Netanyahu vows to take “immediate action” to shut down Israel’s Al Jazeera TV station (file photo)
Jerusalem:
Israel’s Knesset on Monday passed a bill authorizing senior ministers to ban Israeli news channel Al Jazeera from broadcasts – a move Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is preparing to take.
The law, passed by a vote of 70 to 10, gives foreign channels the power to ban content but also allows them to close their offices in Israel.
Netanyahu vowed to take “immediate action” to shut down Israel’s Al Jazeera TV station once the law is passed.
Israel claimed in January that an Al Jazeera journalist and a freelancer killed in a Gaza airstrike were “terrorists”.
The next month, the channel said another journalist wounded in another attack was a Hamas “deputy company commander.”
Israeli forces have been fighting Hamas in Gaza since October.
Al Jazeera strongly denies the accusations and accuses Israel of systematically targeting Al Jazeera employees in the Gaza Strip.
A bill that would allow officials to block foreign media deemed harmful to national security passed its first hurdle in parliament last month.
Netanyahu’s Likud party said he asked the Knesset to “ensure that the law to shut down Al Jazeera is approved tonight.”
Wael al-Dahdouh, Al Jazeera’s Palestinian bureau chief, was injured in an Israeli attack in December and the station’s cameraman was killed.
The war between Israel and Hamas began with an attack by the militant group on Oct. 7 that killed about 1,160 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.
According to the health ministry in Hamas-controlled Gaza, Israeli retaliation has killed at least 32,845 people, mostly women and children.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
