The Impossible Mission of Reading a Haaretz in Tehran

Try reading a Haaretz in Tehran. There is nothing more divisive than Israel today. There is nothing more divisive than Netanyahu these days. There is nothing more dramatic than watching the images that have been arriving from Gaza for months now. And yet, despite everything, when we talk about Israel, when we talk about Netanyahu, when we talk about Gaza, it shouldn't be difficult to find an element that can unite both those who consider Israel the new devil and those who continue to love Israel. The meeting point is important, it is known, it is not reckless and it coincides with an abbreviation of a biblical formula. “Eretz Yisrael”, or “Land of Israel”, the abbreviation of which coincides with a word that you all know. Both those who love Israel and those who can no longer stand it: “Haaretz”. Haaretz is the oldest Israeli daily newspaper still in operation, it was founded in 1918, it has a deep connection with Jewish history, it represents the voice of the secular, liberal and critical left, and it is the newspaper most read by all those who have been trying for months to nail Netanyahu to his responsibilities.

Since October 7, 2023, the day of the attack that changed the history of Israel, Haaretz has chosen to follow a hard, uncompromising line of deep criticism towards the Netanyahu government. It has accused him of everything. It has described him as a manipulative, incendiary, unscrupulous leader. It has openly accused him of systematically lying. It has accused him of continuing the war in Gaza even when he would have the numbers to stop it, just to avoid breaking with religious extremists. It has accused him of no longer representing Israel and of using the war for political ends. It has accused him of having carried out an inhuman management of the West Bank by blaming the violence of the settlers. It has also given space, on its pages, to some historians of the Holocaust who have stated that the systematic destruction and indiscriminate attack on civilians and the hunger imposed in Gaza fall within the definition of genocide. And recently, collecting anonymous accounts denied by the Israeli government, he accused Netanyahu of having given the order to his army, in the Gaza Strip, to open fire on Palestinian civilians near the distribution sites of humanitarian aid. There is nothing more distant from the Israel of today than Haaretz. Yet the same observers, politicians and intellectuals who draw uncritically from every line of Haaretz should have the courage to go a step further and recognize that Haaretz is not only the symbol of everything that Israel's friends do not want to see. But it is above all the symbol of what Israel's enemies refuse to see and that the pages of Haaretz are there to demonstrate every day: a free democracy, and the only free one in the Middle East held hostage by Islamist obscurantism. Haaretz is the only newspaper in the Middle East that speaks badly of its own country and does not end up on the stake, and it should not be difficult to remember that no newspaper in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Iran or Saudi Arabia could criticize its own leader on a daily basis without censorship or reprisals. Haaretz is not a party organ, it is not an underground press, it is a free newspaper that gives voice to a minority camp without ceasing to believe in the Israeli project. David Parenzo, in his book dedicated to Israel, “The Israel Scandal,” recalls the stories of two Haaretz reporters: Amira Hass, who lived for a long time in Ramallah and Gaza and reports on daily life under occupation, and Gideon Levy, who is one of the most unpopular editorialists among Israeli nationalists, but who for this very reason is a symbol of freedom. Remember that no authoritarian country would allow these voices to write every day in the national press, and even though Netanyahu has tried to make life more difficult for Haaretz, removing the newspaper from public bribes and turning off the government's advertising taps, Haaretz is there to remind us that Israel's strength also lies in the possibility for an Israeli newspaper to radically criticize its own government, with a freedom that would simply be unimaginable in other countries in the region. Parenzo reminds us that Haaretz embodies precisely a Jewish way of making opposition: through discussion, doubt, questioning power, and Haaretz is in this sense a space where Jewish culture confronts itself, its history, the idea of ​​a state. Haaretz is often cited by those who argue that Israel does not have pluralism and is not a truly democratic country. Yet the story of Haaretz should remind us that Israel is the only country in the Middle East where women can be generals, supreme judges, prime ministers, ambassadors, CEOs of multinationals, that Israel is the only country in the region where a Gay Pride can take place, that Israel is the only country in the Middle East where Arabs can sit in a Parliament, that in Israel there are two million Arab Israeli citizens, equal to 21 percent of the population. Haaretz, while criticizing those who govern Israel, providing every day useful elements for Israel's enemies to throw stones at the Jewish state, with its opposition, its critical sense, its anti-Netanyahu battle is there to remind us what is the real reason why Israel's neighbors, on seven different fronts, dream of its destruction, dream of its end, dream of a Palestine that reaches from the river to the sea. Israel is a great democracy, a democracy that works, a free democracy, a democracy that as such, being free, also makes mistakes, sometimes serious, other times very serious. But the reason why its enemies, the same ones who read Haaretz, dream of annihilating it has little to do with what is happening in Gaza. And it has a lot to do with the great scandal of Israel: a free, open democracy, in which dissent is tolerated, in which opposition is not arrested and in which it is possible to see every day in a plastic way what it means to live under a regime that transforms freedoms into a crime and what it means instead to live under a democracy that, despite being at war, transforms freedoms not into a corrosive virus but into a virtue to be defended. Try reading a Haaretz in Tehran.