Translated by Christopher Peterson
Invited to participate in the 9th piauí Festival of Journalism, Amos Schocken, publisher of Haaretz, the third leading newspaper in circulation in Israel, harshly criticized Benjamin Netanyahu’s government for its handling of the conflict in the Gaza Strip and even speculated on the idea of extermination. “Netanyahu is constantly changing the conditions to end the war. A new mission always appears, a new place to be conquered or destroyed to guarantee that Israel achieves its objectives.” Israel stepped up its attacks on Gaza this weekend, destroying two high-rise residential buildings. “The idea is apparently to eliminate the Palestinian population, not to achieve a military objective,” Schocken said.
Such systematic invention of pretexts to maintain the war is not recent. Israel and Hamas reached a ceasefire agreement in January this year. The three-part agreement provided for the gradual release of Israeli hostages by Hamas, the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, and the release of Palestinian detainees from Israeli prisons. However, just two months later Israel suspended the ceasefire, broke off the agreement unilaterally, and resumed bombing of Gaza, claiming that Hamas had failed to release the hostages. “Israel backed out of the agreement” and thereby managed to start a “new war”, Schocken said in an interview with piauí editor-in-chief André Petry and reporter Ana Clara Costa.
The publisher’s criticisms of the Netanyahu government at the festival have been published regularly in Haaretz, the newspaper founded by his family in 1935 and that has always been known for its progressive editorial line. In the last two years, the newspaper has suffered reprisals for its coverage of the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip while not endorsing the official Israeli government discourse. According to Schocken, the alliance between the United States and Israel operates in such a way that it leaves the Palestinians no other option than terrorism. “They encourage actions that serve as incentives for terrorism by Hamas,” he says.
Examples include the refusal to grant visas to leaders of the Palestinian Authority to appear at the UN General Assembly that began in New York this Tuesday, September 9, and lasts until September 28, and State Department sanctions against Palestinian human rights organizations – Al Haq, the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights – which have petitioned the International Criminal Court to investigate Israel for genocide in Gaza.
“In previous years, the Palestinian president attended [the General Assembly] and spoke with everyone. This time [the United States] has announced that they will not grant visas, although this is contrary to the agreement between the United States and the UN on the need to allow everyone to participate in the Conference, even if the Americans don’t like them. Another thing that happened recently involved the sanctions on Palestinian human rights organizations. Such acts are an incentive for terrorism, because if you refuse to allow the Palestinians to complain about Israel’s apartheid regime in the occupied territories, what else is left to them except terrorism? The situation in Washington does not help solve the problem that Israel has today.”
Due to the war’s horrors (killing of civilians and widespread famine, a dire humanitarian crisis), Schocken predicts that Israel will suffer the consequences of a moral crisis. “It will be terrible,” he says, referring to the future. “We still haven’t found a way to solve this conflict. I believe that for Israel, it’s something that many people simply want to see resolved. It’s what we should aspire to, living in peace with all our neighbors.”
Schocken is 80 years old. In May, he had already confirmed that he would participate in the festival in person, but a few days before, he had to cancel his trip to Brazil and proposed to speak with piauí through a videoconference. From a computer in the Haaretz newsroom in Tel Aviv, the publisher said he believes that Zionism is a valid idea: “Jews deserve a place for self-governance. But our leaders today have changed the meaning of Zionism in such a way that I call their approach anti-Zionism. To confine Palestinians under such a brutal regime destroys our capacity to build a nation.”
In the initial months of the war in Gaza, Haaretz was accused of conducting propaganda in favor of Hamas’ terrorism by reporting the death of Palestinians. Schocken’s newspaper suffered government sanctions for contradicting the official discourse (Netanyahu banned State agencies from publishing advertisements in Haaretz and cancelled subscriptions for public employees), but this did not dampen the level of criticism in the newspaper’s coverage. During the piauí event, Schocken read an excerpt from an editorial published that same day in Haaretz: “In August alone, more than seventy people were killed every day by the Israeli Defense Forces (…) Most died when their tents, houses, or streets were bombed.”
Judging from the way the war is proceeding, Schocken believes that Netanyahu will be remembered as the worst leader in Israeli history. In his opinion, the prime minister might have been a good leader if he had listened to the suggestion by former U.S. President Joe Biden to create an independent State for the Palestinian people. “The initial attack by Hamas was horrible. They deserved a response, of course,” he said. “But it’s hard to understand why so many Palestinians are being killed in Gaza because of acts by Hamas.”
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich is influential in the government and feels no qualms about authorizing the funds for raids in Gaza. Smotrich declared last year that it would be “justified and moral” to kill two million people from hunger in Gaza if it were necessary for Hamas to return the Israeli hostages – according to the Netanyahu government, there are 47 hostages. Schocken feels that Smotrich’s position is tantamount to that of former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar: both want absolute control of the entire territory and would do whatever is necessary to achieve that goal. (Sinwar was killed by the Israeli Army in October 2024.)
Even so, Schocken states that “what Smotrich finances and encourages is a crime against humanity. The Palestinians have been attacked and driven out for two years. Israel kills the Palestinians’ livestock and destroys their homes. Their life has turned to hell.”
The war in Gaza has already killed more journalists and media professionals than any other war in world history, according to a survey by the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. Al Jazeera estimates that some 270 news professionals have been assassinated since October 7, 2023. The editor-in-chief of piauí asked Schocken if he believes that the killing of journalists is accidental or a method. “I have no proof that the deaths were planned, but I can’t claim that they weren’t,” Schocken replied.
No journalist from Haaretz has been killed while working in Gaza. “I think nobody here considers the possibility of an Israeli journalist being assassinated. Israel is not Vladimir Putin’s Russia,” Schocken said. “Netanyahu is more envious of the way Donald Trump rules, with government agents more loyal to the leader than to the people. He wants to do in Israel what is being done in the United States, Hungary, and other autocratic regimes.”