Index on Censorship weekly round-up
[link removed]
Home ([link removed]) Latest ([link removed]) Subscribe ([link removed]) About Index ([link removed]) Donate ([link removed])
Friday, 31 May 2024
[link removed]
A copy of Israel Today newspaper with the headline "Battle of Heroes". Photo: Chenspec
Israel's decision to seize video equipment from AP journalists last week may have been swiftly reversed but the overall direction of travel for media freedom in Israel is negative.
Journalists inside Gaza are of course paying the highest price (yesterday preliminary investigations by CPJ showed at least 107 journalists and media workers were among the more than 37,000 killed ([link removed]) since the Israel-Gaza war began) and it feels odd to speak of equipment seizures when so many of those covering the war in the Strip have paid with their lives. But this is not to compare, merely to illuminate.
The past few days have provided ample evidence of what many within Israel have long feared – that the offensive in Gaza is not being reported on fully in Israel itself. On Tuesday a video went viral of an Israeli woman responding with outrage at the wide gulf between news on Sunday’s bombing of a refugee camp in Rafah within Israeli media compared to major international news outlets. Yesterday, in an interview with Canadian broadcaster CBC, press freedom director for the Union of Journalists in Israel, Anat Saragusti, spoke more broadly of the reporting discrepancies since 7 October:
"The world sees a completely different war from the Israeli audience. This is very disturbing."
Saragusti added that part of this is because the population is still processing the horrors of 7 October and with that comes a degree of self-censorship from those within the media. The other reason, she said, is that the IDF provides much of the material that appears in Israeli media and this is subject to review by military censors. While the military has always exerted control (Israeli law requires journalists to submit any article dealing with “security issues” to the military censor for review prior to publication), this pressure has intensified since the war, as the magazine +972 showed. Since 2011 +972 have released an annual report looking at the scale of bans by the military censor. In their latest report, released last week and published on our site with permission ([link removed]) , they highlighted how in 2023 more than 600 articles by Israeli media outlets were barred, which was
the most since their tracking began.
In a visually arresting move, Israeli paper Haaretz published an article on Wednesday ([link removed]) with blacked out words and sentences. Highlighting such redactions is incidentally against the law and will no doubt add to the government’s wrath at Haaretz (late last year they threatened ([link removed]) the left-leaning outlet with sanctions over their Gaza war coverage).
The government's attempts to control the media landscape was already a problem prior to 7 October. Benjamin Netanyahu is known for his fractious relationship with the press and has made some very personal attacks throughout his career, such as this one ([link removed]) from 2016, while Shlomo Kahri, the current communications minister, last year expressed a desire to shut down ([link removed]) the country's public broadcaster Kan. This week it was also revealed by Haaretz that two years ago investigative reporter Gur Megiddo was blocked from reporting on how then chief of Mossad had threatened then ICC prosecutor (the story finally saw daylight on Tuesday ([link removed]) ). Megiddo said he’d been summoned to meet two officials and threatened. It was “explained that if I
published the story I would suffer the consequences and get to know the interrogation rooms of the Israeli security authorities from the inside,” said Megiddo ([link removed]) .
Switching to the present, it feels unconscionable that Israelis, for whom the war is a lived reality not just a news story, are being served a light version of its conduct.
In the case of AP, their equipment was confiscated on the premise that it violated a new media law, passed by Israeli parliament in April, which allows the state to shut down foreign media outlets it deems a security threat. It was under this law that Israel also raided and closed Al Jazeera’s offices ([link removed]) earlier this month and banned the company’s websites and broadcasts in the country.
Countries have a habit of passing censorious legislation in wartime, the justification being that some media control is important to protect the military. The issue is that such legislation is typically vague, open to abuse by those in power, and doesn’t always come with an expiry date to protect peacetime rights.
“A country like Israel, used to living through intense periods of crisis, is particularly vulnerable to calls for legislation that claims to protect national security by limiting free expression. Populist politicians are often happy to exploit the "rally around the flag" effect,” Daniella Peled, managing editor at the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, told Index.
We voiced our concerns here ([link removed]) in terms of Ukraine, which passed a media law within the first year of Russia’s full-scale invasion with very broad implications, and we have concerns with Israel too. But as these examples show, our concerns are far wider than just one law and one incidence of confiscated equipment.
Jemimah Steinfeld, CEO
Help support Index on Censorship ([link removed])
** South Africa votes amid corruption and rampant abuse of power
------------------------------------------------------------
[link removed]
Inequality is clear in the divide between spacious and leafyPrimrose (top) anddensely populated Makause (bottom)
in the state of Gauteng. Photo: soar.earth
Two years ago, South Africa was named the most unequal country in the world in a World Bank report ([link removed]) . This in a country where apartheid was dismantled 30 years ago. In the week the country went to the polls, inequality is proving to be at the heart of the debate which is stoking claims that freedom of expression is under threat, writes Clemence Manyukwe ([link removed]) .
** Bahrain: Joint letter on human rights
situation to the United Nations
Human Rights Council
------------------------------------------------------------
[link removed]
King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa of Bahrain in 2014. Photo: Ministry of External Affairs/CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 DEED
Index joins more than 30 other organisations to raise concerns over the situation in the country 13 years after popular uprisings were quashed. Read the letter to the UN here ([link removed]) .
** From the Index archives
------------------------------------------------------------
** Tiananmen Square: The hunger strike declaration, 2 June 1989
by Liu Xiaobo, Zhou Duo, Hou Dejian and Gao Xin
August 1989
------------------------------------------------------------
[link removed]
As we approach the 35th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, a poignant reminder here ([link removed]) of the simple demands of those who protested across China. "We are on hunger strike. We protest, we appeal, we repent. We are not in search of death; we are looking for real life." We stand with them, yesterday, today and tomorrow.
Help support Index on Censorship ([link removed])
Index on Censorship defends people's freedom to express themselves without fear of harm or persecution. We publish censored writers and artists, monitor and campaign against censorship, and encourage debate.
We rely on donations from readers and supporters. By donating ([link removed]) to Index you help us to protect freedom of expression and to support those who are denied that right.
[link removed] ([link removed])
============================================================
Want to change how you receive these emails?
You can ** update your preferences ([link removed])
or ** unsubscribe from this list ([link removed])
INDEX ON CENSORSHIP © COPYRIGHT 2023
** Privacy and Cookie Policy ([link removed])
