Boycotting Haaretz: part of Netanyahu’s masterplan to destroy press freedom in Israel

A protester holds an Israeli flag and a mask representing PM Benjamin Netanyahu at a Tel Aviv protest after his dismissal of the defense minister, November 2024

Anat Saragusti writes in Haaretz on 26 November 2024:

Make no mistake, the decision that was approved by the government of Israel on Sunday, to boycott Haaretz – imposing economic sanctions, forbidding any use of public funds for advertising or subscriptions – is not a stand-alone event.

It partners another incident, when one of Israel’s most important investigative journalists, Ilana Dayan, was brutally attacked when she “dared” to tell CNN’s Christian Amanpour that Israeli media doesn’t show the scale of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Shortly after this interview, Dayan was bombarded by incitement, hate speech, threats on social media and via text messages to her private cellphone, along with a clear delegitimization of her right to express the facts.

These are not separate incidents. This is part of a well-crafted masterplan by Netanyahu and his government to destroy press freedom in Israel and the independent media in this country.  The masterplan plays out in several dimensions.

• Israeli government imposes sanctions on Haaretz, cuts all ties and pulls advertising;
• Israeli, international journalists assail government boycott of Haaretz;
• In Netanyahu’s Israel, freedom of expression means freedom to praise the leader.

Legislation: As soon as he took office, in late December 2022, Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi announced that his goal was to close the public broadcaster, Kan. He declared that this is part of an overhaul reform plan that he intended to implement.

When the winter session of the Knesset opened, a few weeks ago, the Netanyahu government introduced a long list of bills targeting the independency of Israel’s media outlets. Some of those bills focus on the public broadcaster, others aim to grant political players the authority to shut down media outlets that “endanger the security of the State of Israel,” a very broad and often intangible definition.

If passed, these bills would effectively give political leaders the right and ability to shut down any news website or media outlet that doesn’t totally align with the government.

Netanyahu’s minions also want to have the ability to control the access to the internet. Imagine that Israel’s government would be able censor news sites that criticize its policies or publish leaks from closed forums. The analogy, if not the inspiration, is with Russia or China. And this aggregation of censorship power is already in the pipeline.

Israel has already proven its willingness and capacity to shut down media outlets. It closed all the offices of Al Jazeera in Israel and in the Occupied Palestinian Territories by executive order, using wartime emergency regulations. While implementing this order, they also closed down the live feed of Gaza broadcast by the biggest news agency in the world – Associated Press, because Al Jazeera used its footage.

Smears, boycotts, violence: The masterplan’s other key tactics are directed at a hostile takeover or incapacitation of the media. The means? Punishing dissenting journalists; stuffing critical media positions with political nominations; granting Netanyahu-friendly media tycoons economic and regulatory benefits while damaging the business prospects of disobedient outlets.

The masterplan includes a well-organized, orchestrated and sometimes politically funded smear campaigns against individual journalists and media outlets. Already a few years ago, when the accusation that independent media outlets were engaged in a “witch-hunt” against Netanyahu was beginning to be pushed more forcefully, Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party paid for billboards all over the country featuring the faces of four prominent journalists with the slogan: “They will not decide.”

Netanyahu and his supporters term the still-uncowed TV channels in Israel “Al Jazeera” or “poison channels” – to indicate that they are engaged in treason. Netanyahu has not given a sit-down interview in Hebrew to any of the mainstream media outlets in Israel for years. By ignoring them, he conveys the subtext that they are not legitimate. He often insults them, ignores them, and does not reply according to any norms or reasonable standards of behavior when asked for comment.

This approach is readily adopted by all his supporters, with many taking it a step further. Recently journalists and TV crews were brutally attacked by mobs when they try to report on a Hezbollah missile that hit a house in northern Israel, when they reported on a right-wing invasion of a military base where Israel keeps Palestinian detainees, when they covered Haredi demonstrations against being drafted into the IDF, and when they cover anti-government demonstrations calling for a Gaza cease-fire and hostage deal.

Journalists who cover Netanyahu’s ongoing criminal trial are constantly and consistently attacked on social media. Right-wing supporters try to accuse them of bias, attempting to delegitimize their reports; they often threaten the reporters, doing all they can to discourage them from doing their legitimate work.

Violence and smear campaigns against journalists is just another aspect of the masterplan that aims to intimidate and frighten journalists. To obstruct, harass and weigh down journalists doing their job of speaking truth to power, while empowering pro-government propagandists.

Even if the bills forming the legislative backbone of the Netanyahu masterplan not eventually pass, the harm is already done. The threat is right here and it already started to have a chilling effect, in the form of self-censorship that is naturally hard to quantify.

Israel loves to present itself as the only democracy in the Middle East. The intensive efforts by Israel’s government to suffocate free expression and necessary critiques, to muzzle journalists and impoverish media outlets, jeopardize this self-determination. Not far from now, it may be more accurate to define Israel as the Hungary, China or Russia of the Middle East.

Anat Saragusti is head of the freedom of the press section at the Union of Journalists in Israel.

This article is reproduced in its entirety