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.
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