The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit recently canceled all ties to Haaretz due to a Cabinet decision more than a year ago to cease all connections with the left-wing Israeli daily.
On Nov. 24, 2024, the government declared its intention to “sever all advertising ties” with the paper and called upon all “branches, ministries, bodies, and likewise, all government corporations or entities funded by it, not to engage with the Haaretz newspaper in any way whatsoever.”
“According to sources in the defense establishment, accounts with access to Haaretz were recently cut off not only for the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, but also for additional senior offices in the IDF,” Doron Kadosh, military correspondent for Army Radio, reported on Monday.
The impetus for the November 2024 Cabinet decision were statements made a month earlier by Haaretz publisher Amos Schocken.
On Oct. 27, 2024, at a London conference organized by his newspaper, Schocken referred to Palestinian terrorists as “freedom fighters,” called for sanctions against Israel and its leaders, accused Israel of imposing apartheid rule in Judea, Samaria and Gaza and claimed that the IDF was carrying out a second Nakba (the Arab term for “catastrophe” referring to the 1948 establishment of the State of Israel).
“We cannot allow a reality in which the publisher of an official newspaper in the State of Israel calls for sanctions against it and supports the state’s enemies in the midst of a war,” Israeli Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi said after the Cabinet’s decision.
Karhi also said that Haaretz had produced “numerous articles that harmed the legitimacy of the State of Israel in the world and its right to self-defense.”
The government decision halted all state-paid advertising, state-funded subscriptions and other connections with the newspaper.
Haaretz lost hundreds of subscribers due to Schocken’s remarks, news site Walla reported at the time.
The financial blow to the paper is “one that has not been seen in many years,” Haaretz stated, according to Walla. During internal meetings there was talk of “a crazy rate of cancellations and a sharp drop in newspaper advertising.”
