The Israeli newspaper Haaretz has published two startling articles in a row that cast doubt on Israel’s democratic norms.
On Wednesday, it published an opinion piece by Jonathan Pollak with redacted text excerpts referencing a permanent gag order that prevents the media from discussing “administrative detention” – a system under which Israeli forces hold Palestinians indefinitely without charge or due process.
The next day, he published an article detailing how, two years ago, the Israeli government prevented him from publishing an investigation using “emergency powers” and threats. This story later became the subject of an explosive report by +972 magazine and the Guardian, alleging intimidation efforts by its intelligence agency, Mossad, against an International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor.
Obscuring/editing the truth
The “redacted” opinion piece was deliberately marked up by Haaretz staff, in a clear visual representation of the opacity of the “administrative detention” system.
The headline read: “The cause of Israel’s detention:…” with everything after the colon obscured by black squares reminiscent of the black marker used by censors of old.
And so the article continued, describing the plight of Palestinians caught in an indiscriminate Israeli dragnet that preferred to hold large numbers of people indefinitely rather than follow due process.
Israel’s Cause of Detention: ████ ██ █████ | Opinion | Jonathan Pollack
-Haaretz.com (@haaretzcom) May 29, 2024
Whenever the writer referred to police statements or anything related to vague prosecutions or accusations, the dreaded black marks appeared again, frustrating the reader and redoubling their attention to remind them of the dangers of censorship.
The writer, Jonathan Pollak, is a longtime Israeli anti-Zionist activist who has had several run-ins with the Israeli security establishment, having been arrested several times in the past and convicted on at least four occasions on protest-related charges.
His most recent arrest was in January 2023, accused of throwing stones at a Border Police jeep. As his trial date approached, he took the unusual step of demanding that his trial be held not in a civilian court, but rather in a military court, the opaque judicial system inflicted on thousands of Palestinians every year.
Exhibition at a difficult time for Israel
In an article by Gur Megiddo, Haaretz said on Thursday that it was ready to publish a story about Mossad’s alleged pressure on the International Criminal Court prosecutor as early as two years ago.
‘We understand that you know about the [ICC] district Attorney’
Haaretz’s chilling report @GurMegido about how Israeli security agencies used threats and emergency powers to crush his 2-year-old report on the Mossad chief’s attempts to recruit/extort Bensouda from the ICC– Ester Salomão (@EstherSolomon) May 30, 2024
Instead, Megiddo’s article said: “Israeli government officials used emergency powers to prevent the story from being published at the time.”
It is a revelation that has amplified accusations that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not hesitate to subvert the freedom of the Israeli media to block harmful stories.
Megiddo, who was the author of the previous investigation, said that before publishing the investigation, he received a call from a senior security official summoning him to his office.
During the meeting with the person responsible, he was told that if he published, “he would suffer the consequences and get to know the Israeli security authorities’ interrogation rooms inside,” he said.
The report by +972 and the Guardian, published on Tuesday, centered on allegations that then-Mossad chief Yossi Cohen tried to extort then-ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda to force her to abandon an investigation of alleged war crimes committed by Israel in Palestine.
“One of the main conclusions of the investigation would have been known to Haaretz readers a long time ago if Israel were the democratic state it claims to be,” Megiddo said.
“Now the case has been exposed at a difficult time for Israel.
“Instead of being exposed in an Israeli newspaper, the investigation has now appeared in a newspaper with global circulation. Instead of facing history in times of peace, he must now deal with it in the midst of war.”
Cohen’s secret contact to pressure Bensouda occurred in the years leading up to his decision to open a formal investigation into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the occupied Palestinian territory, the Guard report said.
Last week, Bensouda’s successor, Karim Khan, requested an arrest warrant for Netanyahu, in part based on the investigation launched in 2021.
Khan announced that his office had “reasonable grounds” to believe that Netanyahu and his now defense minister, Yoav Gallant, bear “criminal responsibility” for “war crimes and crimes against humanity”.
In a post on X, Esther Solomon, editor-in-chief of Haaretz, described Megiddo’s account as “chilling.”
Niall Stanage, associate editor of the American political newspaper The Hill, described the report as a “new twist in the Mossad’s intimidation of the ICC”.
Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch, said “it is to Bensouda’s credit that despite Israeli threats against her, “she opened a formal investigation into Israel in March 2021, as her term was ending, in instead of leaving it to her.” successor.”
This story originally appeared on Aljazeera.com read the full story
