Why Did I Stop Reading Haaretz?

A chronicle of a foreseeable escape. The dog revisits the moments when she tore the leash, released the choking grip of the collar, and left with a disappointed head but a raised tail - from slavery to freedom, and from home to the street. Will she ever return?

The Dog Bids Farewell to Haaretz  (Source)

In the end, always, it's simply a matter of trust. Like any relationship. And if you try to figure out what broke it - why did you part ways? - you ultimately return to the point of trust. Simply put, the unwritten contract between writer and reader is breached too many times. You finish and ask: why did I read this? You read and feel you've been duped - again. Sucker readers don't die, apparently, but in Haaretz they don't change either - until you realize you're the sucker. So why do people (not to mention dogs) continue this unseemly habit? What is the psychological mechanism that binds them to owners who feed them gravel, in which only occasionally can one find a doggy treat?

Most of the interesting content in Haaretz is (poorly) translated and adapted from other sources - isn't the original preferable? I've already developed an unseemly canine habit of looking up when the content is better than usual and seeing that it's actually not Haaretz's content. Hebrew literature? The literature and culture enthusiast would do well to read literature and culture - and not culture and literature, a supplement that has long ceased to be the current literary pulse, but rather literary current affairs - and the difference between the two is like the difference between the last sounds of the swamp, its croaks and splashes, to tectonic and evolutionary developments between the sea and the swamps. The important literary innovations of our time will reach the supplement when I'm a grandmother, and then it will be too late, even for what interests the grandmother. And what about the pulse of the Jewish state, or at least of the Jewish left (which is not, of course, Jewish)? Well, I prefer an autopsy to the monitor offered by Haaretz's mechanism, which operates on a simple principle. Almost all opinion pieces in Haaretz are uninteresting - what's interesting about them is that they're written in Haaretz. Agree with me - that's not such an interesting thing. And whoever does find it exciting - is the lowest reader. Haaretz is like a tycoon in debt of billions to its readers - billions of wasted moments of countless readers - approaching insolvency. What allows it to survive is only that it's a monopoly - there's no other newspaper for the intelligentsia in Israel. For now. And it's a shame, because it could have been a newspaper for thinking journalists.

The day I stopped reading the Haaretz website was a day like any other. Although Haaretz made it difficult to browse their site for browsers with ad blockers, there are always browser extensions where you browse as a search engine bot, and until Haaretz blocks their site to Google (hint: won't happen) - you can browse freely, and there are other technical solutions for those in the know. But what actually happened is that I lazed about in my kennel, yawned a big yawn, and did something unprecedented. For generic and trivial news, whose sole purpose is not to be completely disconnected from what passes through the minds of Hebrew readers, ynet is enough for me. And I simply changed the shortcut to news: from Haaretz - to the site known as Tamka [Translator's note: a popular Israeli news aggregator]. (And I also told myself that this way I'd be less disconnected from Bibi's state, which is the State of Israel). It felt as light as flicking off the last straw that had weighed on my back for far too long - and had accumulated into an annoying backache. A small tap with the paw (if that's the singular of paws).

Truth be told, I thought my world would crumble. That I'd be exposed to subpar content. That I'd become stupid, ignorant, a street dog, brainwashed, a Bibi voter, a whore and a drug addict, and it would be remembered as the moment of degeneration, at the end of which I'm raped by a Doberman who calls me a bitch and reads Israel Hayom [Translator's note: a free daily newspaper known for its pro-Netanyahu stance]. I was absolutely sure I'd return with my tail between my legs. And the truth: it didn't happen. The world is the same world. The news is the same news, the sea is the same sea, and a story about love and darkness is still an excruciatingly clichéd name (for the sweaty Israeli story). But in fact, something else wonderful happened, which surprised me very much and shook me with excitement from nose to tail. An occurrence that is no less than a sociological miracle - the miracle of change in the dog version. Suddenly, my reference community changed. Yes, everyone's stupid. But instead of my community of idiots being Haaretz's community of idiots, I moved to the all-Israeli community of idiots. In this community I felt more alienated - and this liberated me from the community, which is the real trouble of the dog. What has a dog to do with a pack of humans?

And so finally - only from the moment I disconnected from it - I got to understand the secret that had troubled me for years: I got to understand what Haaretz is, and why it holds its readers like dogs on a leash. Haaretz is a community. And just like Bibi, it controls its imagined community by inciting it against the occasional and unfortunate cat, with tasteless barks - but decisive in language - at imaginary convoys in the desolate night, and occasionally bribes with a little Bonzo [Translator's note: a brand of dog food], and most importantly: doesn't forget to wrap it all in some ridiculous canine unit pride - but flattering to the self-pride of its dogs. Because in the end - Bibi and Haaretz rule through the narcissism of their addressees. So I simply gave up, because I have a little self-respect. Today, I'm a bit more leftist, because Haaretz doesn't warm me up about the shallowness and stupidity of the left (which it displays with a lack of self-awareness - masquerading as self-aware self-awareness). But most importantly: my reference community has changed. From an imagined community in the present, to an imagined community that spans a much wider range of spaces and times.

Whether I want it or not - I am the elite. There's nothing to be done about it, and even a dog won't escape this fate. But if I'm the elite, whose elite am I? Am I the elite of the Israeli left? Why should I confine myself to this failed camp - actually. Why not expand the range. Why not be part of the elite of all of Israel, or of the Jewish people? Why not be part of the elite of the world, and why not of all generations? Why write reviews, instead of writing for generations, and instead of reading sources? Why not aim higher, breathe further, bark at the moon? Why not bark towards the Andromeda galaxy, actually? Here lies the dog. This is the crux of the matter.