah, targeted by an Israeli strike while traveling in a car.

The toll on journalists and media workers during the conflict has been devastating, with at least 97 individuals killed since the war's inception, including Palestinians, Israelis, and Lebanese, as reported by the Committee to Protect Journalists.

"That's not something that we can just report politely," Nagm said.

"We have to be wary and careful and alert the people of the nature of the war that's going on and how deadly it is for the people and also for us as a profession."

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