Has Haaretz Fired Amira Hass?

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1. 5 dancing shlomos says:

   May 28, 2008 at 7:54 pm

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   dont know rappaport. could be that one good israeli, ie, he thinks of himself as a jewish palestinian. not a zionist but a jewish palestinian. will have to read more. in meantime, a selection from MR:

   by Meron Rappaport, 11 August 2005
   According to Shlaim, the first 10 years of the State of Israel prove this argument. King Farouk of Egypt wanted an agreement, and Israel rebuffed him. King Abdullah of Jordan wanted an agreement, and Israel rebuffed him as well. We have already mentioned Zaim of Syria. Even the archenemy Nasser, writes Shlaim in one of the surprising revelations of the book, sent emissaries and even a personal letter to then-prime minister Sharett, to put out feelers for an agreement. He was also turned down out of hand.

   by Meron Rappaport, 11 August 2005
   The book [Avi Shlaim's "Iron Wall"] gives a clear sense of a state that could not get enough. Moshe Dayan, then chief of staff, pressed for war with Egypt to capture the Gaza Strip and Sharm el-Sheikh, and "raised a suggestion" to capture the West Bank. Yigal Allon pressed for remedying the "long-term mistake" made in 1948, by capturing and annexing the West Bank. Ben-Gurion toyed with this idea and once with another idea; in 1956, a moment before the Sinai Campaign, he explained his great dream to his new friends from France: Israel would occupy the Sinai Peninsula, take over the West Bank and dismantle the Kingdom of Jordan, and reach the Litani River in Lebanon, establishing a Maronite state in northern Lebanon. The entire Israeli leadership (with the exception of Moshe Sharett), says Shlaim, adopted the idea of the "iron wall." The only argument was about where to place it.

   by Meron Rappaport, 11 August 2005
   Bar-On was active in Peace Now, and he does not really have any argument with Shlaim as to the facts. He has a serious disagreement with him regarding Shlaim's interpretation of them. It's true that Israel rejected all the Arab proposals, he says, and it's true that up until May 1967, the Arabs had no real plan to attack Israel. But the Arab proposals were unacceptable, and the war was unavoidable, because the Arabs could not forget what the Israelis had done to them in 1948.

   by Meron Rappaport, 11 August 2005
   Shlaim, on the other hand, considers Dayan and Ben-Gurion the source of all evil. Ben-Gurion was a wicked man, Dayan thought in terms of a perpetual conflict. Sharett was the only one who tried to fight them. He represented another school, a school that believed that dialogue with the Arabs was possible, that what Israel did, and even what Israel said, affected the dynamics of the conflict.

   by Meron Rappaport, 11 August 2005
   Shlaim told me when we were still in the cafe that since he was a child, Israel has looked to him like an 'Ashkenazi trick' of which he doesn't feel a part. 'I'm not certain even now that I know how that trick works.'
2. Richard Silverstein says:

   May 29, 2008 at 1:01 am

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   Terrible news. Dov Alfon is the new editor who assumed his responsibilities last month. This is undoubtedly his work. I know nothing about Alfon. But I don't at all like the way he's starting his job.
3. AnomalousNYC says:

   August 26, 2008 at 12:22 pm

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   Jun. 26, 2008
   Calev Ben-David , THE JERUSALEM POST
   What the heck is going on at Haaretz? If you believe some of the things being written about the paper on media Web sites here and abroad, it is nothing less than a political purge, a putsch, a deliberate weeding out of regular voices deemed too politically controversial.

   Why? Because its target readership is no longer the left-wing intelligentsia and bourgeoisie, but the investor and entrepreneurial class that read (and advertise in) its successful sister business daily, The Marker, and prefer a Haaretz (in the words of one of its critics) “without Palestinians or the underprivileged.”

   As a result, according to this scenario, such writers as Meron Rappaport, Gideon Levy, Amira Hass, Danny Rubinstein and Akiva Eldar, who have focused much of their work on the Palestinian issue, have either been forced out, encouraged to leave the paper or have had their writing space reduced or marginalized.

   In addition, reports recently circulated that the highly regarded social affairs reporter, Ruth Sinai, whose work has detailed the plight of the unemployed, was fired – and then had her dismissal rescinded this week.

   These changes are being carried by Haaretz’s new editor, Dov Alfon, who previously worked at The Marker under its boss, Guy Rolnick – widely regarded as the dominant editorial vision in the company – with the approval of publisher Amos Schocken, who now must also answer to the paper’s German co-owners, DuMont Schauberg.

   Both Alfon and Schocken have felt it necessary to respond to these charges, with the latter replying to the media Web site, The Seventh Eye: “I understand there are those readers who want Haaretz to look like a protest [manifesto] against the occupation – for example, Ashkenazi, secular and righteous, and focused on the occupation. But a newspaper is not a protest [manifesto]; it’s a newspaper. By the way, Haaretz was against the occupation before Amira Hass and Meron [Rappaport], and it will be after them. And don’t misunderstand me. I am certainly of the view that the occupation is Israel’s most severe ailment, one that endangers its very existence. If it were possible, then, I would be ready to be the publisher of a newspaper that solely campaigned against the occupation till its end. The problem is that some of those protesting against the occupation also want to know what is happening in the shops of Comme Il Faut [a clothing chain]. So we were concerned that they wouldn’t take out a subscription to the newspaper that I am prepared to be the publisher of.”

   link to jpost.com