AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, as we continue our conversation with Haggai Matar, Israeli journalist, activist, executive director of +972 Magazine, former conscientious objector who refused to serve in the Israeli army.

You just wrote a piece in The Nation magazine that’s — the gist of the headline is “Are we doing enough to deal with what’s happening right now in Gaza?” There was a piece that Oren Ziv wrote in +972, your publication, just out, “'We must use every tool to resist': Israeli teens jailed for refusing military service.” You’re a conscientious objector yourself. Talk about your own decision, when you made it, and the state of the movement of conscientious objectors today in Israel.

HAGGAI MATAR: Sure. So, I refused a very, very long time ago, actually together with my colleague Oren Ziv in 2002. I had spent two years in prison back then for refusing the draft. That is quite unusual. Most teens that refuse the draft would go to prison for about three to four months. That is what is likely expected with the recent refusers.

AMY GOODMAN: How old were you?

HAGGAI MATAR: At the time, I was 18.

AMY GOODMAN: Why two years?

HAGGAI MATAR: Well, we’re talking about the height of the Second Intifada. There as a spike in refusals. Usually, unfortunately, we only have one to, say, four kids at a time that refuse and go to prison. When I refused, there were times that we were 40 in military prison. We were packing military prison, both young people refusing the draft and reservists who were saying, “We won’t go back to oppressing Palestinians in the Occupied Territories.” So the movement was really growing, and singling out a couple of us to put us on court-martial and sentence us for a very, very long prison sentence was basically a way to break the movement.

AMY GOODMAN: And so, talk about the movement today.

HAGGAI MATAR: So, today there is a very, very impressive new generation of kids that have seen the horrors of the Gaza war and are saying that they will not take part in any of it. Actually, these kids have been saying, you know, “The horrors of October 7th and the horrors of the Gaza war are both things that should never happen again, and we must stop them, and the way to do that is by refusing.” They were sentenced this week, both of them, for the first round of imprisonment. They have several friends that are already in prison and have been going back and forth in and out of prison for a cumulative couple of months.

So, the movement is still there. It’s still fighting. We’re still talking about a few individuals at any given time. But I think it’s important and inspirational for so many people. We know it’s meaningful for other teenagers considering the draft. It’s meaningful for Palestinians that hear about people going to prison so as not to participate in oppression. And I think it’s a message for the world.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk more about these two teens, Iddo Elam and Soul Behar Tsalik.

HAGGAI MATAR: Well, the two of them have — Iddo comes from a family of left-wing activists. His father is an immigration lawyer. And he’s been very much involved in Banki, which is kind of the youth movement of the Communist Party in Israel. And his partner is — actually, I don’t know him as well, but he’s always someone I’ve seen kind of grow through the years into realizing that going into the army is just not a possibility for him.

AMY GOODMAN: So, you started +972 in — when? 2009?

HAGGAI MATAR: There were some founders —

AMY GOODMAN: 2011.

HAGGAI MATAR: — of +972 that started in 2010 to 2011. I joined late 2011 and became a staff, you know, person in 2014.

AMY GOODMAN: And explain for a global audience what +972 is and why it’s even called that.

HAGGAI MATAR: Sure. So, +972 is the international prefix if you want to dial in to Israel or Palestine. Whenever you want to call, you would dial that. And, basically, this is our way of telling the world what is happening in Israel-Palestine. The magazine has evolved over the years, and today it is a binational, independent, nonprofit outlet run by Palestinian and Israeli journalists. We also — the team behind it also co-publishes, together with Just Vision, a site called Local Call, which is in Hebrew. And in both these initiatives, we try to bring out information about the realities of oppression, of apartheid, of war crimes, publish investigations and analysis offering an alternative and a better future for all residents of our region.

AMY GOODMAN: So, I want to also talk about another news outlet. Last month, the Israeli Cabinet unanimously voted to sanction Haaretz, the newspaper, saying its editorials “have hurt the legitimacy of the state of Israel and its right to self defense,” unquote. Under the move, the government will stop advertising in Haaretz and cut off communications with it. Haaretz slammed the decision, saying it’s, quote, “another step in Netanyahu’s journey to dismantle Israeli democracy. Like his friends Putin, Erdoğan, and Orbán, Netanyahu is trying to silence a critical, independent newspaper. Haaretz will not balk and will not morph into a government pamphlet that publishes messages approved by the government and its leader,” unquote. This all comes six months after Israel banned Al Jazeera from operating in Israel. So, if you can talk about the overall crackdown and what this means? Haaretz is what? Like 100 years old?

HAGGAI MATAR: Yeah, yeah, older. Yes, I think, first of all, a lot of solidarity with our colleagues in Haaretz. They’re the only mainstream media outlet that is speaking anything about what’s happening in Gaza seriously. They have some great people there doing that work.

And this attack, we need to understand it in the context of an increasing attack on media freedoms. And like anything else in Israel-Palestine, there’s deep differentiation between the treatment of Palestinian journalists, of whom over 160 have been killed by Israel the past year in Gaza. So, you know, we need to remember that whenever we talk about press freedoms. Haaretz is facing an ad ban. Palestinian journalists are just being killed by the dozen. So, just kind of to remember that.

But the journalists in Haaretz are facing what is part of an ongoing attack on press freedoms in Israel. This bill that outlawed Al Jazeera is targeting foreign outlets that represent so-called a threat to national security. The initiators of that bill are talking about expanding that bill to outlaw Israeli outlets that’s a so-called threat to national security. So, outlets like ours, like Haaretz, could be up next, basically. And this is just one part of a set of attacks on the free media in Israel. It’s very, very dangerous. And while I have a lot of criticism of my colleagues in the mainstream that have just betrayed our profession by not talking about Gaza, I’m also deeply concerned with the way that the government is trying to take over all of the media and make sure that, you know, it’s 100% committed to the line of supporting Netanyahu.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk, Haggai Matar, about military censorship? How does it work?

HAGGAI MATAR: So, in Israel, all stories that have anything to do with military or security issues — and there’s a very long list of what is concerning national security — have to be submitted in advance to the military censor. There are military censors sitting in studios, TV studios, radio studios, and reviewing material that is about to be published, with a short delay. Stories that we write have to be published with the censor. And they have the right to stop publication, to redact parts, and you’re not allowed to say what was removed or how. That is absolutely appalling. It’s the only country in the world that describes itself as democratic and has such a terrible institution.

Still, I do want to say the most important stories do get out. The censorship doesn’t stop, usually doesn’t serve the political interests of the leadership, very rarely does, but usually the biggest stories, like stories we have published on AI and the way that the army uses AI to generate kill lists and kill over a thousand Palestinian families with AI machines, that’s a huge story we were able to break, and the censorship didn’t stop us from that. So, while there is a censorship, most of the censorship —

AMY GOODMAN: You’re talking about the stories of Yuval Abraham —

HAGGAI MATAR: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: — “Where’s Daddy?” and also Lavender?

HAGGAI MATAR: Lavender, yeah, exactly.

AMY GOODMAN: And so, explain. What does the military do? They — 

HAGGAI MATAR: So, we have to file those stories with the censor, and I’m not at liberty to say how they intervene. They’re not allowed to add things, but they can take out parts, and we can’t discuss them. However, it’s really important to say, the vast majority of our findings, we were able to publish. And when the Israeli media does not share our findings, when they don’t go into Gaza and do their own reporting, when they don’t rely on the reporting of Palestinian journalists and tell Israelis what is happening, it is not because of the censorship. It is because of their own self-censorship.

AMY GOODMAN: And before we end, you spent two years in jail. Young people now who are resisting are spending a couple months in jail. Are you all in the same jails as Palestinian prisoners?

HAGGAI MATAR: No, not at all. Conscientious objectors go to a military prison. And I myself was transferred from a military prison at some point to a civilian prison. But even there, there is complete segregation between Palestinian political prisoners and criminal prisoners that are Israeli citizens. So, it’s completely separated.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you for being with us, Haggai Matar, Israeli journalist, activist, executive director of +972 Magazine, former conscientious objector who refused to serve in the Israeli army, was in prison for two years in Israel. To see Part 1 of our discussion, go to democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks so much for joining us.