With rare exceptions, the media actively overshadow the crimes committed throughout Palestine by the army, the settlers and the militias (even if they may oppose Netanyahu on issues of domestic policy or hostages). The vast majority of Israeli Jews, 14 months after the trauma of 7 October, still prefer not to know anything, as if they didn’t have access to the Internet!

Dissonant voices

Divergent points of view are expressed in î, including on Zionism. The online magazine +972 is more ‘engaged’. However, the daily’s editor-in-chief, Aluf Benn, has become the target of a campaign of hatred and discredit. Netanyahu is trying to drain his advertising resources. Benn replied in the Guardian on 26 November: this ‘will not stop us reporting the grim truth about Israel’s wars’ and ‘showing the suffering in Gaza and Lebanon’.

No to censorship and threats

Haaretz attacks the apartheid regime and supports the struggle of Palestinians (without equating them with Hamas) to fight for their rights. Its journalists, like Gideon Lévy, investigate in the West Bank with the help of the B’Tselem association. Nir Hasson reports on a monumental compilation put online by the historian Lee Mordechai, which details the thousands of crimes of all kinds committed against Palestinians. To read this daily is to know.

In Gaza, Palestinian journalists have been the victims of targeted assassinations. In Israel itself, the right to information is increasingly coming up against censorship and threats. The space for democratic expression continues to shrink. Against this backdrop, many international voices are today speaking out in defence of Haaretz. We naturally join them.

Pierre Rousset