Protecting freedom of expression and freedom of the press has been paramount at ACRI for over 50 years, in fact, ACRI’s first legal appeal in 1981 was protecting freedom of the press. Since the outbreak of the war, freedom of expression has been under unprecedented attack. ACRI is determined to respond to the attempts to undermine this basic democratic freedom with every tool at our disposal.
Beginning in February 2023, the Minister of Communications, Shlomo Karhi attempted to shut down Kan, Israel’s largest public broadcasting corporation, while declaring his plan to move public broadcasting to private ownership. Karhi’s overall agenda is to limit the power and budgets of the media so the government will have more control over the messaging being provided to the public. Nearly a year later, attacks on the media have increased, posing a grave violation to our rights. This week a law was passed allowing sanctions to be imposed on foreign broadcasting channels from Israel be cancelled. The Minister of Communications is now able to stop the channel's broadcasts, restrict access to its website, and seize devices used to provide the channel's content, including mobile phones. The law specifically prevents the court from overturning the decision, paralleling the attacks on the Judiciary we spent all of 2023 combatting. On April 4, 2024, we petitioned the High Court of Justice demanding the law be overturned.
Even before the law was passed, amidst Knesset discussions, Prime Minister Netanyahu stated he will be using the law against Al Jazeera, an independent news organization funded partially by the Qatari government, which has played a crucial role in providing coverage of the war. This law directly violates the fundamental rights of freedom of expression, the right to information, rule of law and freedom of the press, and blocks citizens from receiving a variety of information that does not fit the Israeli narrative or is not broadcast on Israeli media channels.
On May 5, 2024, the government decided to impose sanctions on Al-Jazeera TV in Israel. In addition to filing a legal petition challenging the constitutionality of the law, ACRI has submitted several interim injunction requests. These requests seek to prevent the government from implementing the law until its constitutionality has been thoroughly examined and ACRI is still awaiting a response, after which we will take immediate action. We are determined to pursue every avenue to protect freedom of expression.
Al Jazeera could be only the first to go, creating a platform for shutting down all forms of media that do not parallel mainstream Israeli sentiment. Continue to safeguard democracy and human rights with us. Thank you for amplifying our voices amidst times of dissent and silencing.
The legal petition was written by ACRI attorney Hagar Shechter