According to one source, the objective of the move is psychological warfare. A senior officer told the newspaper, "This is a crazy idea. Nobody understands what the military benefit is here." The military, when asked to comment, referred Haaretz to the Prime Minister's Office for a response.

The unusual request was received overnight from the Prime Minister's Office. The IDF has not confirmed the details and directs inquiries for response to Netanyahu's office.

Netanyahu is expected to deliver remarks at the UN Friday. His speech is expected to include "creative" elements, and Netanyahu can be assessed to try to provide a "show." However, the prime minister is not expected to announce Israel's practical response measures over the recent sweeping movement to recognize "Palestine" by some 150 UN member states.

The prime minister plans to take concrete steps, but will not do so before meeting with President Donald Trump on Monday. Another fundamental component, which Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer has emphasizes repeatedly, is that Israel cannot be the one publishing policy plans because whenever an initiative is labeled "Israeli," it is dead on arrival on the Arab street.

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The Interior Ministry announced Thursday it would suspend all cooperation and advertising with the Haaretz newspaper following controversial remarks made by the paper's publisher, Amos Schocken, at a conference in London where he criticized Israeli policies and called for international sanctions.

Speaking at a Haaretz-organized conference, Schocken issued sharp criticism of Israeli policies, described Palestinian attackers as "freedom fighters," and claimed Israeli forces were conducting a "second Nakba" in Gaza. His comments extended to calls for international sanctions against Israel and its leadership, while characterizing government policies in the West Bank and Gaza as an "apartheid regime."

The Interior Ministry's official statement described these comments as "deeply offensive and revealing a fundamental departure from core values, particularly as Israel conducts its most justified war, initiated in response to Hamas's deadly Oct. 7 attack."

Channel 14 correspondent Yishai Friedman reported that Schocken told conference attendees that Prime Minister Benjamin "Netanyahu's government shows no concern about enforcing cruel apartheid rule over the Palestinian population," adding that "achieving a Palestinian state is only possible through sanctions targeting Israel, its opposing leadership, and settlers."

The Interior Ministry's statement emphasized that "we cannot and will not stand idle while facing attacks on IDF soldiers and the state's efforts to defend its citizens." The move represents an unprecedented break between a government ministry and a major Israeli news organization.

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The left-leaning newspaper Haaretz has once again been accused of offensive reporting on Haredim after one of its cartoonists singled them out over coronavirus. 

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The controversial cartoon from Monday, drawn by Amos Biderman, showed the crowded Western Wall plaza during Tisha B'Av and two police officers discussing the threat of COVID-19 community spread. "Is it OK to have them in such close proximity to each other?," one officer asks, to which the second responds, "They got a special pass for Tisha B'Av." 

pic.twitter.com/RXWSm5OFjv

— Amos Biderman (@Amos123Biderman) July 19, 2021

The paper and the cartoonist have since come under criticism for ignoring the data showing Haredim are not violating the social distancing rules more than the general population and in fact, Haredi towns and neighborhoods have seen relatively low morbidity in the latest wave. 

Ishay Lapidot, a Haredi singer, took to Twitter to express his outrage. "When the government feels threatened, Haaretz and Biderman will always find a way to make fun of someone, even if that is based on lies and hatred that could be taken right out of Der Sturmer," he wrote. 

Another journalist, Yishai Cohen from the Haredi news portal Kikar Hashabat, wrote: "What do you do when Haredim do not fit the narrative of a new wave of infections, and when Haredim are rarely seen on planes and when most of the community spread is actually within the secular world when the images from Ben-Gurion International Airport show the entire story and you cannot turn them into superspreaders with a long nose? You call up Amos Biderman." 

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The stated vision of the conference – hosted by the Jewish Agency for Israel, Haaretz, the Ruderman Family Foundation and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem – intended to expand the definitions of Judaism beyond the narrow-religious boundaries.

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"The important thing is to create a debate in Israel about alternative ways to exercise your Jewishness, not just Orthodox ways," Haaretz publisher Amos Schocken told JNS.

"And to recognize the various ways of doing it on an equal footing. It's not just the haredi and national religious who get to run the show."

While working to expand the definition of Judaism and promote discussion, however, some participants noted that certain types of people and discussions were left out.

Chabad-Lubavitch Rabbi David Eliezrie, co-director of the North County Chabad Center in Yorba Linda, Calif., maintained what while he sees "great value" in many of the presentations with speakers making "phenomenal points," he was "saddened that there was no representative from the haredi community," which would have offered "balance and deeper discussion," he told JNS.

"Those in the Orthodox world who are here are left of center and not representing mainstream Orthodox thought," said the rabbi.

The real crisis of the Diaspora – a a conversation about which he said was missing from the conference and might have been led haredi speakers – is the failing of Jewish education among young American Jews. To that end, Chabad emissary couples on college campuses throughout North America, Israel and Europe offer Torah study, classes, Shabbat dinners, holiday programs and other opportunities to grow Yiddishkeit.

'The country is for each of the people in it'

Lisa Barkan, Jerusalem resident and founder of nonprofit Jerusalem Village, similarly told JNS that while the Oct. 30 conference discussed a "policy direction" in detail, grassroots, face-to-face dialogue between Israel and the Diaspora over relevant topics was not discussed, despite "playing a central role" in the Israel-Diaspora relationship.

She agreed with Eliezrie that "there are not many kipot here," and she hasn't seen "a single haredi" Jew. Though otherwise, she said, the conference provided a comfortable meeting place for a "diverse collection of people who really care."

Conference organizers said haredi members of Knesset were invited to speak but declined.

According to Schocken, Knesset member for the Haredi United Torah Judaism Party Moshe Gafni told organizers, "if I support the left wing, they will recognize the Reform Jews," who Schocken said are viewed as "the haredis' greatest enemy."

"They are suspicious," he explained. "They say Haaretz is anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic because we oppose Israeli civilian presence in occupied territories, which is our position."

However, he clarified, "Haaretz is a Zionist newspaper. Our view is that Israel is a just and necessary solution for the Jews, and the existence of Israel and the fulfillment of Zionism is extremely important for the Jewish people."

"We have to strengthen Israel and make it successful, but we think that the country is for each of the people in it," he continued.

At plenaries with speakers that included prominent figures from Israeli society, politicians, academics, social entrepreneurs and leading representatives of Diaspora Jewry, the dialogue focused on fundamental questions regarding Jewish identity in Israel and the ties with the Diaspora.

"What is Judaism? Is it a religion, nation, culture or peoplehood?" posed one session. Panelists, who included well-known former refusenik and chairman of the advisory board of Genesis Prize Foundation Natan Sharansky, determined that Judaism is all of the above, and "only with a broader perception of Judaism is it possible to realize the Zionist vision of a Jewish and democratic state, and to build a strong, open and respectful relationship between Israel and Diaspora Jewry."

According to Sharansky, "some see [Judaism] as a religion or nationality. Some see it as a world of culture or history." He maintained that "we cannot decide one section is Judaism and another isn't … we must preserve all facets of Judaism and be in dialogue with one another."

During his address, President Reuven Rivlin lauded Haaretz for bringing discussions of Judaism outside the traditional synagogues and Batai Midrash, some of which have been "critical cultural assets of Jewish literature."

However, he added, "in the Israeli discourse, Haaretz has many times taken the fascinating role of pouring gasoline – to burn, to inflame, to challenge, to irritate. It is a role that has importance. But sometimes, you have to stop and ask how do we keep feeding the bonfire and still let people warm themselves in its light?"

He encouraged the media to fulfill its responsibility "to ask questions about Judaism and humanity. To confront the concept of universal Judaism as opposed to particular Judaism. To write about anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. To debate about religiosity and secularization. To be a bridge between the diverse Jewish people living in Israel, and the diverse and complex Jewish people living in the Diaspora."

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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A few days after the ceasefire was declared, I starting sending the paper feature articles about the feelings among the reservists on the front line in Sinai. I had been called up for six months straight, and through the articles I tried to let the civilians on the homefront know how the reservists were feeling and discuss what was bothering them.

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We were a platoon of reservists there on the dunes, near Tassa, not far from the town of Ismail, 8 km (5 miles) from the Suez Canal. We slept in foxholes that we dug in the sand and covered with slabs of corrugated tin. We had no lights, and when it got dark we read by candlelight. During the day, we watched Egyptian soldiers' movements, but mostly we were busy preparing meals from the daily rations we received.

In the first article, I told readers about the difficulties of phoning home. In an age of smartphones equipped with Whatsapp and Twitter, it's inconceivable that for weeks we couldn't talk with our wives or children. I wrote, "Ever since the war, we haven't been able to call home. Newspapers published pictures of portable telephones on the western side of the canal, but our unit never got any, for some reason, not even once."

In another article I told them about one of my comrades who, when he left for furlough, took not only his dirty laundry and his gun, but also a carton of eggs: "When we saw Tal wrapping up a flat of 30 eggs, we thought it was a joke but he answered, 'It's serious. I'm taking eggs home. You don't know that there's a serious egg shortage in the city?'"

At the end of December 1973, an entertainment troupe visited us for the first time. I wrote, "In the afternoon, a military vehicle stopped at the entrance to the outpost. Out came a red-haired, bearded guy who played the accordion, a pretty girl who had brought a xylophone from her home in Givatayim, two siblings from Argentina – Glorida and Fredo – who sang songs accompanied by a guitar, and a fat reservist who served as the emcee and told jokes."

We near the canal got to see our first movie in February 1974. It was fun, in the heart of the desert, to see naked young Swedish girls. I described it as follows: "Last week, we had a refreshing experience and watched a movie. The movie was screened from a truck hooked up to a generator. They hung up a white cloth, and to the side sat a technician and a film projector. The technician said that it was a Swedish film called '17,' which had been produced in Sweden a few years ago. It was a little strange to get used to the idea that we were sitting on the IDF's front line, a few hundred meters from the Egyptian Second Army, watching a Swedish erotic film."

In a different article, I wrote about a brief, moving encounter we had with Egyptian soldiers.

"For four months, we saw them digging down in the sand a few hundred meters away. Suddenly, in the middle of the day, three soldiers from the Second Army in their light uniforms approached the barbed wire fence and waved. For a moment it seemed as if they wanted to surrender because they had come without weapons. But when we got to the fence, it turned out that they wanted to talk to us and take pictures, and trade Egyptian coins and banknotes for our [Israeli] lira – and shake hands. All of a sudden, the barriers were down and we saw that, like us, they wanted to go home and leave the tanks and the sand dunes. Later, we took a picture together. They gave us their home addresses and asked that we send them the historic photo."

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