Haaretz sanctions: Israel’s latest assault on critical voices

On November 24, the Israeli cabinet approved a resolution imposing sanctions on the country’s one of the most influential newspapers, Haaretz, accusing it of incitement and of supporting “the enemies of the state.”

The resolution instructs government officials and agencies to halt all communication with the media group and discontinue advertising on its platforms.

Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi defended the decision in a post on X. “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.”

According to Haaretz, the government claimed its action was due to “many articles that have hurt the legitimacy of the state of Israel and its right to self-defence”.

Among other Israeli media, Haaretz stands out for its editorials and opinion pieces that often adopt a critical stance toward Netanyahu’s administration, providing a perspective a lot less uniform compared to some other outlets.

The government’s decision also cited remarks made by Haaretz publisher Amos Schocken in London.

During an event hosted by the newspaper on October 27, Schocken described Palestinians as “freedom fighters”.

“It (Netanyahu’s 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 was quoted as saying in news reports.

During his speech, Schocken also called for international sanctions on Israeli leaders, suggesting that such measures represented the only viable path to compelling the government to alter its policies.

“In a sense, what is taking place now in the occupied territories and in part of Gaza is a second Nakba,” Schocken said.

“A Palestinian state must be established, and the only way to achieve this, I think, is to apply sanctions against Israel, against the leaders who oppose it, and against the settlers,” he added.

The move against Haaretz comes as the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants on November 21, 2024, for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant, accusing them of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Gaza.

Netanyahu’s government condemned the warrants as politically motivated, dismissing them as an attack on Israel’s right to 'self-defence'.

Broader war on press freedom

The crackdown on Haaretz follows the complete shutdown of Al Jazeera’s operations in Israel earlier this year.

In September, the government ordered the network’s offices closed, banned its broadcasts, and confiscated equipment under a new law allowing closures of media outlets deemed security threats.

Noa Landau, Haaretz’s deputy editor-in-chief, described it as a predictable pattern.

“To all my colleagues in the Israeli media who are silent today in the face of the illegal sanctions against Haaretz (and the persecution of the Public Broadcasting Corporation)—don’t be surprised when your day comes too,” she said on X.

Israel has killed at least 137 journalists and media workers among the tens of thousands who have died in Gaza, the occupied West Bank, Israel, and Lebanon since the war began, according to preliminary investigations by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) as of November 25, 2024. This makes it the deadliest period for journalists since the committee began collecting data in 1992.