Netanyahu Vows to Expel Al Jazeera

29 Jul

7:17 AM

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to expel Arabic news station Al-Jazeera from Israel, claiming that the network is “inciting” violence, the Independent reported, according to PNN.

Al Jazeera, which has long been accused of being bias against Israel, has, alongside other media, been covering the current al-Aqsa crisis over the past couple of weeks.

“The Al-Jazeera network continues to incite violence around the Temple Mount,” Netanyahu wrote in Hebrew, in a Facebook post.

He further added, “I have appealed to law enforcement agencies several times to close the Al-Jazeera office in Jerusalem. If this does not happen because of legal reasons, I will work to legislate the laws required to remove Al Jazeera from Israel.”

Al-Jazeera has, in the past, been faced with government censure in neighboring Egypt when, in 2014, the Arab state jailed three al-Jazeera journalists for seven years and closed the network’s offices. Two have been released, but a third remains in prison.

Egypt, along with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, has called for Qatar to close Al Jazeera.