3/29/2023 0 Comments Cast of the last bastion![]() Haaretz has opposed the law on the Nation State since it first came before the Knesset in 2011. “It will lead us to disaster,” says Schocken. And if you believe in the Zionism expressed in Israel’s declaration of independence, you cannot accept the law on Israel as the Nation State of the Jewish People, a law which has a fascist stamp.” Adopted in 2018, this “basic law” defines two categories of citizens: Jews, who have full rights, and the others (meaning the Palestinians) who, although citizens, do not. Amos Schocken, the paper’s managing director since 1992, personifies the moderate but unrelenting version of this change. These tendencies gradually pushed the paper towards active forms of “resistance” because of a feeling of a growing threat more to Israeli democracy than to the Palestinians. To explain this evolution, the paper’s journalists point to two converging tendencies: the constant reinforcement of Israeli colonisation of the occupied territories, and the radicalisation in a colonial direction both of Israeli society and of its political representation. This “change” tends in three directions, explains Noa Landau, deputy editorial director: “We are first and foremost a liberal paper” – in the Anglo-Saxon sense, leaning towards progressivism – “and clearly we pioneer information on the occupation of the Palestinians, the treatment of immigrants, and human rights.” How did this come about, with a paper which, after it was bought in 1933-4 by the Schockens (a family of rich German Jews who fled Nazism), was for long a vehicle for a proclaimed, politically centrist Zionism? Colonial radicalisation of society It personifies the change the paper has undergone,” adds one of its international stars, Amira Hass, who has been covering the Palestinian territories since 1993. “For the past decade, a journalist like Nir Hasson has provided an exceptional chronicling of the Judaisation of Jerusalem and the incredible segregation of the Palestinians that it involves. Nobody else regularly and systematically publishes the kind of information that we do,” says Hagar Shezaf, a young reporter covering the occupied territories. ![]() “We are not afraid to tackle the most controversial issues. ![]() On the present too Haaretz stands out with coverage unique in the country. “Apart from Haaretz, all the main media support the official version.”īut it is not only on the past that the paper uncovers what the others are hiding. “Neither Yedioth Aharanot (the country’s most-read daily) nor any other Israeli paper would have published these articles,” says the historian. Raz, who has produced several works including “Kafr Qasim Massacre” on the massacre at Kafr Qasim, has himself in recent years published in Haaretz or seen his work reported by Aderet in a series of incendiary articles on the Nakba, on hitherto unknown massacres, but also on affairs like the integration of the oriental Jews who arrived in the 1950s. The paper employs full time a journalist, Ofer Aderet, who follows the work of historians who are completely “deconstruction” the old official versions. Raz publishes his revelations regularly in the columns of Haaretz. Raz digs out the buried traces of the Israeli past, rubbed out by official historiography precisely to mask the facts hidden by its own heroic version. They are often based on the work of a young historian, Adam Raz, who in 2015 set up a working group, the Institute for Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Research, known as Akevot, a name which means “traces” in Hebrew. Haaretz, the Israeli “newspaper of record,” has unleashed a wild torrent of such revelations about the way Israel expelled the Palestinians from their lands. In the end this not very effective tactic was swiftly abandoned. ![]() Some first poisonings were carried out in April 1948 near Acre and in villages close to Gaza. ![]() Yadin wrote to his subordinates that they should act “with the utmost secrecy”. The archives show that General Yohanan Ratner requested a written order, which was refused. Conceived under the auspices of the future Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion, and his future chief of staff, Yigael Yadin, the operation was called Cast Thy Bread 2 and was intended to prevent the return of the Palestinians after they had been expelled. Archives show the Israeli army conducted biological warfare in 1948.” 1 Reading on, you discover that orders were given to poison the wells of Palestinian villages during the civil war which pitted the forces of the Yishuv (the Jewish colony in Palestine) against those of the native population in the period leading up to the creation of Israel on 15 May 1948. You arrive in Israel, buy a copy of Haaretz and spot this headline: “Throw the material in the well. ![]()
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