Netanyahu Wants to Boycott HaaretzWe won’t back down.
December 11, 2024 By Aluf Benn Columbia Journalism Review
The longest-serving prime minister in Israel’s history has built his long career on media manipulation, which he views as a necessary tool for holding power. Netanyahu never shied away from abusing the state regulatory power to reward or punish publishers and media owners. His dirty tricks before the crucial 2015 election, first exposed by Haaretz, have led to his indictment in two corruption cases that are still pending, along with a third case of receiving illegal gifts from tycoons.
Akin to fellow democratically elected autocrats like Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, and India’s Narendra Modi, Netanyahu has been striving endlessly to control the media using several means. Billionaire supporters have established a pro-Netanyahu, free-delivered newspaper, Israel Hayom, followed by a mouthpiece television outlet, Channel 14, a kind of Fox on steroids in Hebrew. The government has adapted its TV regulation to ease the way for its pet channel, which has markedly grown in popularity during the current war.
The older mainstream commercial TV channels, 12 and 13, have been under constant attack by the “Bibists,” chiding them as too hostile and too liberal. The government-owned public broadcaster, Kan, has been threatened with closure. On the same day of the Haaretz boycott resolution, Karhi sponsored a bill to shut down Kan and sell its frequencies to private entrepreneurs. The fact that these channels support Netanyahu’s war policy and included some of his vocal supporters in their commentariat would not protect them from his insatiable drive to control their message.
Haaretz fills a unique role in Israel’s public sphere—and on Netanyahu’s enemies list. The oldest existing publication in Hebrew (since 1919), and since 1997 also available in English, Haaretz has traditionally been a strongly critical voice within Israeli society. Described by The New Yorker’s David Remnick as “arguably the most important liberal institution in a country that has moved inexorably to the right,” Haaretz has held a firm stance against Israel’s occupation and the oppression of Palestinians in the occupied territories. We stand for human and civil rights and, increasingly alone among Israeli mass media, constantly report on the abuses and atrocities of the occupation. Only Haaretz would question the morality of the Israel Defense Forces’ counterterrorism operations and tactics. And only Haaretz would publish anti-Zionist opinions.
Our position led Netanyahu to name Haaretz, along with the New York Times, among “the main enemies of Israel” in 2012. (When his remarks leaked, he denied them.) And over the years, we got into occasional trouble with some of our subscribers, who may share our oppositional view of Netanyahu and the right wing in general, but might be offended by moral critique of the military, which they revere. We wouldn’t budge, however. When we see or suspect war crimes, we report them as they occur, rather than wait until the fighting is over or bury the story altogether.
In Israel, we have military censorship by law. Each news item involving military intelligence or nuclear affairs, or secret diplomacy, must go through prepublication review by the censor. While this is definitely a nuisance and a major obstacle to press freedom, it is far more relaxed today than in Israel’s early years. Yet the censor still enforces government “ambiguities” over Israel’s nuclear program or certain cross-border operations, forcing the media to cite “foreign sources” rather than its own reporting.
During the war, however, the official censorship has been a smaller obstacle to press freedom than mainstream public attitudes. Israel’s Jewish society has been growing deaf to the suffering on the other side, especially since the suicide bombings of the Second Palestinian Intifada (2000–2005) in Israel’s cities, and the Hamas takeover of Gaza in 2007 following the Israeli “disengagement” two years earlier. The daily lives of Palestinians under occupation are underreported by mainstream Israeli media, and external criticism of Israeli practices is labeled there as anti-Semitic smears. Allegations of war crimes are usually framed as “legal risk at The Hague,” referring to the International Criminal Court, which issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant and might pursue other Israeli officials and military brass.
Netanyahu Wants to Boycott Haaretz - Columbia Journalism Review |
