The EU has banned many Russian and Belarussian news sources since the invasion of Ukraine.
The USA seems to not have followed through (as far as I know - as Russian news sites seem to be available).
The USA seems to not have followed through (as far as I know - as Russian news sites seem to be available).
Israeli news reports and analysts say Qatar has sent more than $1 billion to Gaza over the past decade.
Qatar sent that aid through fuel to the Gaza Strip's Hamas government, which in turn sold it and paid partial salaries. In the past, the money was sent via suitcases stuffed with cash.
Israel allowed these transfers to Hamas. Supporters of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu say the payments his government approved helped keep the status quo in the Gaza Strip and Hamas from escalating attacks on Israel.
https://www.npr.org/2023/11/02/1210110109/qatar-israel-gaza-...
Iran is Hamas' main backer. Qatar funded Hamas with Israel's consent, so it's not really fair to hold this against Doha. (Their continuing to host Hamas' leadership is fair to criticise.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatar_and_state-sponsored_terr...
Sure. Hence why I qualified my statement with "continuing." Doha hosting Hamas in '17 was fine. Doha hosting them after October 7 is fair to criticise.
Yes. Hamas was seen by even Israel as better than anarchy. That's why they let Doha fund them.
We're now seeing American lawmakers criticising Qatar [1]. That's prompting Dohas to "re-evaluat[e] its role as mediator in ceasefire talks" and weigh "whether to allow Hamas to continue operating [its] political office" [2][3].
[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/qatar-says-gaza-ce...
[2] https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/qatar-says-gaza-ce...
[3] https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/qatar-considers-fu...
Better then anarchy or better than peace? There is some people on both sides of this conflict which are happy to see it radicalized and I think those people all benefits from the other being strong on the other side.
All that said, the actions taken by the Israeli right are certainly not helping the possibility of a future peace agreement, but it's not clear whether this specific action belongs in that group. One might argue that a stronger central authority in Gaza means there is a partner for a future agreement and that if Gaza can transition to be a more peaceful place (and it seemed to be heading in that direction) that would also support a future agreement.
Qatar is not a western country, there is no reason to expect it to buy into western exceptionalism. This is not to defend Hamas but simply to point out that the western double standard doesn’t reach much beyond Europe.
America is (a) a country and (b) major trading and security partner.
> Qatar is not a western country, there is no reason to expect it to buy into western exceptionalism
We are their security guarantor. It’s why Doha is publicly debating shutting down Hamas’ political office.
Are missiles coming out of Qatar? Are they even supplying arms to Hamas, or do they simply fund the civilian portions of the government?
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/world/middleeast/israel-q...
The furthest the freely accessible part goes is to say Israel "encouraged" Qatari payments to Hamas.
from what I can see it never mentioned Israel directly giving money to Hamas. But encouraging payments seems close enough.
I think pretty much any money going into Gaza should be considered funding Hamas. It either went directly to Hamas or it was taxed or it allowed Hamas not to spent that money. This means Europe and the US also funded Hamas.
The reason for funding was to create chaos, not to remove it. Why else do you fund a group that destabilises the area. Basically Israel wanted Gaza to be more chaotic as they felt it gave them more control.
The decision to pursue power and chaos as opposed to seeking resolution and a path to peace has had obvious consequences.
This whole thread is so strange, people keep claiming Palestinians cannot be trusted to rule themselves, while at the same time accusing Israel of genocide for not giving them the ability to rule themselves.
> But encouraging payments seems close enough.
Hmmm. I don't think I agree with that. It's such a polarized and emotional debate. It could really benefit from being precise with words.
Making everything sound just slightly worse than it is will help rile up the side that feels slighted and it will let the other side just pass the speaker off as a liar. The result is fewer shared facts, more polarization and a more emotional debate.
The truth of war is bad enough. It doesn't need to be stretched.
AlJazeera is known to be untrustworthy on matters of the middle east. Just as BBC is untrustworthy on matters of UK international politics and the NYT [1] can't be trusted on US foreign policy matters.
AlJazeera, NYT and BBC are weapons of mass propaganda just like Globaltimes or RT. The main (and admittedly stark) difference is how often these weapons are deployed.
[]1 https://www.theguardian.com/media/2004/may/26/pressandpublis...
AFAIK, there has been no ban. It would probably face some backlash given the First Amendment right to freedom of press. (Though I'm not sure that truly extends to the press of a foreign country?)
I don't think you can compare Al Jazeera and RT, because one has been a firehose of bullshit that has literally advocates invasion of Ukraine, and the other does not. As far as I know, Al Jazeera is banned purely because they've been critical of current Israeli policy. There are some reasonable criticisms of Al Jazeera and things they could have done better, but that applies to every media outlet on the planet.
Both have the same aim, just as Qatar Airways sponsor your flights with oil money so you might fly through Qatar, Al Jazeera pays journalists so they can push Qatar's narratives to Western or Arabic audience. This is highly similar to RT in intent.
Looking from Israel standpoint, it's a news outlet that pushes your enemies propaganda arm videos unfiltered and also uses it to radicalize part of your population
Also note that the Israeli government spends tons of money to push Israeli narratives and viewpoints. That's fine, they're allowed to do that, but we can leverage the same "highly similar to RT in intent" accusations against them. In the end we should judge actions, not intent.
The discussion here is about the actions of Israel versus Al Jazeera, not a possibility of banning Al Jazeera in the United States or maybe Israeli viewpoints.
Also, I am pretty sure Israeli spendings to push Israeli narratives in the US are minuscule, especially compared to Qatar's.
This is quite popular in europe and is a result of lesson learned from the nazis
Well, you can. You're allowed. But at that point I decide to stop engaging. So good day to you.
Quite the contrary, just look at ADL or AIPAC.
It seems you think Israel has direct finance or control interest in AIPAC, do you have something to support that?
AIPAC is nominally funded by "individual donations", but the problem with that it is fairly trivial for a nation-state to fund things in this manner, so it doesn't really tell us anything. And then, of course, there's the question of personal connections: if you have a private person donating huge amounts of money to AIPAC, and they just happen to be heavily involved with the governing political party in Israel, I would consider them an agent of the state of Israel ipso facto even if they don't have such official position (just as I would consider, say, one of Putin's pet oligarchs a Russian agent if they donate money to an American political campaign in their private capacity).
I've spent a while translating various articles on the Al Jazeera Arabic site from Arabic to English with mistral-7b. Everything seemed to be very fact based, and was emphasising things like civilian deaths, which aligns to what I'd consider public interest.
The Arabic text does consistently use the term شهيد (martyr) to describe Palestinian civilian casualties in Gaza, which is the closest thing to biased language I found across multiple articles about Israel and Palestine - but I think that is normal in Arabic for describing even non-combatant casualties and not necessarily reflective of bias given Arabic conventions.
This is obviously a source with a considerable bias, but they link to many concerning examples of Al Jazeera reporting. I personally don’t speak Arabic but anecdotally I’ve heard that the translations are accurate, the bias is manifest in choosing what to translate. This example was especially concerning, exacerbating civilian deaths:
> Al-Jazeera Fabricates Information Designed To Thwart Israel's Instructions To The Gaza Population
>Al-Jazeera broadcast footage of bodies of civilians strewn over a road, presenting them as victims of an Israeli attack against people who had abided by the IDF instructions to evacuate to southern Gaza.[91] Israel in fact had secured safe passage to the south for those civilians who wished to go there, while Hamas exerted pressure on them to remain put in order to use civilians as human shields.[92]
“because one has been a firehose of bullshit that has literally advocates invasion of Ukraine”
How is that different from CNN/BBC/whatever advocating NATO/US invasions in the last half century? (Serbia, Iraq2, Libya, etc). And more recently Gaza.
I read Clark's Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia (<https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002RI9PMM/>) right after hearing about YouTube shutting down Russian state media channels. I was surprised to learn in the book of the extent of the freedom of the press in late 18th-century Prussia. A British visitor wrote that people were as free to speak as back home, citing a work that was very critical of the king in the context of Poland. During the Napoleonic wars, despite the existential threat to Prussia from France, at least four newspapers that celebrated Revolutionary France as the next step in human freedom were allowed to publish.
It's always preferable to counter propaganda with free speech. Even liars deserve the opportunity to speak. This is especially true when there is no formally declared war between US/Europe outside Ukraine and Russia.
Yes it did. And that was a dark day for Europe.
Whatever the interpretation, I think it's clear that things are degrading fast in the last few decades. I don't think an EU-wide block on Russian media such as RT wouldn't have passed with such indifference 20 years ago.
That's the most worrying to me: not the measure itself, but the indifference from the general population. In fact, I have another comment in this thread saying that block was abhorrent and it's gathering downvotes... In HN, a community where most are well-educated people from the US, a country that has arguably been the staunchest defender of freedom of expression and of the press. I find that worrying. And then there is cancel culture, and other factors, that have eroded effective freedom of speech.
At this rate, in a few more decades Western democracies will be hard to tell in practice from Chinese authoritarianism, which is worrying, because they have better economic projection, more safety, booming infrastructure, a less aggressive foreign policy... Democracy and freedom is basically what makes the West worth it, if we lose it, what's even the point?
Illiberal maybe, but not undemocratic.
If a supermajority opposes free press, it would be undemocratic to force it upon them.
Too many people - usually Americans - confuse liberal democracy with democracy.
Liberal democracy is a phrase for a reason - and the liberal comes first for a reason!
Just because people vote for something doesn't make the thing they voted for democratic. Historically people have voted to install a non-democratic government before.
If not, it's not democracy! You're deciding to overrule the demos and enforce your minority opinion!
I know it seems like pedantry but we shouldn't confuse liberalism with democracy.
rt.com, enter… loads instantaneously.
sputnikglobe.com, enter… loads instantaneously.
Please don’t lie.
Edit: it was not a lie, my apologies.
One of the most ineffectual bans I have ever seen.
To me this is more a discouragement of promotion than any real ban, but I will edit my previous comment.
Try one of these (none accessible to me in Sweden):
My wife is Belarussian and was upset she couldn't read her news, that's how I know they banned many websites. They didn't ban the "opposition" websites run from outside Russia/Belarus though :).