SCANDAL RESULTLY Between politicians, in Israel: “The foreign press violates the censorship directives”

Israeli politicians are arguing about the efforts to censure the current conflict with Iran, CNN and Sky News reported on Friday.

Two extreme-right ministers in Israel have intensified the pressure on foreign media about filming the places hit by the Iranian missiles, threatening that they will ask security agencies to investigate the press, while the opposition leader denounced “amateurism and populism of these people.”

The intensification of this pressure from the government comes in the context in which journalists working in Israel operate in accordance with the censure laws of the country.

In a letter to the new interim chief of the SHin Bet internal security agency, the Minister of National Security, Istamar Ben Gvir, said that “some” foreign institutions of the media “violate the censorship orders and commit a serious crime against national security” through the live broadcasts from the rockets.

Ben Gvir said he is asking Shin Bet to take measures to “prevent continuous, reckless and dangerous behavior to broadcast the locations of missile attacks.”

The leader of the opposition: “The decision to impose a total embargo on the transmissions, impossible to apply”

In contrast, the leader of the Israeli opposition, Yair Lapid, harshly criticized Ben Gvir's attack on the foreign press and the approach of the Israeli government.

Lapid said on Friday that “the decision to impose a total embargo on transmissions is impossible to apply as everyone has a camera mobile phone and unnecessarily undermines the global support that Israel has enjoyed in the last week for the right war.”

“The amateurism and populism of these people have no limits,” Lapid said.

Ben-Gvir replied, doubling the stake. He said: “The journalists will request the appropriate approval from the censor, they will be subjected to a check to verify that they do not harm the security of the state – and they will be approved.”

Rules imposed on foreign press in Israel

The Israeli defense forces allow the filming of certain rocket impact places in Israel, such as Thursday's Ramat Gan and the rocket that hit the Beer Sheva hospital. The army also coordinates the activity of the foreign press on the spot. The foreign media is often accompanied by the local press at the impact places.

Journalists working in Israel operate in accordance with the censure laws of the country and may be obliged to present the filmed materials to the military censors to be examined.

In a common statement with Ben Gvir, the extreme-right minister of communications, Shlomo Karni, said that “foreign media operating in Israel violates censorship directives.”

“These transmissions often reveal the exact locations of missile impact, the extent of damages and, in some cases, sensitive images from the place of the incident,” they said.