Joining Arab States, Israel Targets Al-Jazeera

FEATURING MARK LEVINE – Within weeks of Saudi Arabia’s bizarre attack on neighboring Qatar that included a demand to shut down Al-Jazeera, Israel is now attempting to ban the network’s journalists.

The Israeli communications minister Ayoub Kara announced this week that he would be revoking Al-Jazeera reporters’ press credentials and moving to shut down the outlet’s Jerusalem bureau. Mr. Kara cited Al-Jazeera’s coverage of the Al Aqsa mosque related news as a reason for its imminent ban. He even went as far as calling Al-Jazeera a, “tool for the Islamic State.”

The news outlet, which is funded by the Qatar government has made a name for itself as a trustworthy journalistic institution over the past 2 decades. Despite that and, perhaps because of it, it has been targeted many times. But what is behind this latest attack in Israel?

Read Mark Levine Al-Jazeera’s article HERE.

Mark LeVine, professor of history at UC Irvine and Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Lund University, Sweden, and a senior columnist at al-Jazeera, where he’s extensively covered the Arab uprisings and the Israeli Occupation. He’s the author and editor of a dozen books, including most recently One Land, Two States: Israel and Palestine as Parallel States (UC Press) and a forthcoming book on the next 50 years of the Occupation.