Editor’s Note: This opinion piece is part of a platform swap between Good Faith Media and Baptist News Global, which today published an opinion piece by Craig Nash. 

One of the pillars of modern democracies is a free press. You cannot have a true democracy without impartial news outlets that not only aren’t controlled by the state but also are free to criticize the government.

Benjamin Netanyahu, who already stands on the cusp of being indicted in a global court as a war criminal, recently closed the blinds on Israel as a democratic government by banning the international news service Al Jazeera. Democracies do not ban news outlets. Dictators do.

Netanyahu is a tyrannical dictator driven by vengeance who needs to be removed from office immediately. To everyone worried about the growth of antisemitism in the present moment, please understand your words are incomplete unless you also denounce Israel’s leader, who is “antisemitic” in another sense of the word. The 35,000 civilians he has slaughtered also are semitic people. Just not his kind of semitic people.

On May 5, Netanyahu declared: “Al Jazeera reporters harmed Israel’s security and incited against soldiers. It’s time to remove the Hamas mouthpiece from our country.”

To comprehend the scope of this, imagine a president of the United States banning the BBC, Reuters or Fox News. Not only would such an action not stand up in court, it would be seen around the world as anti-democratic.

Al Jazeera, which is a respected news service based in the Middle East, issued a statement saying it will “pursue all available legal channels through international legal institutions in its quest to protect both its rights and journalists, as well as the public’s right to information.”

And it added: “Israel’s ongoing suppression of the free press, seen as an effort to conceal its actions in the Gaza Strip, stands in contravention of international and humanitarian law. Israel’s direct targeting and killing of journalists, arrests, intimidation and threats will not deter Al Jazeera.”

More than 100 journalists and media workers were killed in Gaza in the first seven months of Israel’s attacks there. 

Then last week, Netanyahu’s government confiscated camera and broadcasting equipment from the Associated Press, claiming the news agency had violated a new law by providing a live video feed of Gaza to Al Jazeera, one of AP’s clients. (Baptist News Global also is a client of AP, which is the source of many images used on our website.)

That drew condemnation from the White House and the State Department. 

“The free press is an essential pillar of democracy and members of the media, including AP, do vital work that must be respected,” said Adrienne Watson, a spokesperson for the National Security Council. 

What’s going on here? Israel is facing intense pressure from other world democracies to stop killing innocent civilians in Gaza and to find a better way to root out Hamas. Their war effort is not achieving the stated goals. While claiming to protect sensitive information about troop movements, Netanyahu really is targeting news outlets that don’t tell his story the way he wants it told — with him as the hero.

This is not how democracies operate. 

And Americans, beware. Remember how Donald Trump has berated the national media for producing “fake news” when he, instead, is the one pushing out fake news. Remember how he has berated, discredited, slandered and mocked the national media.

We are one presidential election away from what is happening in Israel happening in America. Netanyahu and Trump are cut from the same dictatorial cloth.

The entire free world should condemn Netanyahu and the Israeli government for their attempts to censor a free press. That is not how democracies operate.

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