Gideon Levy, a columnist for Haaretz, talks about why the Israeli government’s boycott of Haaretz newspaper undermines freedom of speech and Israeli media coverage of the war on Gaza. pic.twitter.com/Yf5fdiROiW
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) November 26, 2024
Israel has become nearly as censorious as the Ukraine and it’s actually shocking that it took this long for Haaretz to face sanctions.
Haaretz, which is very “liberal American Jew” in its orientation, has been causing problems for Bibi Netanyahu for a long time.
They’ve been agitating for an investigation into October 7th “intelligence failures” since the beginning (and as recently as a few hours ago). They report on the war crimes and the weird sexual shit IDF does, pretty much all of it.
Apparently, the reason Bibi didn’t go after them harder before this was that they are too well-established and it looks terrible.
CNN:
Israel’s cabinet unanimously voted to sanction the nation’s oldest newspaper, Haaretz, on Sunday citing its critical coverage of the war following the October 7 Hamas attacks and comments by the outlet’s publisher calling for sanctions on senior government officials.Haaretz, which is widely respected internationally, has provided critical coverage of Israel’s war following the Hamas attacks on October 7, including investigations into abuses allegedly committed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) as military operations expanded across Gaza and into neighboring Lebanon.
The proposal, put forward by communications minister Shlomo Kar’i, will end government advertising in the newspaper and cancel all subscriptions for state employees and employees of state-owned companies.
That’s obviously just the beginning.
This is the way tyrannical government stuff works: they start with something that seems to not be that big of a deal and then they continue to gradually expand it.
Haaretz described the move as an attempt to “silence a critical, independent newspaper.”In a statement following the vote, Kar’i wrote: “We must not allow a reality in which the publisher of an official newspaper in the State of Israel will call for the imposition of sanctions against it and will support the enemies of the state in the midst of a war and will be financed by it, while international bodies are undermining the legitimacy of the State of Israel, its right to self-defense and are actually imposing sanctions against it and its leaders.”
Amos Schocken, the newspaper’s publisher, drew criticism for referring to Palestinian “freedom fighters” during a speech at an event organized by the outlet in London on October 27.
“It (the Netanyahu government) doesn’t care about imposing a cruel apartheid regime on the Palestinian population. It dismisses the costs of both sides for defending the settlements while fighting the Palestinian freedom fighters that Israel calls terrorists,” he reportedly said.
Following widespread criticism of the comments in Israel, Schocken clarified his comments saying that he did not believe Hamas militants were freedom fighters.
In an editorial Haaretz said that Schocken was referring to “Palestinians living under occupation and oppression in the West Bank.”
There isn’t really any difference between the two, other than that Hamas is more effective. They’re the same group of people fighting for the same reasons, and aside from the various factional conflicts, there is mutual support for each other.
He probably did mean to include Hamas and was afraid of getting put on trial for it.
Frank Smyth of Global Journalist Security says “Israel is no longer respecting press freedom even within its own borders” after the Israeli government’s boycott of the Haaretz newspaper. pic.twitter.com/OIJmEWNJbs
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) November 25, 2024
It will be interesting to see how far America goes with the censorship when they enter the war. America has a different situation than most countries, as there is no major opposition outlet, because the media functions as a cartel and expels all meaningful dissent against the government.
However, there is “alternative media,” which we’ve seen several different crackdowns on since 2017, when I was banned from everything. Basically, I was a part of an anti-Trump crackdown, then came an virus/vax truth crackdown, then came a crackdown on criticism of the Ukraine war. Right now, we have more freedom than we’ve had since before the virus hoax, but virtually all of the people surrounding Trump are calling for silencing criticism of Israel and Jews, and are even trying to pass laws to make it illegal to criticize Jews, which the Democrats never did.
