Haaretz publisher Amos Schocken: Israel’s settlers have won Haaretz Daily Newspaper |
In a wide-ranging interview with the student newspaper of Ariel University, Schocken discusses how the Israeli right has redefined Zionism, how Israel isn’t interested in peace, how the future of Israel is cause for concern – and how, despite all this, peace is still possible.
By Almog Ben Zikri Jun. 24, 2015
▻http://www.haaretz.com/news/israel/1.662793
t’s not easy being Amos Schocken, the publisher of Haaretz, in present-day Israel. The Israeli bon ton is distancing itself from him, and he and his newspaper have become a target for the barbs of right-wing organizations, who portray the newspaper as anti-Zionist and as a fifth column. And those are some of the milder descriptions.
For Schocken, 70, everything began with family. His German-born grandfather, Zalman Schocken, began his career as an uneducated shopkeeper and became an economic phenomenon. Along with his varied business interests and the chain of department stores that he built and managed, he was an impressive autodidact who read books on philosophy, history, the humanities and Judaism. He provided financial support for quite a number of Jewish philosophers and intellectuals, and was the patron of Israel’s Nobel laureate for literature, S.Y. Agnon.
In 1934, when the Nazi party came to power, Zalman Schocken, an ardent Zionist, decided to immigrate to Palestine. There he became a member of the board of the Jewish National Fund, and helped to purchase land in Haifa Bay. In 1935, he added to his publishing empire a local newspaper that he purchased for 23,000 pounds sterling. It was called Haaretz.
“My father told me a story,” says Amos Schocken. "My grandfather participated in meetings of the JNF board of directors. The representatives of the ’settlers’ of that time, the settlement movement that wanted to establish kibbutzim and moshavim, would come to ask for money for their projects. Some of the requests were approved, some rejected. Suddenly my grandfather realized that what had been rejected at one meeting would reappear at the next one.
Dr. Arthur Ruppin, one of the leaders of German Zionist who emigrated to Palestine in 1908, sat next to him at the time. So my grandfather asked: ’Dr. Ruppin, I don’t understand. At the previous meeting we decided not to approve that settlement. Why is it coming up again?’ And Ruppin replied, ’Mr. Schocken, you don’t understand. In Palestine there’s no such thing as ‘no.’ ‘No’ is only a postponement until the next meeting.’
“Dr. Arthur Ruppin (a leader of the Jewish settlement movement in Palestine) was sitting beside him. So my grandfather asks: ’Dr. Ruppin, I don’t understand. At the last meeting we decided we were not approving this settlement. Why has it come up again?’ And Ruppin answered: ’Schocken, you don’t understand. In Palestine thee’s no such thing as no. No just means it’s been put off until the next meeting.’” Some might say that Amos Schocken also doesn’t understand that there’s no such thing as ’no,’ especially when it comes to peace plans and withdrawals.
Grandfather Zalman gave the newspaper to Amos’ father, Gershom Schocken, who was chief editor and publisher from 1939. After his death, in 1990, Amos became the publisher. The paper’s guiding principles have remained clearly leftist. (Amos Schocken told me he only once vote for Likud – in 1973, after the Yom Kippur War, because he felt Prime Minister Golda Meir had unleashed a catastrophe.)
Haaretz opposes Israel’s continued occupation of the West Bank. It is critical of official bodies in Israel – including the Israel Defense Forces. This often elicits anger from the Israeli public, as happened last year during Operation Protective Edge, when Haaretz published a piece by Gideon Levy ("Lowest deeds from the loftiest heights") that called the Israel Air Force a “death squadron.”
I met Schocken, who is also one of Israel’s most important art collectors, at the Haaretz offices in south Tel Aviv.