Israel’s Interior Ministry announced on Thursday it will no longer publish in the Hebrew daily Haaretz following anti-Israel comments by Amos Schocken, the paper’s publisher, at a London conference on Oct. 27.
Ministry Director-General Ronen Peretz stated the ministry’s new position in a letter to Kobi Altar, director of its Department of Publicity and Advocacy.
“As part of a conference held in London, the publisher of the newspaper Haaretz, Mr. Amos Schocken, said serious things in English, in which he called Palestinian terrorists ‘freedom fighters,'” the letter states.
“In addition, he called for sanctions to be imposed on the Land of Israel and its leaders and claimed that the IDF is carrying out a second Nakba and imposing apartheid rule in Judea, Samaria and Gaza,” it continues.
Schocken’s words “arouse disgust and indicate a severe disconnect from fundamental values, especially at a time when the State of Israel is waging a war that could not be more just, which began as a result of the murderous terrorist attack of the organization Hamas on Oct. 7,” wrote Peretz.
As a result, “until further notice,” all “publication and collaborations” with Haaretz were to be canceled, he said.
The ministry cannot stay silent “in the face of harm to IDF soldiers and the state’s efforts to protect its citizens,” Peretz concluded.
A handful of other ministries, including the Foreign Ministry, the the Education Ministry, the Communications Ministry, the Culture and Sport Ministry, the Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Ministry, followed suit on Thursday.
Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi proposed that Jerusalem cut all ties with the left-wing newspaper, including by canceling ads by the Government Press Office, a unit within the Prime Minister’s Office.
The proposal “will reduce the hard impact that Israeli citizens feel, not just from the newspaper’s publications, but also because they are required to fund it from their tax money,” Karhi wrote.
In a similar move, the mayor of Nesher, a town of about 23,000 near Haifa, announced on Thursday that it would also cut ties with the paper, Channel 14 reported.
“I informed the municipal spokesperson and the treasurer to stop any publication in the newspaper Haaretz and any newspaper related to this newspaper,” tweeted Mayor Roi Levy.
At the London conference, titled “Israel After October 7th: Allied or Alone?,” which was sponsored by Haaretz, Schocken opened the event by accusing the Netanyahu government of “imposing a cruel apartheid regime” on the Palestinian Arab population.
“It dismisses the costs [to] both sides for defending the settlements while fighting the Palestinian freedom fighters that Israel calls terrorists. In a sense, what is taking place now in the occupied territories and in part of Gaza is a second Nakba,” said Schocken, using the Arab term meaning “disaster” for Israel’s 1948 War of Independence.
“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,” added Schocken.
Other speakers at the conference also made controversial remarks.
Mick Davis, a former Conservative Party chief executive and leader of the Jewish Leadership Council, said, “Israel’s existential threat is entirely internal and not external,” according to The Guardian.
Labour MP Hamish Falconer, Minister for the Middle East and North Africa, defended the United Kingdom withholding arms export licenses to Israel, saying, “Everything we do is based on international law.”
Arab Israeli Knesset member Ayman Odeh, of the Hadash-Taal Party, said the British government must “end all military, financial and diplomatic support” to the Israeli government, the paper reported.
Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, who participated in a panel discussion at the conference, said the Gaza war should have ended months ago. “Israel should pull out completely from Gaza” and “embark immediately on negotiations… for a two state solution,” he said.
“Ironically, given how many of the speakers were critical of the Israeli government’s conduct, conference-goers were met outside the JW3 community centre in north London by a pro-Palestinian demonstration,” The Guardian reported.
Other sponsors of the conference included left-wing NGOs, the New Israel Fund, Yachad, A Land for All and Standing Together.