In early 2022, Haaretz ran a very complete story on how Mossad chief Yossi Cohen threatened the International Criminal Court prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, according to The Guardian. However, that story was not published at the time, because of pressure from intelligence agencies within Israel. On May 29, Haaretz finally reported this two-year-old story, in a highly redacted article. The Guardian reports that this article and similar reports showed how “Israel has used intelligence agencies to surveil, hack, pressure, smear and allegedly threaten senior staff at the ICC” in order to prevent any investigations relating to Palestine.
On May 30, a second article appeared in Haaretz, describing the threats that the investigative reporter, Gur Megiddo, had endured two years ago, in an effort to stop the original investigations. Megiddo wrote that he was called to appear before two senior security officials, representing two different intelligence agencies. When Megiddo arrived, he was required to leave his phone outside of the room, to prevent him from recording the meeting. The first comment was, “We understand that you know about the prosecutor.” They knew that Megiddo was investigating Yossi Cohen’s three trips to Congo, to request aid from President Kabila to stop the Bensouda prosecution. They knew that Megiddo had attempted to call Bensouda’s office. Megiddo said that they, “explained that if I published the story I would suffer the consequences and get to know the interrogation rooms of the Israeli security authorities from the inside.” Megiddo continued, “In the end, it was made clear to me that even sharing the information ‘with my friends abroad’, referring to foreign media outlets, would lead to the same results. In this case it was made clear they would enforce real penalties.”
Press freedom has been under attack in Israel, including from military censors and court orders. On May 5, the offices of Al Jazeera were closed, and on May 20, the camera of an AP photojournalist was seized for some time, requiring an intervention from the White House. Haggai Matar, the executive director of +972, said: “What we’ve seen, even before October 7 and the Gaza war began, is that this is an Israeli government that is hostile to journalism. The background is that we have a prime minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] who is indicted under several accusations, a number of which are about controlling the media. We have a minister of communications [Shlomo Karhi] who sees it as his role to fight the free press, and politicians trying to pass bills restricting the media entourage. Their main concern is to influence what the Israeli public sees.”
