New Yorker : Israeli Haaretz Newspaper : columnist Gideon Levy for many years has been ferociously attacking the Israeli government for sponsoring the “criminal enterprise” of settlements, the Israeli Army for war crimes during the bombing of Gaza, two years ago, the Israeli media for “dehumanizing” the Palestinians, and the Israeli people for complacency in the face of injustice

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Haaretz ( "The Land" ) is the most Liberal Newspaper in Israel. Golda Meir once said that the only government that Haaretz ever supported was the British Mandate, before the birth of the state.

The New Yorker
The Dissenters
Haaretz prides itself on being the conscience of Israel. Does it have a future?
by David Remnick
February 28, 2011

Haaretz prides itself on being the conscience of Israel. Does it have a future?


Some excerpts :


( About Tahrir Square Revolution in Egypt ) :

Pfeffer wanted to make sure his readers understood that the demonstrations were in fact not anti-Israeli, and he wrote a column headlined “WHY SHOULD ISRAEL BE THE ONLY DEMOCRACY IN THE MIDEAST?” “The late Arab-American scholar Edward Said appears to have been right,” he wrote. “We’re all suffering from Orientalism, not to say racism, if the sight of an entire people throwing off the yoke of tyranny and courageously demanding free elections fills us with fear rather than uplifting us, just because they’re Arabs. . . . Doesn’t Egypt deserve democracy, too?”

The editorial pages, meanwhile, represented a wide range of views. Both the editor of the section, Aluf Benn, and the columnist Ari Shavit attacked Barack Obama for failing to support a crucial ally. Benn wrote, “Barack Obama will be remembered as the president who ‘lost’ Turkey, Lebanon, and Egypt, and during whose tenure America’s alliances in the Middle East crumbled.” Shavit, a liberal-centrist who has long been arguing for a reckoning with Iran, was Spenglerian in his gloom, writing that Obama’s failure to support a “moderate” like Mubarak, coupled with his failure to speak up for the democratic movement in Tehran, signalled nothing less than the decline of the West.

But the voices that predominated in Haaretz were in praise of the Egyptian democracy movement. Bradley Burston, a former Berkeley radical whose first job in Israel was as a shepherd, wrote a column thanking the Egyptians for jolting Israelis out of fixed ideas. “It is beginning to dawn on my people, the Israelis, that freedom for Arabs may have nothing to do with annihilation for Jews,” Burston wrote. “Here and there, people here are recognizing that the Arab world, and this grand nation which is its cultural epicenter, is vastly more complex than this view of a vast sea of blood-eyed fanatics barely restrained by the brittle dikes of a heavily subsidized corps of despots.” And, he insisted, “Benjamin Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman”—Israel’s foreign minister—“increasingly resemble the rulers of unapologetically non-democratic Mideast regimes.”

Finally, the paper published an unsigned editorial reflecting the consensus opinion of the owner and publisher, Amos Schocken, and the editorial board:

Israeli leaders have always preferred to do business with Mubarak and his ilk, on the assumption that they would “preserve stability” and forcibly repress the radical forces seeking change in the region. This view led Israel to disregard the citizens of neighboring countries, viewing them as devoid of political influence in the best case and as hostile Israel-haters in the worst case. Israel viewed itself as a Western outpost and displayed no interest in the language, culture and public opinion of its immediate surroundings. Integration into the Middle East seemed like a trivial, if not a downright harmful, fantasy.

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