Why did Israel revoke the press credentials of Al Jazeera correspondent Elias Karam? He has not been accused of inciting violence. He did not commit the ultimate sin of calling for anti-Israel sanctions. He has not even advocated a boycott of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. Karam, an Israeli Druze who identifies as Palestinian, did not sound off about the proposed Nationality Law that if adopted would anchor in the law that he and others like him are second-class citizens. Karam is being punished for using his mic and his camera to protest Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands.

“As a Palestinian journalist who is in an occupied area or a conflict area, journalistic work is an integral part of the resistance and of political and educational action,” Karam said in a May 2016 interview with the Arabic-language TV network Dar al-Iman. “A journalist fulfills his role in the resistance through his pen, voice or camera, because he is part of this [Palestinian] nation and is resisting in his unique way.”

Dozens of Jewish Israeli journalists, this one included, can sign off on Karam’s defense. They, too, oppose the occupation and write and speak out against it, describing injustice and oppression and even encouraging decisive action by the international community to end it.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu going after the Qatar-based network was, in fact, warning all foreign media and Israeli journalists that a similar fate will befall anyone who deviates from the party line. Karam is not the first Israeli journalist to pay for stepping out of line and will probably not be the last. At the beginning of May, Israel refused to renew the work permit of Derk Walters, correspondent of the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad. The Government Press Office, which operates under the Prime Minister’s Office, accused the reporter of “hostile and biased coverage” of the situation in the Israeli-occupied West Bank city of Hebron.