Haaretz’s New Russian Co-Owner
Gal Beckerman June 12, 2011
The Israeli paper Haaretz, reported yesterday that Leonid Nevzlin, whom I described last year as the Russian oligarch “who got away,” just purchased 20% of the company’s shares. Its value: 700 million shekels. This leaves the legendary Schocken family, owners of the paper since 1937, with a 60% stake (David Remnick recently had an illuminating profile of Amos Schocken), and the publishing company DuMont Schauberg of Cologne, Germany, with the last 20%.
It’s still too early to say what this means for the paper, but Nevzlin is a fascinating character who only barely escaped the fate of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, his onetime business partner, when he arrived in Israel in 2003. He has since remade himself into a Jewish philanthropist, bolstering projects that promote ” Jewish peoplehood,” an amorphous but currently trendy notion. His biggest project has been resuscitating Israel’s Diaspora Museum.
My immediate thought was that this offers proof that a left-wing exists among the Russian Jews of Israel. The popularity of Avigdor Lieberman and his party has allowed people to see this population as monolithically hard-right. For the influence-seeking Nevzlin to invest so much to (let’s be honest here) prop up what Israelis see as a leftist brand means that the paper and its editorial line must have sympathizers among the Russians. It’s also hard to imagine Schocken, not an easy man (see again Remnick’s portrait), joining with Nevzlin unless he felt some kind of political kinship with him.
For more on Nevzlin’s colorful background, here’s my profile of him from last fall.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30
