Maybe the first sign was the executive order which passed a few months ago that enabled the government to shut down “foreign media outlet that endangers the security of the state”. Under the fog of war, the government decided to shut down Al Jazeera offices in Jerusalem and Ramallah in the West Bank, and blocked access to its website.
Many Israelis wouldn’t have thought twice about this, given Al Jazeera’s history and especially how it has behaved since October 7.
But obviously, the government didn’t stop there.
When the Knesset opened its winter session, everything moved fast, and last week, the Israeli government passed two resolutions that dramatically limit the free press in the country – a slippery slope that puts Israel’s democracy at risk.
One decision, or “recommendation” as the ministers euphemistically characterised it, was to impose economic sanctions on Ha’aretz, the most liberal paper in Israel, and the only mainstream media outlet in the country that happens to cover all sides of the war in Gaza.
It may seem indulgent to have these high-minded concerns in the middle of the war, but I would argue this is when they’re most necessary.
Haaretz is the only institutional outlet in Israel that tells readers what is actually happening in Gaza, providing daily reports on the casualties and destruction there, and on the humanitarian crisis that has been unfolding for months. It is the only publication that reports on the developments in Gaza Strip daily, not just from the Israeli point of view, which is dominant elsewhere in Israeli media. Ha’aretz coverage is thus not particularly flattering to government policy, and its investigative endeavours often make it look bad.
Ha’aretz is not free from controversy. The remarks by Amos Schocken in London rightly concerned many in Israel and the diaspora, but is this a reason for a government to turn on a free press? I don’t think so. In any case, several Ha’aretz journalists publicly distanced themselves from his remarks
The government’s decision to boycott Ha’aretz by imposing sanctions on it, and ban the use of public funds for advertising or subscribing to the paper is obviously meant to weaken the paper’s economic sustainability, and punish it for its stance. Shlomo Karhi, the Minister of Communications, has repeatedly said that the government should not financially support critical media outlets.
A second decision has been to privatise Kan, the Israeli public broadcaster. This decision moved incredibly fast to become law by a Knesset resolution, and has already been passed a preliminary vote. Using the word “privatise” may be misleading, though, because the expressed intention is to eliminate this organisation – the Communications Minister keeps exclaiming that he fails to understand why the government would need to pay for the news section at the station, which is “not balanced” – meaning that he doesn’t want to support journalists who expose things from behind closed doors, nor does he want to support investigative journalism.
The above three initiatives go hand in hand, as part of a well-crafted master plan to weaken, and then eliminate, the free press in Israel, which would lead to total governmental control of the narrative.
And if that was not enough, they are also trying to pass a bill that would give the government total control of the internet, allowing them to block access to certain websites and social media networks and news sites, a common policy tool that’s part of the repertoire of authoritarian states like North Korea, China and Russia.
The government’s plans also include an orchestrated, organised and sometimes funded smear campaign from Netanyahu himself. Almost every time the Prime Minister goes on air via his social media accounts, or on a live broadcast, he has something cynical and humiliating to say about mainstream media. He constantly ignores them, never takes any interviews with them, and when he rarely answers questions in a press conference he never answers them seriously. He has given not a single sit-down interview with non-aligned Hebrew journalists for three years, appearing only on one channel, Channel 14, which has been repeatedly and accurately criticised for spreading misinformation and far-right views.
The smear campaign against press freedom is carried out by Netanyahu’s supporters and members of the coalition, and it is extremely powerful on social media, where they distribute hate speech against individual journalists and media outlets, threaten journalists, and spread incitement. And this campaign has been successful: we are deeply concerned about the rise in violent incidents against journalists and TV crews. Recently, journalists and TV crews were violently attacked while covering a destruction caused by a missile; some months earlier, a mob attacked journalists and prevented a live broadcast from a right-wing demonstration (led by Knesset members!) that resulted in an invasion of an army base that holds Palestinian detainees (also led by Knesset members!).
The anti-media legislation may not pass, and the sanctions against Ha’aretz may be found unlawful by the Supreme Court, but the damage has already been done. Journalists are intimidated, and the public is encouraged to lose faith in mainstream media, to not trust them. Some of them seem to have already imposed self-censorship measures, hesitating to go into deep investigations or criticism.
Democracy cannot survive without two key bases: a strong and independent legal system and a strong and independent free press. The Israeli government is fighting with all its might to destroy and weaken both.
