Newspaper Closed By Israeli Censor

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This story was submitted to the Israeli military censor. No changes were made.) TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Israel's military censor, using broad powers left from when Palestine was under British control, ordered a major Israeli newspaper to shut down this week for four days. It was a rare display of the full force of the state's censorship authority.

Not since the 1950s had an Israeli newspaper been shut down because of a censorship violation. But frequently in recent days the blue pencil has been taken to press copy, both in Israeli publications and news dispatches by foreign correspondents.

At a foreign press association luncheon this week, Defense Minster Moshe Arens acknowledged the “considerable inconvenience” of having to submit sensitive stories for approval prior to publication. But he defended the need for censorship in light of Israel's perpetual state of war with neighboring Arab states.

‘General Consensus’ “I think it is something that is distasteful to Israelis. . . . But I think there is a general understanding and consensus in Israel that it is essential with the severe dangers Israel is facing,” Arens said.

Haaretz, an independent daily owned by the same family as the closed tabloid Hadashot, suggested that the decision was political and the censorship excessively severe.

“The government's use, via the chief censor, of archaic emergency measures to shut down the Hadashot newspaper's printing presses is a sorry and dangerous chapter in the annals of government-press relations in Israel,” Haaretz said in an editorial.

The latest tensions between the press and the censor resulted from a controversy surrounding the deaths of Arab terrorists who hijacked a commuter bus April 12. Previous clashes came during Israel's invasion of Lebanon and an exchange of Israeli and Palestinian prisoners last November.

The army said two of the hijackers were killed when the bus was stormed by Israeli troops and that two others died of wounds en route to a hospital.

Official Version Challenged The official version of events was challenged, however, after photographs that the Israeli censors had banned came to light and showed at least one of the hijackers alive and apparently uninjured in the custody of Israeli security men after the bus was stormed.

How this transcription was made

The paper is Maria’s identification, not a masthead: no masthead, folio or date appears on this clipping. Recorded 2 November 2026. Masthead not readable on the scan. The label on the slide read: [no masthead on clipping] — A single-column clipping, read at 6x-7x. The whole article as the clipping preserves it is transcribed; the clipping ends at the foot of the column with the sentence about the banned photographs, and nothing on the scan indicates whether the article continued. No masthead, date line or page number. SEE THE LABEL PROBLEM IN `notable`.

Cite this clipping

"Newspaper Closed By Israeli Censor," Telegram & Gazette, 2 May 1984. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1984-048. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1984-048