Doha, Qatar — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that his government had “unanimously” decided to shut down the Qatar-based Al Jazeera news channel, one of the few outlets which still has an operational bureau in the war-ravaged Gaza Strip.
Al Jazeera, which went off-air in Israel shortly after the announcement, condemned the move as a “criminal act.”
Here are five things to know about the Arab media giant, with which Netanyahu’s administration has had a long-running feud that began well before Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza started on October 7.
Foundation
Al Jazeera was launched in Doha in 1996 by a decree issued by the former emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani.
While stipulating that the channel should be “totally independent of all influences,” the decree also provided a $150 million government loan for “setting it up and covering its operating costs for five years.”
Though Al Jazeera Media Network is a private business, the broadcaster has retained some Qatari government funding, which its critics often cite when questioning its editorial independence from Doha.
The broadcaster immediately emerged as a rival to international media giants but its no-holds-barred coverage as the self-described “first independent news channel in the Arab world” also sparked a series of legal disputes in the region in its early years.
Global reach
The channel says it operates in 95 countries with 70 bureaus and a staff of 3,000 employees, with a global audience of 430 million homes.
Al Jazeera, the network’s initial Arabic-language news channel, was joined in 2006 by an English service.
Al Jazeera and Al Jazeera English — the network’s flagship channels — have distinct editorial lines with the Arabic-language channel more frequently facing criticism from within the region.
The network also includes a live public affairs channel, Al Jazeera Mubasher, and its digital-only AJ+ channel, which is aimed at a youth audience.
Arab Spring
When a wave of popular uprisings swept the Middle East and North Africa in 2011, Al Jazeera was seen as a key shaper of public opinion because it gave unprecedented airtime to opposition groups, most notably the Muslim Brotherhood.
The network has repeatedly rejected any accusation of bias in its coverage.
Al Jazeera faced pressure from governments across the region and became the focus of a feud between Cairo and Doha after the 2013 military ouster of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood President Mohamed Morsi.
Cairo considered it a mouthpiece for Morsi’s Islamist movement and Egyptian authorities arrested three Al Jazeera journalists, including Australian Peter Greste, provoking international condemnation.
Qatar blockade
In 2017, Qatar’s neighbors, led by Saudi Arabia, imposed a three-year diplomatic and economic blockade on the Gulf monarchy.
As well as demanding Qatar cut ties with the Muslim Brotherhood and its sister organization Hamas, and downgrade relations with Iran, the boycotting states also called for the closure of Al Jazeera and all its affiliates.
The channel called the pressure an attempt to “silence freedom of expression.”
Israel-Hamas war
Since the start of the war in Gaza on October 7, Al Jazeera aired continuous on-the-ground reporting of Israel’s campaign and its consequences.
Its broadcasts have been among the most watched in the Middle East amid widespread disenchantment with Western media coverage.
Last month, Netanyahu called Al Jazeera a “terrorist channel,” saying he would “act immediately” to halt its activities after a new law was passed.
At the time, the news station called the proposed ban a “part of a series of systematic Israeli attacks to silence Al Jazeera,” which it said included the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh, one of its most prominent journalists in the region, while covering an Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank in May 2022.
Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, Al Jazeera’s office in the Palestinian territory of Gaza has been bombed and two of its correspondents killed.
In January, Israel said an Al Jazeera staff journalist and a freelancer killed in an airstrike in Gaza were “terror operatives.”
The following month, it accused another journalist with the channel who was wounded in a separate strike of being a “deputy company commander” with Hamas.
Al Jazeera has fiercely denied Israel’s allegations and accused it of systematically targeting Al Jazeera employees in the Gaza Strip.
Its bureau chief in Gaza, Wael al-Dahdouh, was wounded in an Israeli strike in December that killed the network’s cameraman.
His wife, two of their children and a grandson were killed in the October bombardment of central Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp.
His eldest son was the Al Jazeera staff journalist killed in January when a strike targeted a car in Rafah.
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