Arad Mayor Yair Maayan announced on Friday that he would ban the left-wing daily Haaretz from his city over what he said was a “false blood libel” in a feature article accusing the Israeli Defense Forces of “deliberately” firing on Gazans near aid distribution sites.
“The municipality will not allow false incitement against IDF soldiers and the State of Israel, certainly in times of war. The municipality will act to prevent the entry of the inciting newspaper into the city in accordance with the Prevention of Incitement Law,” Maayan told JNS.
The mayor wouldn’t say if the ban would include door-to-door deliveries of Haaretz to subscribers, although that number is likely negligible given the newspaper’s relatively small Hebrew print distribution.
The Haaretz article, by Nir Hasson, Yaniv Kubovich and Bar Peleg, titled, “‘It’s a Killing Field’: IDF Soldiers Ordered to Shoot Deliberately at Unarmed Gazans Waiting for Humanitarian Aid,” cites anonymous Israeli soldiers and officers who accuse the IDF of firing on Gazans using tanks, artillery and snipers to prevent them from approaching areas where they weren’t permitted.
The IDF rejected the accusations, saying its directives “prohibit” intentional attacks on noncombatants. “The IDF did not instruct the forces to deliberately shoot at civilians, including those approaching the distribution centers,” the IDF Spokesman’s Office said in a statement.
Even so, the IDF said it would “thoroughly” examine “any allegation of a deviation from the law or IDF directives… and further action will be taken as necessary.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz also rejected the Haaretz report, declaring in a joint statement that “these are vicious lies designed to discredit the IDF—the most moral army in the world.
“The IDF operates under difficult conditions against a terrorist enemy that operates from within the civilian population and hides behind it as a human shield and operates a whole industry of lies to harm the legitimacy of the State of Israel,” they continued.
The Haaretz report followed one by the United Nations on June 24, which claimed that 410 Palestinian Arabs were killed by Israel’s military while attempting to procure aid from U.S.- and Israeli-run distribution hubs of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
The U.N. report appears to be based on a June 22 statement by Jonathan Whittall, head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) OPT (Occupied Palestinian Territories).
“I’ve been told over 400 have been killed,” Whittall said during a visit to the Gaza Strip.
The number may have originated with the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry. According to a Sunday statement by GHF Interim Executive Director John Acree:
“We have experienced a growing pattern of false information seemingly formulated by the Gaza Health Ministry, an arm of Hamas, and then reported first by Al Jazeera and then echoed by the U.N.”
GHF, which has delivered more than 51 million meals since its launch, said that it’s Hamas doing the shooting, and not at GHF’s hub but at sites run by others. “Our GHF news monitoring continues to reveal inaccurate news coverage by international media outlets linking GHF sites to violent incidents that did not occur near our sites, but in fact occurred at United Nations’ (U.N.) convoy sites or other humanitarian groups who operate near our site,” the statement said.
This is not to say that GHF sites aren’t at risk. The group has received “credible reports” that Hamas had placed “bounties” on the heads of its U.S. security personnel and Gazan aid workers—“offering cash rewards to anyone who injures or kills them.”
Its local staff has already been targeted, with12 killed and others tortured, according to GHF.
“In recent days, Hamas has also pre-positioned armed operatives near humanitarian zones in an effort to disrupt the only functioning aid delivery system in Gaza,” GHF added.
The Haaretz article didn’t refer to Hamas culpability in the Gazan deaths, though it quoted one source, a military officer, as saying, “I know there are Hamas operatives among them [the people receiving aid].”
According to Haaretz, some of the fatalities near aid centers were caused by militias opposed to Hamas and supported and armed by Israel’s military.
Arad’s mayor, in announcing his ban of the paper, said Haaretz was “inventing a false blood libel against IDF soldiers. They provide antisemitic material to the whole world with false accusations.”
Haaretz editor-in-chief Aluf Benn said in response, “We will continue to loyally serve our readers in Arad, just like everywhere else.”
The newspaper quoted Michael Sfard, an attorney and left-wing political activist, as saying that Arad’s mayor had no authority to halt the newspaper’s sale in the city.
“Not only does a mayor not have the authority to decide what can or cannot enter his city, he doesn’t even have the power to determine which newspapers are sold in the city hall cafeteria,” said Sfard.
Arad’s mayor insisted to JNS that he could implement his ban, saying Haaretz’s latest libel was of a piece with previous statements, noting newspaper publisher Amos Schocken’s comments at a London conference in Oct. 2024, in which he called Palestinian terrorists “freedom fighters.”
“These are the bloodthirsty Nukhba killers who murdered babies,” said Maayan, referring to Hamas’ “Nukhba force,” which spearheaded the terror group’s invasion of southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Schocken’s remarks caused a storm in Israel and led the government the following month to cut all state-paid advertising, state-funded subscriptions and other connections to Haaretz.
On June 1, Israeli Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara sent a letter to the directors-general of government ministries instructing them to ignore the Cabinet’s November decision.
Israeli Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi sent a follow-up email criticizing the attorney general’s interference as “another expression of the arrogant rule of clerks that refuses to accept a decision of the nation.”
“In a democracy, the government is elected. The clerks are appointed. This order cannot be reversed. We will continue to uphold the government’s decision and will not fund the libelous newspaper Haaretz in any way,” he said.