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November 26, 2024 - 1:00pm
Under a new directive introduced by Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi on Sunday, the Israeli government will now boycott the liberal newspaper Haaretz. From now on, all government bodies and those funded by the state are under strict instruction not to contact Haaretz, or to publish announcements or advertisements in the paper.
The new policy has not been backed by a law passed in the Knesset; instead, it takes the form of a government resolution, whereby each minister has been ordered to boycott the paper and ensure that everyone in their department does the same.
Unusually, Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara was not made aware of the proposal in advance, and did not examine or present an opinion on the resolution. Since the policy is technically advisory and does not legally prohibit government ministries from publishing in or contacting Haaretz, it is unlikely that the courts could uphold any legal challenges against the decision.
The exact cause of the decision is unknown, although it is widely believed to be in response to comments made by Amos Schocken, publisher of the newspaper, during a conference in London last month. Schocken referred to Palestinian militants as “freedom fighters”. He quickly walked back the remarks, and clarified that he was not referring to Hamas, but the damage was already done.
In his statement announcing the boycott on Sunday, Karhi argued that the paper had been “undermining the goals of the war” and “weakening the military effort and its social resilience”. But it seems that such a move has been under consideration for a while: last year, Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fuchs worked on a draft resolution preventing the government advertising office from publishing in Haaretz, although it was never implemented.
Even though most government ministers had already independently announced that they would no longer cooperate with the newspaper, it is another development in the erosion of liberal norms in Israel, which was already underway before 7 October but which has gathered pace since.
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SubscribeOpinions may be different. Being “Guardian” in a country at war, where people are running to bomb shelters every day, has its own set of consequences.
You might as well argue the same about the Moscow Times.
Who is bombing Novosibirsk?
So much for the “only democracy” in the Middle East.. Assimilating to the region?
Come to us, George!
We will be glad to see you in the north of Israel, the rent prices there are not high now, they are very “democratic”
Haha, totally , buy low sell high
( Israel could never afford a true democracy anyway so probably not much changed)
The government not advertising itself in some guardianista paper is not the end of democracy, George.
Conspiring with foreign NGOs undermining the existence of the State they live in, however, it’s a little different.
By eradicating dissent you fixate the state in perpetual fight or flight response. But fair enough, it might very probably be the only response available to Israel after all
“the policy is technically advisory and does not legally prohibit government ministries from publishing in or contacting Haaretz” – This is what you name “eradication”. No court can call that «eradication», but our George can. You’d make a fine Guardian correspondent. Or Völkischer Beobachter, which is essentially the same thing.
What a facile comment!
is a govt required to work with those who explicitly oppose it?
You’re suggesting it’s reasonable for govt to punish media organisations that refuse to do their PR?
Principles people, principles!
Ha’aretz isn’t being censored. The government can choose whether or not to make commercial use of news media which relentlessly attack them. I would also argue that the liberals are deluded here. Israel is facing an existential crisis. Hamas and Hezbollah avowedly wish to destroy Israel. The right wing are correct and the progressives are wrong regarding the possibility to reach an accommodation with these vicious forces, whatever the complex origins of the conflict. Everyone who.gives any kind of succour to these enemy organisations should be condemned.
I’ll say it again. Any Supreme Court that is not 100% appointed by elected officials, is fundamentally undemocratic.
The author of the article makes demands on Israel that he would never dare make of Britain, where he would be laughed at. Meanwhile, in Canada, in France, in Spain, in Britain, an outright queer fascism is gaining strength, which the author is afraid to even think about, lest he offend his friends at the fireside.
While I think I sympathise with your frustrations, I must warn you that an elected Judiciary is, I believe, a hallmark of nascent totalitarianism.
‘Elected Judges’ honour the underlying logic and claim to legitimacy of all the ‘Revolutionary Tribunals’ which have adminstered Terror, from Revolutionary France to the Sondergericht in Nazi Germany to the Peoples Courts of Leningrad and Beijing.
History shows that an electorate is quite as easy, if not easier, to manipulate than a college or parliament of professionals.
So many, disgusted with elite failure, are now rushing in, “like fools” to endorse the crudest form of straw poll democracy – even as they are the first to notice the demographic shifts in western society.
“Lo, thou trustest in the staff of this broken reed.. whereon if a man lean, it will go into his hand”
You make yourself a hostage to fourtune by putting your eggs in the basket of Direct Democracy. You put liberty, justice, truth and the national interest at the mercy of a straw poll. Nothing is so faithless as the “common body” of public opinion.
“This common body, like to a vagabond flag upon the stream, goes to and back, lackeying the varying tide, to rot itself with motion”
“Appointed” by the elected, not “appointed” by themselves, which is what is called “totalitarianism”. It doesn’t matter that they are a jurisdictional branch of power, it matters that they appoint themselves. Is it really that hard to understand?
Once again, they appointed themselves in Israel.
Almost all totalitarianisms have been ‘democratic’ according to their own interpretation of that elastic word.
Who gets to vote, who takes the trouble to vote, who gets to stand, who gts to pick the question. It’s a realtively easy fix.
I want my judges to be impartial and unbeholden to any and all interests. Not the servants of a constituency.
What about Americans? “When a vacancy occurs, the president, with the advice and consent of the Senate, appoints a new justice” of the Supreme Court of the United States…
.
They live in a totalitarian country? Why are you lying?
I doubt any in Israel objected to the notion of a strong judiciary. The government wished last year to prevent the strong judiciary from making political policy. A free press is also important, but in liberal democracies no government is obliged to support any organisation that opposes its popular mandate
One of the justifications given by the International Criminal Court for its arrest warrant against former defence secretary Gallant, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is that they did not do enough to investigate media reports of potential war crimes. The boycott against Haaretz puts yet more pressure on an already enfeebled liberal press in the country, and makes it less likely that such reports will be issued in the future.
.
Are you serious?
Ha’aretz is the Israeli equivalent of the New York Slimes, that eminent NY paper. Good on Israel for shunning this rag.
It’s a perfectly reputable paper.
It isn’t.
Suggesting that Palestinian militants are “freedom fighters” is nothing more than outrageous propaganda. One side started this war, and it wasn’t Israel. No way around this indisputable fact.
Why would anyone demand that a wartime government that was attacked during peacetime associate with a propaganda publication for the other side? I highly doubt the United States provided daily briefings to an American-based Nazi publication during WWII.
To call Haaretz “a propaganda publication for the other side” is completely laughable.
“another development in the erosion of liberal norms in Israel”
Actively opposing the government’s much needed effort to crush the avowed, deadly enemies of every Israeli and in fact calling them “freedom fighters” is the real “erosion of liberal norms in Israel.”
Actively opposing the government’s illegal policies is entirely reasonable.
If that active opposition takes the form of usurping the elected government, it is not reasonable.
Israel had governments from one party until the mid-1970s (there were various name changes, but I’ll gave the English name of Labour). When the Labour party identified itself wholly with the Oslo Accords, it entered a descent towards electoral oblivion. Why? Because the “negotiating partner” Yasser Arafat had no intention of honouring his part of the agreement, and only saw it as a means of extracting concessions. The result was an enormous increase in terrorist killings of Israelis, which Labour tried to present as necessary sacrifices for peace.
Understandably, when the Israeli population decided that it had made too many sacrifices for a “peace” that was a delusion, it voted in Benjamin Netanyahu. Labour personnel, however, were embedded in all the institutions of the Israeli state, and once they understood that they were unelectable, they began to wield their power through bureaucratic rather than democratic means, with the spearhead of these efforts being the Supreme Court.
As you can see, this is nothing like honest and legitimate opposition to government. If you would like to downvote this comment because it offends your gut feelings, I would ask you to offer any information or argumentation to show where you think I have gone wrong.
If David Swift is brought back to write on this subject again, I’ll unsubscribe from Unherd. He is acting precisely as a “Herder” here. Unherd can have a range of voices and no-one expects to agree with every article, but it has no purpose if it presents establishment propaganda.
Ha’aretz is a newspaper that uses the term “freedom fighters” for men who rape women while cutting pieces off them and then murdering them when they and their friends are done with them. This is no doubt very fashionable among Swift’s friends in the West, but it is very different in a country being ravaged by such “freedom fighters”.
Even then, Swift writes “another development in the erosion of liberal norms” as if Netanyahu closed Ha’aretz down (I wouldn’t have objected to that). Is Swift aware that Zelensky, for example, closes down not merely outlets supporting the enemy (the equivalent of Ha’aretz), but even outlets loyal to the country that disagree with his strategy or tactics. All Netanyahu has done is cut the paper off from government sources, which barely makes a difference to a paper that will automatically denounce anything his government does, while instead supporting a bunch of unelected and unelectable judges who want to replace Israeli democracy with their own oligarchy. The issue is not judicial independence, but the judiciary usurping government.
The Times of Israel, a couple of days ago, denigrated as “far right” a Jewish photographer who was arrested because he dared to record the violence of pro-“Palestinian” mobs in Montreal. The ToI and the Jerusalem Post are only a little behind Ha’aretz in their leftism. If they had their way, the brave “freedom fighters” would long since have turned them into corpses.
The ICC is a highly politicised body that cheerleads for terrorists. Swift piously wrings his hands as if it is a pure collection of lawyers above the fray. As I said, this is pure establishment propaganda, designed to catch out the unwary. Is is not unherding.
Your comment is nothing other than “pure establishment propaganda”.
I’ll take that as an admission that you can’t construct a single argument against what I’ve written, but that you want to register your dislike nevertheless.
Well said, Mr. Walker.