{"id":3034,"date":"2023-04-12T23:46:48","date_gmt":"2023-04-12T20:46:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sawtoroba.com\/Eng\/?p=3034"},"modified":"2023-04-12T23:51:02","modified_gmt":"2023-04-12T20:51:02","slug":"ben-gvir-orders-a-palestinian-media-office-in-beit-hanina-to-close-jerusalem-story-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sawtoroba.com\/Eng\/?p=3034","title":{"rendered":"Ben-Gvir Orders a Palestinian Media Office in Beit Hanina to Close \u00a0\u00a0Jerusalem Story Team"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Ben-Gvir Orders a Palestinian Media Office in Beit Hanina to Close<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\u00a0\u00a0Jerusalem Story Team<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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On March 14, 2023, Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir signed an order banning Marcel, a private production services company in Beit Hanina inside the Jerusalem boundaries, from providing communication services to the Ramallah-based Voice of Palestine (VoP) radio station and Palestine TV, the official channels of the\u00a0Palestinian Authority\u00a0(PA).<\/p>\n

The Marcel company provided the VoP and Palestine TV with a branch studio and offices inside the city boundaries, enabling them to broadcast programming within\u00a0East Jerusalem, extending their reach outside\u00a0Areas A,\u00a0B, and\u00a0C<\/a>\u00a0to inside Israel.<\/p>\n

On March 20, police arrived at the Marcel offices in Beit Hanina, closed them, and arrested the manager, Amir Abbas, and six company employees: Palestinian reporters Layali Eid, Nuhad Hijazi, and Lana Kamela, photographers Yazan Haddad and Walid Kamar, and camera operator Firas Handawi, according to\u00a0Arab News.\u00a0Police interrogated Abbas for hours before releasing him.<\/p>\n

The Israeli police verbally warned all five journalists, as well as Abbas, to stop their work for the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation (PBC), the parent company of the VoP, from Jerusalem, and released them without filing charges. Israel had earlier\u00a0banned the PBC from operating directly in Jerusalem\u00a0in November of 2019.<\/p>\n

Ben-Gvir himself tweeted about the closure mockingly, referring (in Hebrew) to the office as an \u201cenemy media channel\u201d that \u201cbelongs in Syria, not Eretz Israel.\u201d1<\/a><\/p>\n

The PBC published a statement on the closure, which read:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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[The order] will not prevent the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation from continuing to provide coverage in occupied Jerusalem\u2014the capital of the Palestinian state. What happened proves the essence of the Israeli lie . . . that Israel is a democratic country that respects freedom of expression and freedom of the press.2<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The\u00a0Committee to Protect Journalists\u00a0immediately issued a statement condemning these actions:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Israeli authorities must reverse their order to close the Voice of Palestine\u2019s operations in Israel, which was issued without citing any specific problems with its coverage. Palestinian journalists should be able to do their jobs freely, without fear of being interrogated, harassed, or obstructed from doing their work.3<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cPalestinian journalists should be able to do their jobs freely, without fear of being interrogated, harassed, or obstructed from doing their work.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Committee to Protect Journalists<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Reporters Without Borders\u00a0likewise condemned the move harshly, saying:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The decision by the Israeli authorities to deprive the Palestinian public broadcaster of its means of broadcasting is part of a growing crackdown on the Palestinian media and amounts to indirect but very effective censorship of the Palestinian Authority\u2019s media outlets. Furthermore, it is unacceptable to target and intimidate journalists who are just doing their job. The ban on the production company, which in practice prevents the broadcasting of Palestine TV and Voice of Palestine, must be lifted immediately.4<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Even Israel\u2019s Union of Journalists condemned the summoning of the journalists for questioning:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Interrogation of journalists is an extreme step that seriously harms the freedom of the press, the public\u2019s right to know and journalists\u2019 work. The Union of Journalists will make the necessary legal assistance available to the [interrogated] journalists and will consider taking legal measures.5<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Israel occupied Arab East Jerusalem in 1967, an occupation which is considered illegal under international law, and unilaterally extended its jurisdiction and law over it. Previously, since 1948, East Jerusalem had been the capital of the entire West Bank under Jordanian rule and was historically an integral part of the area (see\u00a0What Is Jerusalem?).<\/p>\n

The ban of Marcel was based on a 1995\u00a0Israeli law\u00a0deriving from the 1990s\u00a0Oslo Accords, which prevented the PA from operating anywhere within the Israeli-declared municipal boundaries of Jerusalem. At the time, Israel used this law to shut down the East Jerusalem offices of the PBC in addition to the Palestinian Health Council and the\u00a0Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. They did not want any Palestinian media reports coming out of Jerusalem.<\/p>\n

Israeli authorities in recent years have applied this law as a way of criminalizing\u00a0any<\/em>\u00a0PA involvement of any kind in Jerusalem as part of their overall effort to eliminate the possibility of Palestinians ever having national claim to the city or a part of it. This has often reached the realm of absurdity, with\u00a0soccer matches,\u00a0puppet shows,\u00a0covid clinics, and more being shut down due to alleged PA support or involvement.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u00a01<\/a><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Itamar Ben-Gvir (@itamarbengvir), \u201cIn the order I signed, we closed the Palestinian station today<\/a>\u201d [in Hebrew], Twitter, March 20, 2023, 5:02 p.m.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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2<\/a><\/p>\n

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Josh Breiner, Sheren Falah Saab, and Nir Hasson, \u201cFar-Right Minister Ben-Gvir Blocks Voice of Palestine TV Broadcasts in Israel<\/a>,\u201d\u00a0Haaretz<\/em>, March 21, 2023.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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3<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u201cIsraeli Authorities Shutter Voice of Palestine Radio\u2019s Israel Operations, Question 5 Journalists<\/a>,\u201d Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), March 20, 2023,<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ben-Gvir Orders a Palestinian Media Office in Beit Hanina to Close \u00a0\u00a0Jerusalem Story Team On March 14, 2023, Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir signed an order banning Marcel, a private production services company in Beit Hanina inside the Jerusalem boundaries, from providing communication services to the Ramallah-based Voice of Palestine (VoP) radio station …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sawtoroba.com\/Eng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sawtoroba.com\/Eng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sawtoroba.com\/Eng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sawtoroba.com\/Eng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sawtoroba.com\/Eng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3034"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sawtoroba.com\/Eng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3034\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sawtoroba.com\/Eng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sawtoroba.com\/Eng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sawtoroba.com\/Eng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}