Government approves proposal to block Hezbollah-affiliated Al Mayadeen news
Communications minister signs order to seize network’s equipment and block local access to its websites, says ‘terrorist representatives’ are posing as journalists
Sam Sokol is the Times of Israel's political correspondent. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"
The government on Sunday approved a proposal to block Lebanon’s Hezbollah-affiliated Al Mayadeen news channel, and Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi signed an order to confiscate the network’s equipment and block its websites.
Last November, the security cabinet voted to shut down the Al Mayadeen satellite news station in Israel, in line with emergency regulations allowing the government to close foreign news outlets it believes are harming national security amid the ongoing war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. However, the measure expired in January.
The decision to again block the network — apparently both its transmissions and its work in Israel — came after “the reappearance of terrorist representatives posing as journalists about two weeks ago,” a spokesman for Karhi said in a statement referring to an Al Mayadeen reporter’s broadcast from Majdal Shams last month, a day after a rocket fired by Hezbollah killed 12 children on a soccer field in the Druze town in the Golan Heights.
In her broadcast, Al Mayadeen’s Hanaa Mahameed falsely claimed that the children were hit by an Israeli strike, prompting Karhi to state that the military was “invited to take [Mahameed] and throw her across the border. Letting a Hezbollah reporter broadcast from the scene of the massacre Hezbollah committed is absurd on every level.”
Al Mayadeen said in a post to social media platform X that the move to again ban it “can only be seen as a blatant attack on freedom of speech and an effort to conceal the truth.”
“This aggressive move targets the core purpose of journalism: to expose the truth, inform the public, as well as debunk misinformation being spread on global issues,” the network said.
The latest ban on Al Mayadeen was implemented under the so-called Al Jazeera law passed by the Knesset in April, which grants the government temporary powers to prevent foreign news networks from operating in Israel if they are deemed by the security services to be harming national security.
The legislation was initially aimed at the Al Jazeera network, which the government banned in May, shuttering and raiding its offices, alleging it was actively harming national security. Last month, the Tel Aviv District Court extended the ban on the network.
Al Jazeera’s English-language and Arabic websites are no longer available in Israel on some local internet providers.
The war in Gaza erupted when thousands of terrorists broke through the border fence on October 7, rampaging through Israel’s southern towns and murdering some 1,200 people while carrying out other atrocities such as mutilation and sexual abuse.
Terrorists also took 251 hostages, 111 of whom are believed to still be held captive in Gaza, including the bodies of 39 confirmed dead by the IDF.
Israel responded with a military campaign to destroy the Hamas regime in Gaza and free the hostages.
The day after the Hamas attack, Lebanon’s Hezbollah terror group began attacking along Israel’s northern border saying it was acting in support of Gaza. Near-daily rocket and drone attacks have drawn Israeli responses, raising fears that the fighting is bringing the two sides to the brink of a full war.
In November, Al Mayadeen claimed that two of its journalists and a civilian were killed in an Israeli strike, despite the IDF saying it had only struck Hezbollah targets.
The news outlet said that its “correspondent Farah Omar and cameraman Rabih Maamari were killed by an Israeli attack,” and the state-run National News Agency (NNA) alleged the same, adding that “the death of three citizens” was caused by “enemy bombing” in the Tair Harfa area.
At the beginning of August, the IDF confirmed carrying out a strike in Gaza City that killed Al Jazeera reporter Ismail al-Ghoul, but said he was a member of Hamas’s elite Nukhba force who participated in the October 7 onslaught.
In addition to his participation in the massacre in southern Israel, al-Ghoul instructed other terror operatives on how to film and distribute videos of attacks on Israeli troops, according to the military.
Israel denies deliberately targeting journalists.
