YouTube’s compliance with Israel ban violates press freedoms, Al Jazeera says
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Al Jazeera Media Network denounced YouTube’s compliance with an Israeli decision to ban its channels, calling the move a “violation of media freedoms and international standards,” Anadolu reports.
In a statement late Thursday on the US social media company X, Al Jazeera stated: “We strongly denounce YouTube’s submission to the Israeli authorities’ decision to ban the broadcast of our channels on the platform and the blocking of our websites in Israel.
“This response violates the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, which require global technology companies to protect freedom of expression and resist government pressure that silences independent journalism.”
Israeli authorities earlier this week decided to block broadcasts of Qatar-based Al Jazeera and Lebanon’s Al-Mayadeen for 90 days, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
Israeli Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi announced Sunday on X that Al Jazeera and Al-Mayadeen would be blocked in Israel on their websites, television broadcasts, and YouTube beginning that day.
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Al Jazeera said: “The banning of our digital platforms and websites on weak security grounds sends a dangerous signal that major technology companies can be co-opted as instruments of regimes hostile to freedom.
“This escalation is part of a broader and systematic pattern of Israeli violations, including the killing and detention of our journalists and the closure of our offices in the occupied territories, aimed at suppressing the truth.
“We call for an international investigation into how technology platforms submit to censorship and for safeguards against political pressure.”
As of 1100GMT, there had been no reaction from YouTube management.
Israel began barring Al Jazeera from operating in May 2024, and the decision has since been extended, citing the network’s coverage of Israel’s war in Gaza, Al Jazeera reported.
During the war, Israel killed more than 71,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 171,000 others, most of them women and children, and destroyed about 90% of the civilian infrastructure in the Gaza Strip.
Israel has occupied Palestinian territories, as well as land in Syria and Lebanon, for decades and has rejected withdrawal and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital along pre-1967 borders.
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This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
