Ari Shaviet, Leftist Speaks With Fareed Zakaria About Israel

Nadene Goldfoot                                                        

"Ari Shavit (Hebrew: ארי שביט; born 16 November 1957) is 67,a  leftist journalist . Shavit was a senior correspondent at the left-of-center Israeli newspaper Haaretz before he resigned" due to his own conduct. He spoke with Fareed Zakaria on CNN today, and I was wondering what would be said about ISRAEL.  

Haaretz has a left bias because:  Such media sources are moderate to strongly biased toward liberal causes through story selection and/or political affiliation.  They may utilize strong loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by using appeal to emotion or stereotypes), publish misleading reports, and omit information reporting that may damage liberal causes. Some sources in this category may be untrustworthy. 

• Overall, we rate Haaretz Left biased based on story selection and editorial positions that strongly favor the Left and High for factual reporting due to a clean fact-check record.

"He has for many years been a critic of Benjamin Netanyahu who was born in 1949. Although admitting that Netanyahu is highly intelligent, Shavit argued that Netanyahu "scorns [US] Democrat politicians and liberal intellectuals... as weaklings." Shavit also castigated Netanyahu for not being "a civil leader who truly cares for the welfare of his citizens. He [Netanyahu] is unconcerned by social justice."  This is as Ari sees Netanyahu, and I see no examples as to how he comes to feel this way, as every time Israel has been in a dire situation, they have voted for him.  

In fact, during Netanyahu's long 2nd term, he, "opposed the 2008 Israel–Hamas ceasefire, like others in the Knesset opposition. Specifically, Netanyahu said: "This is not a relaxation, it's an Israeli agreement to the rearming of Hamas ... What are we getting for this?" Forming Coalitions is completely different from the USA democracy and he was to do just that in 2009.  He chose his competition of the Left, to comply.  Tzipi Livni of Kadima turned it down!   Netanyahu did manage to entice a smaller rival, the Labour party, chaired by Ehud Barak, to join his government, giving him a certain amount of centrist tone.                                                                

                                       Suha, Arafat's wife and Hillary Clinton

                                         Arafat, daughter  Chelsea and Hillary Clinton

 In 2009, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton voiced support for the establishment of a Palestinian state – a solution not endorsed by prime minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu, with whom she had earlier pledged the United States' cooperation.  Some cooperation that move was!  Netanyahu said that any furtherance of negotiations with the Palestinians would be conditioned on the Palestinians recognizing Israel as a Jewish state." 

 None of this was a part of Shaviet's knowledge, evidently.  That's the problem with many journalists;  they write more from personal opinion than fact. 

People gather outside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office for protest during a meeting on the confidence vote in the government against Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara (not seen) in West Jerusalem on March 23, 2025.  According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, demonstrators marched from Gaza Street, where Netanyahu’s official residence is located, to his office, where the government was meeting to vote on Justice Minister Yariv Levin’s proposal to withdraw confidence from Baharav-Miara. On Friday, Netanyahu’s office said that the government had unanimously agreed to remove Bar as head of the Shin Bet domestic security service, marking a first in Israel’s history. 

An Israeli writer and journalist, Shaviet spoke with Fareed Zakaria on CNN today after Israel resumed its war in Gaza with Hamas about political fractures in Israel and their impact  on the war with Hamas terrorists. He had resigned from Haaretz when a pattern of sexual misconduct came to public attention. 

Shavit was born in Rehovot, Israel, and studied at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. His father was a scientist and his mother was an artist. Some of his ancestors were early leading Zionists.  Shavit was drafted into the Israel Defense Forces in 1975. He volunteered as a paratrooper in the Paratroopers Brigade. He served as a squad leader and took part in various raids against armed Palestinian organizations and camps in Lebanon, including Operation Litani.    

                         Finkelstein                                                   Kramer          "In 2013, Shavit released My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel. It was a New York Times Best Seller and received widespread acclaim.  The book received many positive reviews, as well as criticism from both the left, including from Norman Finkelstein, and from the right, including from Martin Kramer."  His book should show just how on the left in his thinking that he was.  

Norman Finkelstein, a real leftist is the guy who "According to Finkelstein, his involvement in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict began in 1982 when he and a handful of other Jews in New York protested against the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. He held a sign saying: "This son of survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Auschwitz, Maijdenek will not be silent: Israeli Nazis – Stop the Holocaust in Lebanon!"  I corresponded with him for a while and could not budge him.  He'd ignore my evidence and just carry on his merry line, like our president often does.  Martin Kramer caused controversy at the February 2010 Herzliya Conference in Israel,  by advocating for the elimination of Western aid in what he termed "pro-natal subsidies" to Palestinian refugees in Gaza in order to discourage population growth and Islamic radicalization:  Those subsidies are one reason why in the ten years, from 1997 to 2007, Gaza’s population grew by an astonishing 40%. At that rate, Gaza’s population will double by 2030 to three million.  Kramer is a senior and past editor of the Middle East Forum's Middle East Quarterly. Primarily a scholar of twentieth century Islamist intellectual and political history, Kramer has also published columns in the National Review magazine and on the websites of the History News Network.  

Subsidies are one thing.  No one mentioned the Arab allowance of having 4 wives to produce many children at a time.  

The discussion today with Zakaria seemed to be convoluted to him as much as it was to me.  I could not decide what Shaviet was saying as to the cause of Israel's divided situation, except Shaviet mentioned it being Trump's fault and dealings with the USA as a role model for Netanyahu. So even Ari Shaviet, a leftist, couldn't explain why the Israelis were demonstrating in the streets as to what they wanted !   

Resource:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ari_Shavit

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/haaretz/ 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Finkelstein

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Netanyahu#Prime_minister_(2009%E2%80%932021)