A week ago, Haaretz published a piece (in Hebrew thread with translations here) by Eitan Leshem, titled “In every house in Gaza we found olives, olive oil and loads of spices. We cook there with mixed feelings”.
The article tells the story of soldiers who have taken over Palestinian homes and stolen food from the homeless, now starving Gazans who were made to flee, perhaps even by those very soldiers. It is really hard to imagine a more crass and wretched piece.
The article was shocking to many, not only because of its content but also because of where it appeared. Haaretz is widely cited internationally, particularly by liberals, as a trustworthy left-leaning Israeli news outlet. Journalists like Gideon Levy and Amira Hass, who often cover the horrors of Israeli apartheid in more detail and with more teeth than any other mainstream Israeli journalist, are considered, for many, the brave truth-telling face of the outlet.
But the paper also has a much darker side, and this has no doubt to do with the fact that, after all, it’s a Zionist paper, as Gideon Levy once clearly stated.
Under the current genocidal attack on Gaza, its Zionist orientation has not only meant that its editors have under-represented Israeli popular support for the genocide – but it has also led the paper to publish and promote some of the most atrocious and dangerous propaganda of the Israeli onslaught in Gaza.
Al-Shifa’ Hospital fabrication
In November, Ronny Linder wrote a piece for Haaretz, titled “The Tragedy of Al-Shifa Hospital: Israel’s Biggest Moral Challenge in the Gaza War”. Here, Linder echoed the military propaganda that Al-Shifa is a “vast human shield,” serving as Hamas’s “main command center”:
“The combination of it being the largest, most important hospital in Gaza, a fast growing refugee camp for desperate Gazans of all ages, and a tool used by Hamas – as a vast human shield above the organization’s main command center – embodies the impossible challenge it presents for Israel.”
The piece was published on November 13, just two days before Israel enacted its final raid of the hospital. The Israeli military subsequently released a propaganda film claiming weapons were found in the basement, but did not prove a clear Hamas presence, not to mention a command center. As Mouni Rabbani commented to Al-Jazeera: “Israeli forces have invaded Al-Shifa’ Hospital and been inside it for 12 full hours – having refused any independent party to accompany them – and now we’re supposed to believe that there were Hamas militants in there being pursued by the Israeli military but they somehow left their weapons behind?”
In the end, Israel never proved the Al-Shifa’ “command center” claim, although Ehud Barak did surprise a stunned Christiane Amanpour on CNN when he told her Israel built some underground bunkers there in the early 1980s. It “remains elusive,” as AP explained it. The UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said on November 17 that one “cannot attack a hospital in the absence of clear evidence.” Türk called upon an investigation, but the matter had already been concluded in advance as far as Israel was concerned. The hospital was already attacked and disabled, all we had to do was believe the propaganda.
This became a blueprint for the ensuing attacks on the rest of Gaza’s hospitals, a campaign that Forensic Architecture calls “a systematic pattern of intimidation and violence by the Israeli military as part of the ongoing invasion.” Currently, only a third of the 36 hospitals in Gaza remain partly functional – with Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza’s second largest hospital, closing down last Sunday after an Israeli siege and arrest of medical staff and patients. Al-Amal Hospital, also in Khan Younis, has been under siege since the beginning of the month.
All these attacks on Gaza’s medical sector followed the same playbook as the initial campaign against al-Shifa’, a campaign that Haaretz gave a critical platform to at a crucial time.