The government unanimously approved at its weekly meeting on Sunday a proposal by Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi, that all government bodies or those funded by it will “cease to engage with the newspaper ‘Haaretz’ in any way and not publish any advertisements in it.”
According to a statement from Karhi’s office, the proposal, which was added to the meeting’s agenda at the last minute with the approval of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, came “following numerous articles that harmed the legitimacy of the State of Israel in the world and its right to self-defense, particularly in light of the recent statements by the publisher of Haaretz, Amos Schocken, who expressed support for terrorism and called for sanctions against the government at the newspaper’s conference in London.”
Schocken's anti-Israel speech
Karhi quoted from a speech by Schocken from the conference in late October and claimed that Schocken said that “Palestinian terrorists are freedom fighters and sanctions should be imposed on the Prime Minister and Ministers Smotrich and Ben-Gvir,” as well as that “The Netanyahu government does not care about imposing a cruel apartheid regime on the Palestinian population.”
The exact quotes from Schocken’s speech were, “The Netanyahu government wants to continue and intensify illegal settlement in the territories that were meant for a Palestinian state. It 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.”
Schocken argued that Israel was ignoring UN resolutions declaring settlements illegal.
“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 of sending, creating refugees, even people who lived in the occupied territories in Area C and the people who live in the northern part of Gaza,” Schocken said.
He added that “a Palestinian state must be established, and the only way to achieve this, I think, is to apply sanctions against Israel’s leader, against the leaders who oppose it, and against the settlers who are in the occupied territories in contravention of international law.”
“Zionism is still a justified idea for the Jewish people, but the conduct of successive Israeli governments has distorted its meaning beyond recognition. Israel needs to be put back on the right path, and unfortunately, the main way to do it, I think now, is by international pressure,” Schocken concluded.
According to Karhi, “It is unacceptable for the publisher of an official newspaper in the State of Israel to call for sanctions against it and support the state’s enemies in the midst of a war, while international bodies harm the legitimacy of the State of Israel, its right to self-defense, and actually impose sanctions, including criminal sanctions, against it and against its leaders.