JNS
The Israeli government was right to stop subscribing to the “paper of record,” which serves as a weapon against the Jewish state.
The International Federation of Journalists was disturbed last month when the Israeli Cabinet voted to cut all financial ties with Haaretz, the country’s self-described “paper of record” with a proud, far-left bent.
“We are extremely concerned over Israel’s authoritarian drift that undermines media pluralism and the public’s right to know,” Anthony Bellanger, the IFJ general secretary. responded to the move. “The IFJ urges the government to review its decision and stop damaging press freedom in the country by boycotting a newspaper. We express our solidarity with Haaretz journalists.”
It’s typical of the IFJ to decry Israeli policies as antithetical to Western values. You know, like the time it blasted the Jewish state for “targeting” Al Jazeera reporters. Never mind that those paragons of the press were affiliated with Hamas and participated in the Oct. 7, 2023 massacre.
And forget the fact that its depiction of the measure adopted in relation to Haaretz is totally false. Canceling subscriptions to and pulling ads from a publication over its content do not violate freedom. On the contrary, they constitute consumer prerogatives.
Furthermore, Haaretz has only itself to blame for its waning readership, as its open anti-Zionism is too much for even many liberal Israelis to tolerate. This is especially true in the wake of Oct. 7 and the paper’s extremist positions on Israel’s defensive seven-front war.
The last straw for the government—and its purse strings—was publisher Amos Schocken’s appalling performance at a conference in London at the end of October, sponsored by Haaretz, in conjunction with JW3-Jewish Community Centre London, New Israel Fund U.K., Yachad, A Land for All and Standing Together.
During his speech at the event—titled “Israel After October 7th: Allied or Alone?”—Schocken smeared his country with lies its enemies love to hear.
“[T]he Netanyahu government wants to continue and intensify illegal settlement in the territories that were meant for a Palestinian state,” he stated. “It doesn’t care about imposing a cruel apartheid regime upon the Palestinian population. It dismisses the costs of both sides for defending the settlements, while fighting the Palestinian freedom fighters that Israel calls terrorists.”
As bad as that was, what came next was downright seditious.
“The only recourse with such a disastrous government is to ask other countries to bring pressure to bear, as they did in order to end apartheid in South Africa,” he said. “In December 2016, the U.N. Security Council passed Resolution 2334, which states that territory cannot be acquired by force; opposes settlement-building, including so-called ‘natural growth’ of settlements; and stipulates the dismantling of all settlements built since March 2001, within the framework of the two democratic states living in peace, side by side, within recognized borders.”
He went on to assert, “Subsequent Israeli governments completely ignored this resolution and acted as though it didn’t exist. Not only did they continue building settlements, but the present government also supports the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from parts of the occupied territories. In a sense, what is taking place now in the occupied territories and in part of Gaza is a second nakba.”
His subsequent pathetic excuse for an apology, which he issued after being broadly excoriated at home, wasn’t much better. It certainly didn’t do him or his periodical any good.
“I’ve reconsidered what I said,” he announced. “There are many freedom fighters in the world and through history, perhaps also on the path to the establishment of the State of Israel, who carried out shocking and dreadful terrorist activities and harmed innocent people in order to achieve their goals. I should have said, ‘Freedom fighters who also use terrorist methods and need to be fought against.’ The use of terrorism is not legitimate.”
The good news for Schocken is that the English-language edition of his radical pages continues to attract prominent pundits and activists abroad. Indeed, Haaretz is the go-to source for every piece of anti-Israel drivel in the print and broadcast media—from D.C. to Doha.
And it received a major, free-of-charge plug this week from two well-known figures in the biz: Piers Morgan and Candace Owens, who conducted interviews with one another on the same day—first on the latter’s podcast and later on the former’s YouTube show.
There was much overlap, particularly when they discussed Israel and the Gaza Strip. On those topics, Morgan was mild compared to Owens, who was aptly named “Antisemite of the Year” by watchdog group StopAntisemitism. And, boy, did she live up to her moniker in each chat.
“What Bibi Netanyahu has done to the Palestinians since Oct. 7 is a holocaust,” she asserted. “It is a holocaust that is being committed on Palestinian children and women.” She also called Netanyahu a “monster” with “genocidal ambitions.”
When Morgan pointed to the problem with relying on social media for facts, Owens nodded and explained that this is why she “ended up signing up for Haaretz and [other] Israeli newspapers, because they’re … calling [what’s going on in Gaza] an ethnic cleansing.”
Piers chimed in to add that, yes, he “read[s] their stuff all the time.” His audience did not doubt that.
Owens then hastened to add, “If Israeli newspapers are calling this an ethnic cleansing, why do we not have people in the Western media that have the courage to call it the same? It’s clearly not antisemitism. Why on earth would Haaretz media, or Haaretz Israeli newspaper, be antisemitic and want to see the undoing of Jews?”
It’s an excellent question the Israeli government is no longer interested in asking. It simply doesn’t wish to fill the paper’s dwindling coffers with the hard-earned shekels of a public invested in defeating the nation’s foes rather than providing them fodder for their propaganda mill.
