Violation of freedom of expression and protest against the war and the occupation

Restrictions on activists, human rights defenders, and on freedom of expression and protest further entrench the occupation and enable human rights violations in the Occupied Territories. Since the outbreak of the war, and through its second year, attempts to restrict space for protests against the occupation, government policy, and the continued war in the Gaza Strip have intensified.

Demonstrations and protests

Dozens of anti-war protests were denied permits by the police and local authorities or faced illegal delays and restrictions. Following numerous petitions, the High Court of Justice clarified that freedom of protest continues to apply in times of war. Nonetheless, in practice police resistance has clearly had a chilling effect on protest.

Demonstrations against the war, in which Israel was accused of war crimes or otherwise criticized, were frequently subjected to restrictions. The Israel Police confiscated and destroyed protest signs and installations it deemed to be inappropriate, while denying in legal proceedings the existence of a policy to that effect. Additionally, some demonstrations were violently dispersed on the grounds of alleged illegality or concern over riots.

With no state protections for freedom of expression and protest, enforcement is increasingly undertaken by unauthorized officials such as municipal employees, as well as private actors such as business owners and security guards, who withhold services or access from protestors wearing anti-war or anti-government shirts or carrying protest signs.

In the West Bank, authorities sometimes declare areas as closed military zones to block Israeli-Palestinian demonstrations and to prevent Israeli or foreign activists from showing support for Palestinian farmers and joining the olive harvest.

Israeli and international activists, along with their Palestinian peers, routinely face harassment from settlers and soldiers during protests or while engaging in farm work. In September 2024, soldiers shot and killed Turkish-American peace activist Ayşenur Özge Eyği after a demonstration in the village of Beita.

Clampdown on free speech

In November 2024, ACRI contacted the State Attorney to protest the unlawful, abusive use of enforcement powers against speech. In the letter, ACRI described a pattern of sweeping approvals for investigations and arrests that disproportionately violate freedom of expression. The threshold for criminalizing speech has been lowered, and enforcement is carried out even over a single post. Additionally, arrests have been approved without a thorough examination of the allegations, resulting in numerous wrongful detentions. The overwhelming majority of those detained are Arab citizens and residents of Israel, raising serious concerns regarding selective enforcement and violations of equality. While statements in Arabic are criminalized, similar, egregious statements in Hebrew are not, and the Israel Police routinely turn a blind eye to incitement to violence against Palestinians.

Speech suppression in academic institutions

Universities and colleges across the country have adopted policies that suppress speech to varying degrees. Students have faced disciplinary proceedings, and some have even been expelled from classes or student housing over social media posts. Faculty have been instructed to refrain from expressing political opinions during public academic activities and limit themselves to positions based on the “broad public consensus.” Lecturers have been dismissed or suspended for expressing criticism.

Police treatment of the press

Systematic harassment of members of the press, particularly foreign and Arabic-speaking reporters, has manifested as violence, arrests, and criminalization without cause, creating a chilling effect on critical journalism and reporting. This trend intensified in June 2025, during the war with Iran and the missile strikes in Israel. For instance, police officers raided the hotel rooms of foreign journalists in Haifa, detained them for hours, seized and confiscated their equipment, and forbade them from broadcasting from the city. The measures were taken even though the journalists in question had not violated the censorship order banning broadcasts of interceptions or the documentation of impact sites. In Bat Yam, the police approved the broadcast location, a site where an Iranian missile landed, and still Border Police officers violently assaulted a reporter and cameraman from an Egyptian television network, stopped the broadcast, and confiscated their equipment.

Early in 2025, the Israel Police also tried to prevent press coverage of the release of Palestinian prisoners. Officers did not allow coverage of the release at the Russian Compound detention facility and took photos of the ID cards of female journalists reporting on the release of a prisoner. The police summoned four Palestinian journalists from East Jerusalem for questioning and warned reporters against covering the event.

Efforts to undermine media independence

In April 2024, under the cover of war, the Knesset passed the Law for Preventing a Foreign Broadcasting Organization from Harming State Security (Temporary Order - Iron Swords), 2024. Commonly known as the Al Jazeera Law, it authorizes the Minister of Communications, with the approval of the Prime Minister, the cabinet, or the Ministerial Committee on National Security, to impose sanctions on foreign media outlets broadcasting from Israel, including blocking broadcasts via Israeli providers, restricting access to the channel’s website, closing the channel’s offices in Israel, and seizing devices used by the channel to transmit content, including mobile phones. Not only does the law violate freedom of expression, freedom of the press, and the public’s right to know, it also preempts the court’s power to overturn government decisions made under it, thus trampling on the principles of the rule of law and judicial independence. As such, the law contributes to efforts made by the 37th government to weaken Israeli democracy, including by undermining the judiciary. Though passed as a temporary order, the law has since been extended. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel has petitioned the High Court to repeal the law. Legal proceedings are ongoing.

Several bills and policies designed to restrict freedom of the press and further entrench government control over public broadcasting and Israel’s media landscape were also presented to the Knesset in 2025. These include placing the public broadcasting corporation under close political oversight, changing the system of appointments so that they fall under ministerial control, opening the possibility of privatizing public broadcasting, and lifting restrictions on broadcasts from private stations. These bills seek to create a reality in which the government controls both the content being broadcast and the public’s access to information, threatening democracy and undermining to right to resist the occupation by civil and legal means, by limiting the information available to the public.

 It is worth noting regrettably that even without these draconian restrictions, most Israeli media outlets have, over the past two years, provided limited, biased coverage of the war in Gaza, deliberately downplaying the extent to which civilians were harmed, and failing to present the Israeli public with the full reality of the war.

For reports and updates on the struggle to defend freedom of expression and protest, see the Association for Civil Rights in Israel’s website – Freedom of Expression.