TOP US NEWS I TRENDING NEWS I VIRAL NEWS I NEWS TODAY I 2026
There’s no media outlet more hated
by the current Israeli government, nor heralded outside Israel, than Haaretz,
the longest-running newspaper currently in print in the country (indeed, it was
founded long before the country was). Inside Israel, Haaretz—the word
means “the land” or “the earth”—is seen as the paper of the educated elite, a
small slice of the population, while its English-language website has more
than 2.5 million unique monthly visitors. It’s a must read for diplomats,
foreign journalists, and followers of Israeli politics (the paper is currently
expanding its US/English language bureau).
Founded in 1918 as a literary
newspaper by the Hebrew battalions of the British Army in Egypt, it was
established as a general newspaper a year later. “Since then, for 108 years, it’s been published every day and hour,” editor in chief Aluf Benn told me when
I sat with him in the paper’s Tel Aviv headquarters recently.
Benn, 61, has been at its helm for
the last 15 years, following his more than two decades as the paper’s national
security and diplomatic correspondent. Born and raised in Tel Aviv (his father
was one of Israel’s most prominent poets and literary figures), he is
confident, warm, and informal. We met in Haaretz’s South Tel Aviv
headquarters, among warehouses in a part of town fast becoming gentrified, in
the Schocken Building, named for Amos Schocken, who owns 75 percent of the paper
and whose family has shepherded it since 1935. The other 25 percent is owned by
liberal Russian businessman and Putin enemy, Leonid Nevzlin, who is an Israeli citizen.
The paper’s hallways are famously laden with contemporary, often provocative,
Israeli artwork, art collecting being the other obsession of publisher
Schocken.
Haaretz’s unique place in
Israeli political culture is amplified daily, especially since the Hamas attack
of October 7, 2023, when self-imposed censorship by the rest of the Israeli
media took hold. “We were the only ones in the Hebrew mainstream media
reporting on what was happening in Gaza and Lebanon,” Benn noted. “About
starvation, killing, destruction, war crimes, shooting people on their way to
get food, maimed and crippled and wounded and dead and widowed and bereaved and
orphaned families and people.”
Indeed, this reporting hasn’t
stopped. Haaretz reporter Nir H***on can’t get into Gaza since Israel still won’t allow
reporters inside without an official IDF ***, but he maintains contacts with
sources via phone and Zoom from his home in Jerusalem. He had a story recently
that was simply names and photos of Gazan children killed since the ceasefire.
“I think that this [Gaza coverage
is] one of the most important journalistic things that we did,” Benn says. “You
could always argue that it’s not enough. It was not enough to change public
perception in Israel. But clearly, when the government goes against us, when
people criticize us, it’s because of that reporting.… We gave names and faces to
dead Palestinian children, or to hungry Palestinian people, sick people who
could not get treatment.”
He continued: “We obviously
reported more about the Israeli side. We’re not some external force dividing
attention between the two sides. But you cannot cover a war by one side.” The rest
of the Israeli media, though, ignored Palestinian suffering almost completely,
despite there being no government censorship.
“The bombs Israel dropped on Gaza happened 50 miles away from here,” he noted. “We could hear it … in Tel Aviv, the
bombing in Gaza. It’s not something that happened in outer space. But it was
not reported…. Most Israelis don’t want to hear about it.”
Indeed, Haaretz, to its
immense credit, consistently invests significant reporting not only in covering
Gaza but the West Bank as well. Occasionally, and ironically, its reporters get boycotted outside of the region (for instance, the Columbia
University encampment leaders refused to give the paper an interview), but
Gazan and West Bank Palestinians talk to the paper regularly. They’ve also
developed a reporting team of Palestinian citizens of Israel who speak fluent
Arabic. “It’s not just about the language; it’s about their ability to
communicate on a much more equal basis,” Benn said.
These days, Haaretz invests
in open-source and video reporting, and recently established a cybersecurity,
technology, and open-source investigation desk—four reporters Benn calls the
“secret service.” Even as I was writing this story, Haaretz’s imaging
research revealed misinformation from the Israeli government regarding
placement of troops and Israeli resources nearly a mile past the official
demarcation line
inside Gaza. This method is used by the paper in the West Bank too, identifying new settlement growth instigated by the government, even
though reporters can roam freely there.
With the Netanyahu government
taking frequent aim at what it considers the cultural elites in the media,
Haaretz and other outlets have become targets—sometimes literally. In July, there
were three attacks by a masked man hauling a brick, two on the headquarters of
TV Channel 12 and one on Haaretz’s headquarters. Even after the alleged
perpetrator was caught there was no government condemnation. No surprise there.
The government’s attacks on Haaretz
continue. A government lawyer successfully just argued that
new billboards sponsored by Haaretz and promoting a free press as a prerequisite for democracy be removed as “electioneering.” After the war in
Gaza began, the government, led by Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi,
“started talking about the need to boycott us because we’re collaborators of
Hamas.… They stopped the residual government advertising. They also told their
government employees that they will not pay for the subscriptions any longer.” Haaretz
hasn’t been barred from any press gaggles, but that is rather a moot point
since Netanyahu has none.
“Today the freedom of the press in
Israel is basically defended by two institutions: the attorney general, who is
the strongest voice for democracy, at least within the Green Line … and the
Supreme Court,” said Benn, though he acknowledged that, due to recent
appointments, “the Supreme Court is going further and further to the
right.”
Indeed, in early July, a right-wing
high court judge proclaimed that anyone who called Israel an “apartheid” state
should be denied entry to Israel. Benn: “That was shocking, actually.… At some
point, since we do write these words, they might come back and try to fight us
seriously. So there is a risk. They don’t want us to be here.”
Benn, the erstwhile diplomatic correspondent, remains a keen
observer of how Israel is seen globally and especially in the United States,
where Haaretz also has its largest English-language readership. Just as
the right-wing government in Israel hates it, liberals consider the paper a necessary
read. Those on the Israeli right blame Haaretz’s thorough reporting for
some of Israel’s bad image. But Benn knows that newspapers report the news;
they don’t create it. “Israel’s image can be fixed if
it changes direction towards a serious effort at peacemaking with the
Palestinians toward a two-state solution, with Syria and Lebanon,” he said.
While many in the Jewish community in the U.S.
are especially concerned about diminishing support for Israel in the Democratic
Party, Benn ***erted that Israel’s image problem is, for now, in both parties: “Both
sides of the American aisle hate its continuous war policy.” Regarding the
stranglehold on Israeli democracy that is so prevalent on the minds of Benn and
his readers, he concludes that “Israel’s domestic crisis matters less to
Americans, especially to Republicans who support similar autocratic policies as
Netanyahu’s.”
Back on the domestic front: There is no
doubt that in October, Israel is facing arguably the most consequential
election of its history. Existential issues like democracy—not only for
the Jewish people of Israel, but for the Palestinian people—will lie before the
next prime minister.
Whoever wins the upcoming Israeli election will
face monumental issues left by this current government that will impact Israel
greatly on the world stage, not just in America. “One of the biggest challenges
for any future govern in Israel would be whether to make Bibi the scapegoat for
whatever Israel did wrong in the eyes of the world,” Benn says. “That includes
dealing with his poisonous legacies—the occupied lands in Gaza, Syria, and
Lebanon, and West Bank ethnic cleansing and Jewish terror.”
Additionally, and perhaps most ominously, the
current government has instituted the death penalty for the first time in the
history of Israel (except for the execution of nazi leader Adolf Eichman) at the urging of far-right Minister Ben Gvir. This inhumane law (being contested
presently in the courts), activates the death penalty only for Palestinian
perpetrators of terror, not those who are Jewish. Once there will be trials for
the October 7 Hamas perpetrators currently in Israeli prisons, there could be
hundreds of death penalties issued, with dire consequences for Israel’s image,
despite the heinous crimes committed on that day.
Indeed, the next prime minister
will be handed a profoundly difficult mess to unravel. But what happens if
Netanyahu wins reelection? “It’s going to be a flood,” Benn says. “Because at
some point they would be able to turn the Supreme Court even more to the right.
The Attorney General would leave. She’s not there indefinitely. But at the end
of the day, clearly, this is the country that they want to build. A country
where it would be impossible to replace the government, where criticism of
policy like apartheid would be illegal, where the press would look like a
government mouthpiece.”
Israeli polls increasingly point to
a very close election, with Netanyahu for the time being trailing an alliance
led by former IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot. Yet Benn is wary, admitting
that he is “in a minority position among my peers here who argue that there’s
no way for Netanyahu to survive the election.” Indeed, there’s fear that
Netanyahu could make ample use of his security services to maintain indefinite
power. Additionally, a stalemate election could find Netanyahu governing
without a mandate with near dictatorial means. “I’m afraid that he could stay
on because he doesn’t need to win decisively with this coalition as he did last
time,” Benn says.
He bemoans the Israel he was raised
in; the Israel his parents helped create. “We grew up believing in liberal
values and lifestyles like science and technology. We never realized the lesson
of, I hate these ***ogies, but the lesson of the 1930s throughout Europe and
the United States was that it can be turned back. The same was true about the
peace process. We thought that these things were irreversible. Well, they’re
not exactly reversible, but they could take a very bad turn as we see in Gaza
and in Lebanon and even in the West Bank, where the Palestinian Authority is
just a prisoner of COGAT (the Israeli military civil administration),
basically, and there’s no money going in; it’s just atrophied there.
“I think this goes back to our
mission at Haaretz. You always need to be on watch and guard and try to
protect these liberal values of democracy, freedom of speech, civil rights,
human rights, and not look the other way, even in wartime.”
Benn has a particular litmus test
for Israeli democracy. He tells me about an article from 2022 that foreshadowed
what Netanyahu has done regarding the implosion of Israeli democracy—with his
attacks on the Supreme Court, the Attorney General, the media, culture,
corruption—in his current term, which would no doubt intensify in another. He
wonders: “Will this article still be publishable after the election if it
ushers in a right-wing government led by Netanyahu, Smotrich, and Ben-Gvir? All
signs indicate that this trio is plotting to turn Israel into an authoritarian
state in which criticizing the government or replacing it will only be a pipe
dream. Well, it could, and it still can, but it’s becoming more
difficult.”
The article was a frontal attack on
an Israeli government that indeed has ruled for the last four years. It was
written by Benn.
TOP US NEWS I TRENDING NEWS I VIRAL NEWS I NEWS TODAY I 2026
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