Israeli Censorship

Radio Station Shut Down

Human Rights – Israel has ordered the shutdown of a dovish Israeli-Palestinian radio station, officials and the station’s operators said.

The “station and other critics said the move was politically motivated, and part of a broader assault on democracy by conservative forces in the government.”

Several members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition are advocating for a series of measures that many believe are aimed at curtailing opposition in the Jewish state.

Among the proposed legislation are attempts to block most foreign funding for dovish groups, lowering the threshold for politicians to file libel suits against the media, and a push to shift control of Supreme Court appointments from an independent panel to parliament.

One of Netanyahu’s alleged henchmen, conservative lawmaker Danny Danon, is said to have boasted that he helped close the “All for Peace” radio station. Danon, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud Party, claimed the Communications Ministry shutdown the station on his whim, after he vaguely said it “incited” against Israel.

“A radical leftist station [for peace] that becomes an instrument of incitement must not be allowed to broadcast to the broader public,” Danon said.

Operators for “All For Peace” radio said they immediately complied with the edict issued last week. Israel’s communication ministry confirmed it issued the order, and said, “[T]he station was broadcasting into Israel illegally.”

The ministry, headed by a Likud Cabinet minister, said that the station’s Hebrew-language broadcasts inside Israel were “economically damaging local radio franchisees.”

Mossi Raz, the Israeli director of the station, said that the station is not subject to Israeli law because it transmits from the West Bank. He further articulated that the legality of the station, which has been operating since 2004, has never been questioned in the past and that the Israeli Government Press Office has issued press cards to the station’s journalists.

Read more at Yahoo.