Haaretz Writer Suffers Hernia Refraining From Using Nazi Analogies

Julius Streicher, a columnist for Haaretz, checked into Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv this morning.

Tel Aviv, August 21 – A reporter for Israel’s only broadsheet daily newspaper underwent surgery today to repair a hernia that occurred as a result of straining not to use Israel’s Olympic achievements as evidence the country has become a latter-day iteration of Nazi Germany, an editor said today.

Julius Streicher, a columnist for Haaretz, checked into Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv this morning after the effort not to employ analogies to 1930’s Germany in his commentary on Israel’s Olympic team cause a rupture in his abdominal wall through which a portion of his lower intestine pushed into the inguinal canal. Doctors successfully restored the intestinal tissue to its proper position and repaired the breach. Streicher remains under observation, and will return to work within the week.

In an article about the two bronze medals that Israeli athletes earned in judo, Streicher had just completed a sentence asserting that the achievements of the two athletes of non-Ashkenazi ancestry embodied the racist, Eurocentric attitudes that Zionism represents. The next natural rhetorical flourish for both Streicher and most other Haaretz writers would involve inserting the name of a prominent Nazi and directly or indirectly linking Israel to that regime. However, for unknown reasons Streicher restrained himself, incurring the injury in the process.

Editor-in-Chief Aluf Benn said that overuse of Nazi comparisons does not normally cause such problems. “Obviously the most important issue here is Julius’s health,” he emphasized. “When he comes back, that will be the time to open a discussion around what may or not be appropriate journalistic discipline. It will clearly not do to have our staff hurting themselves for the sake of variety. But until then, Julius’s focus must be on his own recovery.”

Benn noted that “the newspaper for thinking people,” as Haaretz styles itself, cannot afford to mince words. “No other publication in this country is willing to go where we go, journalistically speaking,” he boasted. “We have attained significant achievements by adhering to those daring standards time and time and time again. No one else has on staff people such as Amira Hess, who actually lives in Ramallah, and Gideon Levy, whose output is often indistinguishable from Palestinian propaganda.”

“Our approach has been vindicated in readership, which awards us almost four percent market share,” he added. “That puts us behind only Yisrael HaYom, Yediot Acharonot, Maariv, Makor Rishon, and probably a few local papers such as the Jerusalem-area all-advertising bi-monthly booklet The Community Bulletin.”

Streicher himself was unavailable for comment. A family member who declined to be identified berated a reporter who posed questions, saying it was just like the Zionazi press to embarrass the Netanyahu regime’s opponents.