Last month, during the Jerusalem Day Flag March — an annual parade marking Israeli control of east Jerusalem following the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, celebrated by some Israelis as the “reunification of Jerusalem” but called, as recently as late last week, an illegal occupation by the International Court of Justice — tensions flared in the city. Israeli journalist Nir Hasson stood bravely in front of Palestinian journalist Saif Kwasmi, attempting to shield him from being assaulted by far-right Israeli protesters. The attackers knocked Hasson, kicking him to the ground. The viral image of Kwasmi and Hasson highlighted an extraordinary moment of solidarity between Israeli and Palestinian journalists — both victims of the Netanyahu government’s attack on press freedom in Israel. The attack took place under the watch of Israeli security forces, who rather than protecting the journalists chose to briefly detain and interrogate Kwasmi — and, of course, Kwasmi alone.
Less than a month before this incident, Western governments condemned the Netanyahu government’s order to close Al Jazeera’s office in Israel, a move based on a new law that grants the government the authority to temporarily ban any foreign media outlet in Israel. The same law was later also used to shut down the’ live feed from The Associated Press (AP) from northern Gaza. Despite global scrutiny, the Netanyahu government extended the ban on Al Jazeera for an additional 45 days and recently introduced a new bill to ban the news outlet permanently. This bill can be arbitrarily used against any foreign media outlet deemed unwelcome by the government.
These incidents fit a pattern of the Israeli right-wing government’s seeking to stifle dissent, control the media and curtail press freedom. Those attempts, however, are long-standing and long predate the start of the war in Gaza last October. As the Israeli Union of Journalists’ director, Anat Saragusti, described it: “The extreme right-wing government of Israel, from the beginning of its term … put the freedom of the press as a target.”
In 2023, before the war began, Israel dropped 11 places in the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) press freedom index, falling to 97th out of 180 countries. In August of that year, Haaretz, Israel’s prominent left-wing newspaper, noted several alarming attempts by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to interfere in independent media. His government also deepened hostility against both local and international media. For example, Shlomo Khari, the minister of telecommunications, threatened legal action against the Arabic channel of Israel’s public broadcaster, Kan. Another minister launched public accusations against international media for spreading fake news and even sought the legal authority to revoke the credentials of international journalists critical of Israel.
Now in 2024, Israel has dropped even further down RSF’s press freedom index and sits at the 101st position, putting it firmly in the bottom half of the world and trailing behind countries like Senegal and Qatar. Al Jazeera was not the only media outlet Israel shut down after the Oct. 7 attacks led by Hamas. In November 2023, Israel’s Security Cabinet shut down the Hezbollah-affiliated Al Mayadeen TV in Israel, in line with emergency regulations passed in October that authorized the government to close foreign news outlets it believes are harming national security. Additionally, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) shut down two Palestinian media outlets based in the West Bank: J-Media and Dream radio station.
Over the past nine months, Netanyahu’s government has scaled up threats against Israeli media outlets viewed as critical of its policies. Khari even accused public broadcaster Kan of serving as a mouthpiece for Israel’s enemies. And last November he proposed a government resolution to ban any state advertising, subscriptions or commercials associated with Haaretz, accusing it of promoting “defeatist and false propaganda” against the State of Israel.
Netanyahu has diversified his attempts to control the media, sometimes using his allies outside his government. Earlier this month, Israeli broadcaster Channel 13 — known as one of the few channels that has aired critical commentary about the conduct of Israel’s war in Gaza — canceled its popular show “War Zone,” hosted by renowned investigative journalist Raviv Drucker. Drucker has long exposed corruption scandals linked to Netanyahu and his associates. The cancellation of his program came right after the appointment of Yulia Shamalov-Berkovich, a former Knesset member allied with Netanyahu, as the head of the network’s news division.
Soon after the show’s cancellation was announced, dozens of Israeli journalists gathered in Tel Aviv and held an “Emergency Conference to Channel 13” where Saragusti stated, “What is happening at Channel 13 news is part of a master plan to destroy the freedom of the press.” Several leading reporters are now petitioning the attorney general to block the appointment, claiming it was akin to political meddling in their work. Veteran journalist Golan Yochpaz noted, “Israeli media is in a fight for survival,” warning that if this fight is lost, “democracy will pay a heavy price and may never recover.”
In the Knesset, several bills have been introduced that put journalists reporting from Israel at great risk. On Nov. 8, an amendment to the counterterrorism law was passed, making the “consumption of terrorist materials” a new criminal offense in Israel. This is a law that can be easily weaponized against journalists. Other pieces of legislation have been introduced: One even grants Shin Bet, the internal security agency, authority to use spyware against journalists.
For the first time in Israel’s history, the Committee to Protect Journalists named the country among the top 10 jailers of journalists worldwide. Currently, 49 Palestinian journalists remain in prison, nearly half of them under administrative detention, meaning that they are detained without charge or trial and their detention can be extended indefinitely. If Israel continues to detain these 49 journalists, it could surpass China, which detained 44 journalists in 2023, as the world’s top jailer of journalists.
Hasson was not the first Israeli journalist to be assaulted since Oct. 7. The surge in the detention of Palestinian journalists also comes alongside an increase in attacks by both Israeli right-wing mobs and security forces against Israeli, Palestinian and foreign journalists reporting from Israel and the West Bank. In 2023, the Union of Journalists in Israel documented 61 incidents of attacks on journalists, double the number that took place the year prior. The absence of accountability in almost all of these cases has created a hostile environment for the media.
These attacks continued in 2024, including against Israeli journalists working for Israeli media outlets. Two weeks after the attack on Hasson, Israeli police arrested Haaretz photographer Itai Ron while he was covering demonstrations against the Netanyahu government, even after showing them his press badge. Arabic-speaking journalists in Israel have been particularly targeted, especially after the shutdown of Al Jazeera. Their ability to report is consistently under threat, with regular instances of Israeli security forces and settlers obstructing their reporting. The dramatic increase in attacks on journalists led Haaretz journalist Linda Dayan to ask her editor, “Is there someone I should call if I’m arrested on the job?” This rise in aggression has turned the Israeli police into a genuine threat to the country’s press freedom.
In the West Bank, Israeli soldiers continue to engage in a deadly pattern of opening fire on Palestinian journalists reporting there, even when they are clearly wearing press vests. In May, Israeli forces fired at Al Araby TV journalists Ameed Shehade and Rabih Al-Monayar while they were reporting on an Israeli raid in the West Bank. The most well-known of these incidents is the killing of prominent American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. Despite a 2023 United Nations report finding that “Israeli forces used lethal force without justification, and intentionally or recklessly violated Abu Akleh’s right to life,” Israel has not held any of its soldiers accountable for her killing, and Israeli officials have also stated that they will not cooperate with the current FBI investigation into her death or any potential probe by the International Criminal Court.
Israel has had a military censor since its founding. The censor is a unit within the IDF’s Military Intelligence Directorate that requires all journalists, both Israeli and international, working inside Israel or for an Israeli publication to submit any article dealing with “security issues” for approval. Failure to comply can result in the censor indicting journalists, imposing fines and suspending or shutting down media outlets.
In past years, the censor maintained a relatively independent stance from the government’s agenda, and there was a consistent drop in the number of censored publications. But the Netanyahu government is actively curtailing the censor’s independence, making it increasingly subservient to the government. Since the start of the war in Gaza, there has been an unprecedented expansion in the number of censored publications and topics.
This past May, Haaretz published an article with large sections of its text blacked out, revealing how expansive Israel’s military censor had become: The article was not about a secret military operation in Gaza but about the arrest of Bassem Tamimi, an internationally recognized Palestinian activist from the West Bank.
In 2023 alone, the censor prohibited the publication of 613 articles compared with just 159 in 2022, marking a new record since Israel’s +972 Magazine began documenting this trend in 2011. Additionally, the censor redacted sections of an additional 2,703 articles, the highest number since 2014, up from 990 in 2022.
Sometime after the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks, the censor issued a memo with directives to local and international media outlets operating in Israel, prohibiting them from reporting on eight topics, including the hostages, the Security Cabinet and cyberattacks, among others, without the approval from the censor. This move was described by a former editor-in-chief of +972 Magazine as unprecedented: “I haven’t ever seen instructions like this sent from the censor.”
This affects not only Israeli media outlets reporting from Israel but also international outlets reporting from abroad, such as CNN, which route their coverage of the war through their Israel-based offices to ensure accuracy and often to obtain comments from Israeli officials. These offices inevitably operate under the shadow of IDF censorship and influence the wider understanding of the war.
Apparently, the expansion of IDF censorship was not enough for Netanyahu. His office exerted what was described as “extraordinary” pressure on the IDF censor to block stories from being published without any security justification, accusing the IDF censor of harming national security and seeking to strip him of his power. Additionally, Netanyahu sought to enact a new law that would oblige the censor to ban publications even more widely, suggesting that journalists who publish any reports on the War Cabinet without the censor’s approval should be arrested.
Press freedom in Israel matters to Israelis, of course, who need to know what Netanyahu’s government may not want them to know. But it also means that the world is shielded from misinformation and disinformation about the ongoing war in the region.
The U.S. plays an important role in pressuring Israel, given the amount of political and military support it lavishes on its ally. And Washington does have the ability to alter Israel’s behavior, as was evident when it pressured Israel to reverse its decision against the AP.
For now, though, the Biden administration’s response has been muted. This stance emboldens Netanyahu’s government to expand its crackdown on the press, as evident by the recent attempt by his government to permanently ban Al Jazeera. It also emboldens other countries in the region. Already, we have witnessed U.S. allies Egypt and Jordan seizing the opportunity to escalate their crackdowns on media outlets and journalists. For instance, Jordan recently sentenced Palestinian-Jordanian journalist Hiba Abu Taha to one year in prison for writing an article titled “Partners in genocide … Jordanian capital involved in genocide in the Gaza Strip.”
While journalism in Gaza operates under catastrophic conditions, with over 100 Palestinian journalists killed, their counterparts in Israel and the West Bank also face an unprecedented assault on press freedom. Al Jazeera’s bureau chief in Jerusalem, Walid Omary, poignantly captured the essence of Netanyahu’s ban on Al Jazeera and the attack on press freedom: “He wants only his voice to be heard.” Journalists’ voices will remain under siege until Netanyahu allows other voices beyond his own without censorship or the Biden administration exerts the necessary pressure to make him do so.
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