Biden-Harris Admin, Which Has Suppressed U.S. Speech, Chastises Israel for Shutting Al Jazeera Office in Wartime

This is almost too priceless to be believed.

The Biden-Harris State Department has admonished Israel over its shutdown of Al Jazeera’s West Bank office during IDF combat operations.

As I’ve previously detailed, Israel has had to dispatch troops into Judea and Samaria, the territory known as the West Bank, which the Palestinian Authority governs semiautonomously, because Iran-backed jihadist groups operating there — including Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, and elements of Hamas — have opened up another front in their exterminationist war against the Jewish state.

Al Jazeera is based in Qatar, a longtime backer of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas (the Brotherhood’s Palestinian branch) and a close ally of Iran. The Biden administration nevertheless considers Qatar to be a “major non-NATO ally.” Naturally, Al Jazeera pushes anti-American and anti-Israeli propaganda. As it must now confront West Bank jihadists in addition to other Iran-backed enemies in the multi-front war, Israel concluded that the Al Jazeera studio in Ramallah is being used for “incitement and support of terrorist activities” and that its broadcasts at this time are a threat to regional and Israeli security.

There is no international-law requirement in wartime that combatants give immunity to outlets for enemy propaganda.

Nevertheless, a Biden-Harris State Department spokesman declared that Israel’s “action is inconsistent with US support for freedom of the press in the West Bank and all over the world.”

The gall here is breathtaking, even by Biden-Harris administration standards.

As recounted in litigation that culminated in a Supreme Court ruling in June, the Biden-Harris White House and other administration officials have engaged in extensive, intimidating actions to induce social-media platforms to suppress reporting and commentary by its political opponents. A majority of the Court ultimately concluded that plaintiffs lacked standing — i.e., that they failed to establish a sufficiently strong nexus between the Biden-Harris hardball tactics and the damages they claimed to suffer in having their speech restricted by social-media companies. It is incontestable, however, that the administration labored mightily to silence its critics.

It’s worth noting that, whatever may be going on in the world, an American government’s obligation is to protect Americans’ rights to free speech and a free press in the United States. Perhaps the Biden-Harris administration could start taking that obligation seriously before presuming to rebuke Israel while it fights a war for its survival.