Israel’s oldest newspaper faces backlash over publisher’s ‘freedom fighters’ comments
The editorial board of Haaretz, Israel’s longest-running newspaper, distanced itself on Monday from publisher Amos Schocken’s remarks describing Palestinian terrorists as “freedom fighters.”
Haaretz publisher Amos Schocken at a conference in Tel Aviv on Feb. 23, 2023. Photo by Gideon Markowicz/TPS
Schocken, who was speaking at a Haaretz conference in London on Oct. 27, said, “The [Benjamin] Netanyahu government doesn’t care about imposing a cruel apartheid regime on the Palestinian population. It dismisses the costs to both sides for defending the [West Bank] settlements while fighting the Palestinian freedom fighters that Israel calls terrorists.”
Several government ministries cut ties with the paper and hundreds of Israelis canceled their subscriptions. Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi proposed extending the boycott across all government bodies, which would have cut advertising and tender announcements on Haaretz‘s print and digital platforms. The Choose Life forum, representing terror victims and their families, filed a police complaint accusing Shocken of incitement.
Schocken issued a clarification, saying he should have expressed himself differently. “As for Hamas, they are not freedom fighters,” Schocken wrote.
The paper distanced itself from Schocken with an editorial titled “Terrorists are not freedom fighters” on Monday.
“Deliberately harming civilians is illegitimate,” the editorial said. “Using violence against civilians and sowing terror among them to achieve political or ideological goals is terrorism. Any organization that advocates the murder of women, children and the elderly is a terrorist organization, and its members are terrorists. They certainly aren’t ‘freedom fighters.’”
The left-wing daily often publishes content critical of the Israeli government’s policies towards the Palestinians.
The Schocken family has controlled Haaretz since 1937 when Salman Schocken, a German-Jewish publisher and businessman, acquired the newspaper.
At least 1,200 people were killed, and 252 Israelis and foreigners were taken hostage in Hamas’s attacks on Israeli communities near the Gaza border on October 7. Of the 97 remaining hostages, more than 30 have been declared dead. Hamas has also been holding captive two Israeli civilians since 2014 and 2015, and the bodies of two soldiers killed in 2014.
