Israeli Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi on Sunday rescinded a letter sent by Israeli Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara to the directors-general of government offices instructing them to ignore a government decision to cut all ties to the left-wing daily Haaretz.
“The current letter of the attorney general is not only a tiring repetition of baseless claims—but another expression of the arrogant bureaucracy that refuses to accept the people’s decision,” Karhi wrote to the same government email list, afterwards posting the statement to X.
On Nov. 24, 2024, Israel’s Cabinet voted to cut all connection with Haaretz, freezing all state-paid advertising, state-funded subscriptions and other connections with the newspaper.
In April, Baharav-Miara called on the government to reconsider its ban, claiming it was made through “an improper proceeding, which cannot stand up from a legal standpoint.”
Said Karhi: “For the second time in three months, the attorney general is allowing herself to effectively cancel the government’s unanimous decision to stop funding the Haaretz newspaper—as if she were the acting prime minister.”
In the name of “freedom of expression,” the attorney general demands that public funds continue to prop up a newspaper that incites against the Israel Defense Forces and serves as a mouthpiece for Israel’s worst enemies, he added.
In a democracy, the public decides, not a bunch of lawyers and appointed clerks, he continued.
“We will continue to uphold the government’s decision and will not fund the libelous newspaper Haaretz in any way,” he concluded.
At the time of the November decision to cancel all business with Haaretz, Karhi’s office explained that the decision came in response to numerous articles damaging to Israel’s legitimacy, and remarks by Haaretz publisher Amos Schocken, who “expressed support for terrorism and called for sanctions against the government.”
On Oct. 27, 2024, at a Haaretz-organized London conference, Schocken said that the Jewish state ought to have sanctions imposed on it, accused the Israeli government of apartheid rule and claimed that the IDF was conducting a second nakba, or “catastrophe” (the Arab term for the creation of the modern-day State of Israel in 1948).
The Netanyahu government has been at loggerheads with the attorney general since its formation. Israel’s Cabinet voted unanimously on March 23 to back a motion of no confidence against Baharav-Miara after Justice Minister Yariv Levin announced formal proceedings against her on March 5 over “prolonged differences of opinion between her and the government.”
Karhi, one of the ministers leading the call for her dismissal, welcomed Levin’s decision. In December 2024, he accused Baharav-Miara of “deliberately thwarting government policy for political reasons” and “inventing absurd legal impediments.”
