Israel government’s boycott of left-wing Haaretz newspaper is understandable for an administration in wartime

At a recent conference held in London by Israel’s longest-running newspaper, Haaretz, the publisher Amos Schocken – who is known for his critical stance towards Israel’s treatment of Palestinians – argued that the Palestinians who are defined by Israel as terrorists are, in fact, freedom fighters. Schocken also claimed that Israel is running a brutal apartheid regime against the Palestinian people and called for sanctions to be imposed on the Israeli leadership.

His words shocked many in Israel, where people are still in grief over the terror attack of October 7 2023, in which Hamas murdered 1,200 Israelis. In response, the Israeli government announced it would halt all government advertising in the newspaper and ban government bodies from commenting in its pages.

This is not the first time that Haaretz, with just 5% of newspaper circulation in Israel, has caused outrage in its home market. In a 2013 article, reporter Amira Hass justified throwing stones at Jewish people on the West Bank, writing that: “Throwing stones is the birthright and duty of anyone subject to foreign rule.”

The same year, Haaretz journalist Gideon Levy called for a boycott of the state of Israel, while in 2017, his colleague Yossi Klein claimed that the Israel’s national religious community was more dangerous than Hezbollah.

His op-ed caused a great deal of upset at the time, with Netanyahu and others calling on Haaretz to apologise.

Haaretz was founded in 1919, 29 years before the establishment of Israel as a Jewish state. Initially, the broadsheet identified with the mainstream of the Zionist movement – and, by the early 1930s, was the most widely distributed newspaper in the Jewish community (the Yishuv).

In 1936, Haaretz was purchased by the Schocken family. Under the leadership of Gershom Schocken (Amos’s father), the newspaper began to adopt liberal positions close to those of the General Zionists, which later became part of the bloc of parties that formed the Likud party decades later.

Schocken himself even served as a member of Knesset from 1955-1959 for the Progressive party, a centrist party that operated in the 1950s and eventually merged with Menachem Begin’s Herut party, before Begin went on to found Likud in 1973.

Under Schocken’s control, Haaretz became an opposition newspaper to Mapai (The Workers Party of the Land of Israel), the party of David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir, which became the dominant party in the Knesset after the formation of Israel.

Even then, Haaretz was known for making controversial statements. A series of articles published by the paper in 1949, called for a reduction of immigration by Jews from North African countries, claiming that they were a primitive population that would not be able to properly integrate into Israeli society.

Defending democracy

These days, Haaretz sits very much at the left of the political spectrum. But in the 1960s and 1970s, most of the newspaper’s writers were considered to be hawks. In an article published in November 1973 under the headline “The Illusion of Peace”, Schocken ruled out any possibility of withdrawing from the territories occupied in the six-day war.

The same year, an article under the headline “No More Doves” by Amnon Rubinstein – who later served as a minister and a member of Knesset for the left-wing Meretz party – argued that the principle of “territory for peace” was no longer legitimate.

Haaretz’s line began to change following the 1982 Lebanon war. The newspaper called for an immediate withdrawal from Lebanon and accused the then prime minister, Menachem Begin, and his defence minister, Ariel Sharon, of a “war of deception” in Lebanon. This led to a wave of subscription cancellations by Haaretz readers who did not like the new line taken by the newspaper.

Over the years, Haaretz has supported the left-wing Meretz party. Earlier this year, it hailed a merger between Meretz and the Labor party as “the blueprint for how the left and centre can resist the tide of authoritarian nationalism”.

Critics say that by boycotting Haaretz, the Netanyahu government is showing its anti-democratic colours. An opinion piece on December 1 by Haaretz’s editor-in-chief, Aluf Benn, said this was part of a policy aimed at silencing dissent:

Netanyahu has never liked our reporting and our strong stance against his policy of occupation and annexation, and his overall denial of Palestinian rights. Now his political henchmen want to delegitimise and strangle us financially – but we are not alone in the government’s crosshairs.

But the goverment’s decision is arguably legitimate. The government is not trying to shut the paper down, merely expressing that it is not willing to continue financing it with public money.

Democracy also has a right to defend itself against those who call for harm to it under the guise of freedom of expression. Haaretz can continue to criticise Israel as much as it wants, but the Israeli public, most of which does not view the activities of Haaretz newspaper favourably – but rather the opposite – should not have to fund it.

In my opinion, adopting the narrative of those who call for the destruction of the Jewish state is crossing a red line. So the Netanyahu government, which is pledged to defend the country and its people and is in the middle of a bitter conflict, is justified in withdrawing financial support in this way.

Ori Wertman, Research Fellow, Faculty of Life Sciences and Education, University of South Wales

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.