The mayor of the southern […] city of Arad announced on Friday his intention to ban the sale of Haaretz in the city, following an exposé featuring Israeli soldiers who testified that they received orders to shoot unarmed civilians in Gaza to keep them away from food distribution hubs, despite posing no threat.
The report, authored by Nir Hasson, Yaniv Kubovich and Bar Peleg, sparked global outrage. The IDF responded by saying "lessons have been learned," while denying the allegations.
The mayor of Arad, Yair Maayan, shared Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz’s response to the investigation, calling the report a “blood libel.”
Maayan wrote: “Again, Haaretz libeled the country in the service of the terrorists […] They invent a false blood libel against IDF soldiers, providing antisemitic material to the entire world with false libel. Israel’s enemies are distributing the slanderous Haaretz libel worldwide. I wish them to end up like the spies who slandered the land of Israel. Heaven will make them pay for it in kind. We will forbid bringing the newspaper that abets terrorists into the city of Arad.”
Haaretz editor Aluf Benn responded to Maayan’s announcement, saying, “We will continue to loyally serve our readers in Arad, just like everywhere else.”
Maayan has been Arad's mayor on behalf of the Likud party since March 2024. Previously, he served as director general of the Authority for Regulating Bedouin Communities in the Negev, as well as director general of the Jerusalem municipality and of the National Infrastructures Ministry.
During Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's first term (1996–1999), Maayan was an adviser for settlement affairs at the Prime Minister's Office. He established the Kedem Premilitary Academy at the West Bank Nokdim settlement, where he lived from 1994 to 2016.
Maayan provided no evidence or detailed response to refute the IDF soldiers' testimonies in the Haaretz report about the shooting near Gaza aid.
In Friday’s post, he also falsely claimed that Haaretz described Hamas’ élite Nukhba militants — “who murdered babies, raped and shot young women, murdered women and the elderly” — as “freedom fighters.”
Earlier in June, a panel of three High Court justices issued a conditional injunction, instructing the Israeli government to explain why it should not annul its November decision to sever commercial ties with Haaretz.
The petitions — now consolidated into a single hearing — were filed by Haaretz Group and the Journalists Association on behalf of the Haaretz–TheMarker journalists' union. They seek to annul the government's decision and prior instructions from the ministries' directors-general.
In April 2025, Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara ruled that the directors general of the ministries acted unlawfully in halting commercial relations with Haaretz. Deputy attorney generals ordered ministers and directors general to reconsider their instructions on the matter.
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