Newspaper boss says Israel imposes 'apartheid' and should be punished; Ministries Order Boycott, Propose Budget Cuts

By Stuart Winer

The Interior, Education and Diaspora Ministries cut ties with the Haaretz newspaper on Thursday, while the Communications Minister proposed a boycott by all government bodies, after publisher Amos Schocken told a conference that Palestinian terrorists were “freedom fighters” and that Israel was imposing an “apartheid regime” on the Palestinians.

In a letter to his spokesperson’s office, Interior Ministry Director-General Ronen Peretz wrote that Schocken’s remarks “provoke disgust and demonstrate a disconnect from fundamental values.”

He said Israel is in the midst of a war “that could not be more justified” following the pogrom carried out by the Palestinian terror group Hamas on October 7, 2023 in southern Israel, in which some 6,000 Gazans including 3,800 terrorists stormed southern Israel on October 7, 2023, killing more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians, kidnapping 251 hostages of all ages, and committing numerous atrocities and using sexual violence as a weapon on a large scale.

“Our ministry is in charge of the campaign against the delegitimization of Israel and it is astonishing to see a supposedly Israeli organization acting against Israel from within,” Diaspora Affairs Ministry Director General Avi Cohen-Scali said.

Education Ministry Director General Meir Shimoni also ordered an end to all cooperation with Haaretz, saying in a letter to staff that Schocken’s remarks “contradict the values of the educational system.”

Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi speaks at the Knesset plenum in Jerusalem on October 30, 2024. (Dani Shem-Tov/Knesset)

Meanwhile, Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi proposed that the government end all interaction with Haaretz, including announcements by the government press service.

Such action, he wrote in his proposal, “will reduce the harsh impact that Israeli citizens feel, not only because of the newspaper’s publications, but also because they are forced to fund it with their taxes.”

Such a boycott would not have a disproportionate impact on freedom of expression, Karhi stressed.

He noted that Haaretz must take into account that its position, as expressed by Schocken, upsets some of its clients, including the State of Israel.

In his remarks, delivered Sunday at a Haaretz conference in London and circulated on social media in a video apparently compiled from several excerpts of his speech, Schocken is seen saying: “The [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu government does not care about imposing a cruel apartheid regime on the Palestinian population. It rejects the costs to both sides of defending the [West Bank] settlements while fighting Palestinian freedom fighters whom Israel labels terrorists.”

“In a sense, what is happening in the Occupied Territories and parts of Gaza is a second Nakba,” Schocken said, invoking the Arabic term for the displacement of Arabs during the creation of the State of Israel and the War of Independence.

He said the only way to establish a necessary Palestinian state is "to impose sanctions against Israel, against the leaders who oppose it and against the settlers [residents of the settlements]." Israel rejects accusations of apartheid in the Palestinian territories, saying that Palestinians living there are citizens of the Palestinian Authority (PA), which has a form of autonomy, and that Arab Israelis enjoy equal rights with their Jewish counterparts.

The Choose Life Forum, which represents some terror victims and their families, said it filed a complaint with police, accusing Schocken of incitement and encouraging harm to the state and its security forces.

“Such statements go beyond the limits of freedom of expression and amount to incitement,” the forum said in a statement. By calling the terrorists “freedom fighters,” Schocken is “supporting the enemies of the state.”

Karhi had previously called for the government to end ties with Haaretz in November 2023, citing the left-wing newspaper’s reporting on Israel’s war against the Palestinian terror group Hamas, following the latter’s October 7, 2023 pogrom on Israeli soil.