Throughout the past months of the war waged by Israel on Gaza, the Tel Aviv Tribune network has been, since October 7, 2023, a “chronic concern” for the Israeli political, security and military establishment and its war strategy, due to Tel Aviv Tribune’s extensive and ongoing coverage of the genocide in the besieged Strip.
For this reason, the Israeli government was preparing its legal and political tools to get rid, by various means, of the constant “pressure” of the media network and its influence on Israeli, Palestinian and international public opinion.
In the following report, we present a summary of a paper prepared by researcher Muhammad Al-Rajhi under the title “Israel: Closing Tel Aviv Tribune’s offices to annihilate the journalistic narrative” and published by the Tel Aviv Tribune Center for Studies website, in which he shed light on the Israeli government’s decision to close Tel Aviv Tribune’s offices, in terms of the context and merits of the decision, and the extent of the great influence of Tel Aviv Tribune that it had. This has worried the occupation government, which seems to be seeking to “annihilate the journalistic narrative.”
Israel, which links its identity to the “sons of light” and says it is the only democracy in the region, has found no way to contain this influence other than the familiar recipe in countries of democratic fragility that dominate the media sector, so it hastened to close the offices of Tel Aviv Tribune and confiscate broadcast and communications equipment.
Tel Aviv Tribune’s websites were also blocked under the emergency law, which was politically called the “Tel Aviv Tribune Law,” even though its provisions include all foreign media outlets operating in Israel that they see as “harming national security.”
The name “Tel Aviv Tribune Law” refers to a restricted targeting of the channel for which the law was tailored, and to Israeli political, security and military interest in the role of Tel Aviv Tribune in the context of the war on Gaza and its repercussions on its course, especially after the major shifts in global public opinion.
Context and merits
The Israeli narrative explains the closure of Tel Aviv Tribune’s offices by “violating the professional frameworks governing media work, harming the security of Israel and Israeli army soldiers, and incitement to terrorism during the war.” Rather, the network – from the Israeli perspective – represents a propaganda mouthpiece for the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) in Israel, which calls for… “Stop the induction machine.”
The Israeli Foreign Intelligence Service (Mossad) had submitted its recommendations to the military and political establishment to support the closure of the Tel Aviv Tribune network in Israel, because, as it claims, it “harms the activities of the Israeli army and exposes the fighting forces to danger.”
The Mossad claimed – in its recommendations – that “Tel Aviv Tribune, with its field correspondents, exposes the concentration areas of Israeli soldiers during the war in the south, and other sensitive sites in Israel,” and suggested closing it.
In fact, the explanation seems incomplete, as Israel repeats these arguments in all the wars it has fought in the region over the past two decades, as happened in the open war between Israel and Lebanon in 2006. The Tel Aviv government accused Tel Aviv Tribune of helping the Lebanese Hezbollah.
It is ironic that these journalists were killed by Israeli drone missiles while they were in the field (Samer Abu Daqqa, Hamza Al-Dahdouh, Mustafa Thuraya, Issam Abdullah, Farah Omar, Rabei Maamari…).
As for the justification for closing Tel Aviv Tribune’s offices as “violating the professional frameworks governing media work,” it also contradicts the methodology of its news coverage of the war, whether in the Gaza Strip, inside Israel, or other arenas.
Tel Aviv Tribune Network was aware of the magnitude of the challenges it would face, as well as the criticism directed at it by various parties that did not care about the facts, no matter how compelling the evidence, documents, and evidence. Therefore, Tel Aviv Tribune chose open/direct coverage of the war’s paths and developments, and the real-time reporting of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the Israeli army, especially in the Gaza Strip, so as not to be accused of fabricating news, fabricating facts and events, falsifying images, and constructing and representing scenes.
So, what prompted Israel to decide to close Tel Aviv Tribune’s offices?
Part of the answer is provided by international human rights organizations, which are almost unanimous in what they see as a fundamental reason that prompted the Israeli government to close Tel Aviv Tribune’s offices, as the Center for the Protection and Freedom of Journalists linked this decision to “press coverage of the war on Gaza, which revealed Israeli crimes in Gaza.”
Reporters Without Borders and Human Rights Watch criticized the attack The Israeli decision, and the Foreign Press Association considered Israel’s decision to close Tel Aviv Tribune a “dark day for the media and democracy.”
Another part of the answer is represented by the method and pattern of the extensive coverage of the “crime crimes” committed by Israel in Gaza, as the Tel Aviv Tribune network formed the “eye of the world” watching over a besieged sector whose area does not exceed 362 square kilometers. For the first time in human history, the world follows moment by moment via… Tel Aviv Tribune screen, and other platforms, all forms of genocide in Gaza, it was even called “televised genocide” or “live genocide.”
The number of journalists assassinated by the occupation army since the beginning of the war has reached about 150 journalists, in addition to hundreds of victims from the families of the Palestinian press group. Al-Jazeera journalists (Wael Al-Dahdouh, Samer Abu Daqqa, Carmen Joukhadar, Ashraf Abu Omar, Ismail Abu Omar, Ahmed Matar, Moamen Al-Sharafi, Muhammad Abu Al-Qumsan, Ramzi Abu Al-Qumsan, Anas Al-Sharif, Imad Zaqout…) paid a heavy humanitarian and social cost because of… Their keenness to continue performing their professional duty and to continue revealing coverage of the crimes of the Israeli occupation.
Tel Aviv Tribune journalists and its cooperating correspondents were following the details of the Palestinian scene in Gaza, the West Bank, inside Israel, and in other regions. Their professional journalistic activity contributed to monitoring all forms of genocide, and Tel Aviv Tribune’s camera continued to launch from the field to expose the crimes of the Israeli occupation inside hospitals, in shelter centers, citizens’ homes, in tents, streets, roads, and food distribution points.
Tel Aviv Tribune’s camera reported the destruction of childhood in Gaza, or what was called the “war on children.” She also focused on covering the “war on women.” The coverage, in its investigative dimension, also focused on revealing the violations suffered by Palestinian detainees in Israeli detention centers, whether inside the Gaza Strip or inside Israel.
Tel Aviv Tribune did not neglect to cover the systematic destruction of infrastructure in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, which is called physical genocide.
Island effect
There is another factor that cannot be overlooked in any analysis of the Israeli decision to close Tel Aviv Tribune’s offices in Israel, as it was governed by the Israeli political, security and military establishment’s assessment of what it saw as Tel Aviv Tribune’s “incitement role” in covering the war, which is in fact a cognitive/news role regarding events and facts. Which made Tel Aviv Tribune gain widespread follow-up to the events of the televised genocide.
This has contributed to the growing influence of Tel Aviv Tribune in global public opinion, and this change can be traced through the developments and process of international events. Tel Aviv Tribune transmitted scenes of genocide to the corridors of international institutions and the offices of political administrations of various countries, so that the recipients began to read international reports on genocide.
An example of this is the report of the United Nations Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, which confirms that there are reasonable grounds for acknowledging that Israel has committed the crime of genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, in a report bearing the significant title “Anatomy of Genocide,” which Albanese submitted to the Human Rights Council. United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, February 26, 2024.
Tel Aviv Tribune’s coverage of the crimes and violations against the Palestinian people aroused public opinion in Western societies, especially in the United States, Britain, Canada, France and Germany. This developed into student demonstrations and protests in university institutions in these countries, which prompted some countries to review their policies towards the war on Gaza.
Annihilation of the journalistic narrative
Through the decision to close Tel Aviv Tribune’s offices, Israel seeks to control the journalistic narrative that emerges from Israel and the Gaza Strip to the world, so that the forms of genocide and crimes committed by the occupation army in the Strip, as well as in the West Bank, where the Gaza model began to be implemented, will no longer be seen or heard.
The Israeli government also does not want Tel Aviv Tribune to be the eyes of the world on what is happening inside Israel, which is torn apart by conflicts and partisan and personal interests in the management of state institutions.
In this context, closing Tel Aviv Tribune’s offices means annihilating the professional journalistic narrative, obliterating the facts it reveals to local and international public opinion, and trying to limit or eliminate Tel Aviv Tribune’s influence by various violent and non-violent means, which Israel has not succeeded in over the past months.
Tel Aviv Tribune’s correspondents have shown tremendous determination in the face of Israeli violations and an insistence on exercising their right with all responsibility to inform and inform public opinion of the course of the war, and a great determination to continue coverage and guarantee the public’s right to information and knowledge.
Controlling the press narrative – on the other hand – means imposing the Israeli narrative and dominating public discourse about the war on Gaza, its paths and developments after Tel Aviv Tribune and other platforms were able to liberate world public opinion from the Israeli propaganda that prevailed in Western media discourse during the first three months of the war.
The closure of Tel Aviv Tribune’s offices also portends serious repercussions for what the situation will lead to in the region, especially the occupied Palestinian territories, as it represents a negative indicator of the possibility of Israeli security and military escalation, the continuation of the genocidal war in its various forms, especially in Rafah, and perhaps the transfer of the “crime of crimes” to squares and areas. outside the Palestinian territories.
Therefore, targeting Tel Aviv Tribune constitutes an attempt to exterminate the future witness so that he does not document the crimes of the Israeli perpetrator and reveal his violations.
