Israel’s boycott of Haaretz is straight out of the authoritarian playbook
Sanctioning newspapers is a threat to democracy
An English-language edition of Haaretz daily newspaper Photo by AHMAD GHARABLI/AFP via Getty Images)
Authoritarians have a playbook when it comes to dealing with the media. It may not be written down anywhere, but the tactics are all too familiar to those with experience of these regimes: Demonize, detain (and if necessary even kill) — and defund. So it should ring alarm bells when supposed democracies engage in these behaviors. Israel’s decision on Sunday to cut funding for Haaretz — an internationally respected news outlet and Israel’s oldest newspaper — is the latest in Israel’s efforts to shut down criticism of its actions at home and to stifle coverage abroad.
Israel’s cabinet voted unanimously to sanction Haaretz after its publisher Amos Schocken called for sanctions against Israel, which he described as imposing a “cruel apartheid regime” on Palestinians, whom he described as “freedom fighters.”
The newspaper published an editorial distancing itself from Schocken’s remarks, which he subsequently clarified saying, “Freedom fighters, who also resort to terror tactics – which must be combated. The use of terror is not legitimate.”
The sanctions will end government advertising in the newspaper and cancel all subscriptions for state employees and employees of state-owned companies. Communications minister Shlomo Karhi said the publisher of a newspaper could not call for sanctions against Israel and “support the enemies of the state in the midst of a war” and still receive government funding.
“We advocate a free press and freedom of expression, but also the freedom of the government to decide not to fund incitement against the State of Israel,” he said. Haaretz has described the move as an attempt to “silence a critical, independent newspaper.”
Such use – and abuse – of government advertising funds to favor supporters and punish critics is a tactic frequently used by authoritarian governments or those where rule of law is weak. But it is by no means the only measure Israel has used in the past 12 months to control the narrative within and outside of Israel.
In May, the government shut down Al Jazeera’s broadcasts from Israel following its approval of a new law that allowed it to ban a foreign channel’s broadcasts if the content was deemed to be a threat to the country’s security. In September, the Israeli military raided and shut down Al Jazeera’s Ramallah office. As one of the few international organizations with local staff still operating inside Gaza, Al Jazeera is a vital source of information about the impact of the war.
Respected Israeli journalist and Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy has written and spoken powerfully about the level of censorship — largely, he argues, self-imposed — within Israel itself. “Only one specific reality is being concealed from Israelis: the reality of Gaza. Life and death in this stricken land is not covered in the newspapers, and it’s not on TV. There’s almost no coverage of Gaza, except in the pages of Haaretz and on some dissident websites,” he wrote earlier this year.
Levy argues that the distorted coverage within Israel is largely due to the willingness of a majority of news outlets to present only a partial view of the realities of war and occupation: “No one orders them to do this; it is done willingly, out of the understanding that this is what their consumers want to hear.”
In going after one of the few remaining outlets that is willing to offer a critical perspective of the war, Israel is extending even further its already iron grip on information. Since Oct. 7, Israel has killed at least 137 journalists and media workers in the war — of those 129 were Palestinians and six were Lebanese. At least eight of those were deliberately targeted, although the challenges of investigating these killings during an active war means the actual number targeted deliberately for their journalism is likely to be much higher.
With one brief exception, no journalists from outside Gaza have been allowed in to cover the war, a situation that seasoned war correspondents describe as totally unprecedented. Media facilities have been attacked, journalists detained without charge (Israel now has almost as many members of the media behind bars as China, currently the world’s worst jailer of journalists), communications blackouts are frequent and those journalists who remain in Gaza are reporting while facing the same deprivations as their compatriots: constant displacement, catastrophic food shortages, no fuel and degrading equipment. Few of the injured have been granted permission to evacuate.
In addition, those who do report from Gaza are repeatedly smeared by Israel as terrorists, or terrorist sympathizers — a smear that the government is now attempting to use against Haaretz. It is an effective tactic —intended to discredit those reporters and, by extension, the information they provide. The message Israel wants to send is that such news outlets are not to be trusted, encouraging us to doubt the images we see and the stories they relate.
Information is a weapon in war. It is at its most effective when those in power control the means of transmission absolutely. Only with the existence of a free, independent and pluralistic media can the public be assured that they are getting the fullest possible picture. Without it, we are all less safe — and less free.
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