Leonid Nevzlin, former business associate of imprisoned Russian oil tycoon Mikhael Khodorkovsky, who fled Russia for Israel when the latter was arrested by the authorities, has bought a 20% stake in Haaretz, investing $40-million in the company (amazing to think that Haaretz’s total valuation is only $200-million). Nevzlin’s net worth is approximately $2-billion. He will also join the board of directors.
This means that only 60% of the stock remains in the hands of the founding Schocken family, while another 20% was sold several years ago to a German publishing conglomerate. An article in The Marker notes that the latter purchased 25% of the company six years ago when it was only worth $128-million, but says the total value of the company has not changed. I’m wondering whether the apparent profit is due to currency fluctuation, because otherwise the claim the company hasn’t risen in value appears false.
Nevzlin, through his wife, runs an Israeli Zionist charity, Nadav, which supports pro-Israel/Zionist causes and awarded the pro-Israel media advocacy group, LATMA, its highest award last year at the Beit Hatfutsot Museum, which the tycoon chairs. I wrote about this last year and queried a childhood friend of mine on the Tel Aviv University faculty about the seemliness of allowing the University (on whose campus Beit HaTfutsot sits) and Museum to be affiliated with an event honoring such an ideologically charged organization. LATMA produced a video attacking the Turkish peace activists murdered on the Mavi Marmara, We Con the World, and also produced a racist video portraying a singing, dancing Barack Obama bragging how much he hates Jews.
This statement by Amos Schocken seems deliberately vague and even ominous considering Nevzlin’s decided political sympathies with right-wing Israeli politics:
Haaretz publisher Amos Schocken said the new investment follows a year-long period of acquaintance and discussions on the goals of the company and its shareholders. In the new partnership, Haaretz strengthens itself by gaining an investor and director who is an experienced businessman – one with a specific interest and track record in Judaism and education.
Is that what Schocken calls LATMA? An organization bolstering Judaism and education? Schocken also claims that Nevzlin will not be involved in editorial content. That’s about as ironclad a promise as Rupert Murdoch’s that he wouldn’t mess with the objectivity of the news content and reporting at the Wall Street Journal. It changed radically almost the day he arrived.
I wonder which will it be? Will Haaretz tone down Nevzlin’s propagandizing on behalf of right-wing Zionism or will Nevzlin infuse his politics into the pages of Haaretz (or both)? It seems clear to me that Haaretz, which has slightly faded over the years as a beacon of Israeli liberal journalism, will continue a gradual shift to the right. For example, its current managing editor, Dov Alfon, is a former officer in the IDF’s top-secret military intelligence Unit 8200 (I should add that this may indicate merely a coziness with the intelligence apparatus, rather than a right-wing political ideology). Haaretz printing presses also publish Yisrael HaYom (aka Bibiton) on behalf of Bibi’s Sugar Daddy, Sheldon Adleson. Returning to Nevzlin, his ascendancy only confirms an existing trend.
For the former Russian oil tycoon, wanted in Russia in connection with the prosecution of Khodorovsky, his purchase of a minority interest in Haaretz further burnishes his reputation inside the country and furthers the influence of his “charitable” work. It will also give him a favorable platform in case his reputation needs further polishing should he face further legal difficulties.
In the Haaretz announcement you will find barely a whisper about Nevzlin’s notorious past. You couldn’t get to be an oligarch without bashing a few heads and burying a few bodies. Whatever the outrages of the Russian justice system (and they are many), Leonid Nevzlin has much to answer for both morally and legally. Seems to me Haaretz has taken a calculated risk hopping into bed with someone having this type of reputation.
Oren Persico levels some appropriate criticism at the fawning coverage Haaretz reserved for Nevzlin in the past. At his 50th birthday party, the paper reported that celebrants as distinguished as the IAF chief said:
You’re so different from those other oligarchs.
While former Tel Aviv University President Itamar Rabinovich, crowed:
Simply, we love ya.
He should, because when the Museum was about to collapse financially, Nevzlin stepped in and saved it with an infusion of his personal cash.
Does this sound like the kind of relationship that will allow Haaretz to cover fairly and judiciously matters related to Nevzlin, his affairs, and his legal tribulations?
One wonders what Haaretz will do with the capital infusion. They’re talking about competing in the new digital world. The truth is they produce an online product that is clunky, user-unfriendly, and technologically passe. You can barely get video content to play. The English version of the website produces a pale imitation of the Hebrew product. They’ve got nowhere to go but up. But can they get there? Can they produce an attractive website? Can they add ambitious young journalists to their roster who will produce cutting edge journalism along the lines of Uri Blau, Tom Segev, Amira Hass, and Gideon Levy? Or will they follow the lead of tabloid journalism and beef up their entertainment/gossip/society offerings?
In discussing how Haaretz arrives at decisions over who it will partner with for investment purposes, Schocken makes an exceedingly odd statement about his German partner. He says that unlike previous would-be partners, Haaretz chose the Germans because they had no “business obligation” [i.e. to make a profit], but rather an “obligation to the State and its success.” I find it strange that any businessman would invest money in a venture out of a sense of moral obligation or guilt, or political allegiance, as Schocken implies is the case with the Germans. Whatever happened to profit? You mean Germans no longer care about profit when it comes to investments in Israel or anything else?
H’mmmm
Leonid Levin, is that you? 🙂
Why are Ofer and al-Masri called by you Israeli and Palestinian “entrepreneurs”, whereas Nevzlin is a “Russian oligarch”?
Is Nevzlin not also an “Israeli entrepreneur”?
Does their title change according to their political views and whether they find favour in your eyes?
To me they all should be avoided equally and named equally as exploiters of the working class and condemned equally for using their money to gain excess of political sway.
Always a pleasure to help a Native English-speaker with the language of Shakespeare (or ‘Sheikh Sbir’ as Qaddâfî called him in one of his few brilliant moments)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_oligarch
Oligarchy > “Ali Baba and the 40 thieves” in Arabic.
The Israeli media covering this story use the term “oligarch” in their headlines. If u don’t like it take it up w them.
“the Turkish peace activists murdered on the Mavi Marmara”
Is it a new common custom of “peace activists” around the world, to carry their fire arms with them ?
http://news.nana10.co.il/Article/?ArticleID=806423
Actually it’s a practice of Israeli commandos planning on murdering Palestinian supporters to carry their weapons w them & shoot unarmed victims at pt blank range.
Can you back this with a shread of evidence ?
Where is your proof of that “planning on murder” ?
Making the world a better place indeed….
You have taken issue with the “make the world a better place” description of Richard’s blog before, when he did not immediately see, and respond to some outrageous comment (comparing Netanyahu with Pol Pot, if I remember correctly).
This time you do it because of his irritated response to a completely unsupported claim, namely that the people on the Mavi Marmara carried fire arms with them.
Cut him some slack, will you? You CAN see that the overall issues he deals with do aim at bettering the wordl, can’t you?
I do not know for how long you have been reading this blog, Free man, but I have been doing so since operation Cast Lead, and I still vividly remember something that Richard wrote on the attack on the Mavi Maramara at the time (it was June 4, 2010).
“After reading thousands of words of reporting and eyewitness accounts and watching videos released by both sides, I’m coming to the conclusion that what happened was that the Israeli commandos initially fired stun grenades and rubber bullets from helicopters in order to disperse the crowd on board before they landed. Either some passengers interpreted this as an all out assault on the ship or they were spoiling for a fight.
The initial group of commandos were overrun, beaten and some dragged below decks either to be used as hostages or for medical attention. I speculate that when the IDF command saw their comrades overrun on board and discovered they perhaps had been taken hostage, an automatic, instinctual blood-lust took over. They not only had to liberate their comrades at all costs, but they had to eliminate whatever threat they had faced.
So, I don’t necessarily believe the IDF went into this planning for a massacre (though senior IDF officers were quoted in the Israeli press as saying they were prepared to use lethal force if necessary). But when events spun out of control and did not follow the scenario they’d planned, soldiers began acting on impulse and in completely disorganized fashion, which is fatal to a complicated operation such as this.
In the end, it WAS a massacre. A massacre caused by missed cues and obliviousness on both sides as to how aggressive behavior might be viewed by the other side. Of course, the preponderance of blame is on the Israeli side both because they initiated the encounter and because they had the overwhelming advantage in lethal force.”
Since then there have been many more witness accounts and I do not know for sure if these have changed Richard’s views, but for me this still stands out as a very lucid observation: There were “missed cues and obliviousness on both sides as to how aggressive behavior might be viewed by the other side.”
In short: Please do not hone in on a simplified representation of what Richard stands for in this blog.
That’s laughable. Many of the oligarchs are either overtly or covertly little more than glorified mafia. Of course many of them either killed or had others killed. The Russians have accused Nevzling of murder. I don’t trust the Russian legal system more than I can throw it. But I have absolutely no doubt that Nevzlin has done descpicable things in his life & that this is at least in part what he’s trying to counteract by buying into a mainstream Israeli media property. This is little more than “reputation-laundering.”
Do you think the Palestinian legal and economic system is any different than that in Russia? The Palestinian gave all sorts of monopoly rights to close friends of Arafat and FATAH.
Anyway, Shocken has good credentials as a Leftist/Progressives. Why would he sell out to a disreputable person?
Because he’s a businessman first & a political person 2nd. Yr claim that he’s a “leftist” is stretching it by a long ways.
[comment deleted–off topic. READ the comment rules before commenting again]
This is completely off topic. Since u are new here read the comment rules & respect them.
actually, nevslin is a crook. crooks are titled by their biggest or most prominent theft.
not a word as to the nature of the “german company”
now haaretz is owned by nazi+mafia
why not say it clear and loud?
Please. Do u think a Nazi company would invest in Israel’s most lib mainstream media property?? Actually this guy is trying to defame Haaretz by making such a stupid claim. You’re so damn obvious.
So Georgy, tell us about the Nazi nature of the German company. I assume you investigated it?
I don’t know and will probably never know whether Nevzlin has committed any crimes. What I know for sure is this. In the early 1990s, while most Soviet citizens, including my own family, lost all their hard-won savings in a matter of a few months, some clever guys used their connections to the nomenclatura, the apparatchiks and other corrupt officials to acquire enormous Soviet assets for next to nothing. Among them, unfortunately, was a hugely disproportionate number of Jews. Most of them were members of the Communist Party and Komsomol elites, which gave them access to power, money and good live, and an enrmous competitive edge over any self-made entrepreneur.
To me, these guys are cold-blooded professional crooks. That any of them can earnestly believe in god or charity is either a lie or self-deception. The only one of them I respect is Khodorkovsky, who managed to lead his business to greater transparency, who dared to speak out publicly against corruption and against Putin, and who’s had to pay dearly for this.
@ Richard, You didn’t publish my second comment which was, the guns in the picture are not a standard issue of the IDF.
so that is something the “peace activists” brought with them.
@ Elisabeth
What do you means ” completely unsupported claim, ” ?
i provided a line with a video of a very reputable Israeli media outlet Channel 10, which shows indisputable pictures of “peace activists” carrying guns, which are not IDF issued, which means they couldn’t get them from the IDF soldiers, which means they brought the guns with them.
did you meat a lot of “Peace Activists” demonstrating with guns ?
P.S
these pictures will be part of the U.N report.
Your comment is completely off topic, which is why it was not published. Read the comment rules if you intend to publish another one. Off topic comments are entirely inappropriate here.
RE: “Russian Oligarch Buys 20% Interest in Haaretz”
MY COMMENT: I have always found that the best way to avoid being disappointed is to expect the very worst.
All the various media proprietors and editors will need to heed a higher authority soon. Journalism is about reporting facts. Everything else is commentary and spin. There is so much spin in the media world of Israel and elsewhere it is impossible for most people to sort fact from fiction. Dizziness prevails. Of course alternative media outlets like this blog have their place for discourse and discussion on important issues.
I like this saying about journalists…
“I hate newspapermen. They come into camp and pick up their camp rumours and print them as facts. I regard them as spies, which, in truth, they are. If I killed them all there would be news from Hell before breakfast.”
– William Tecumseh Sherman (1862)