About Mida

Mida

Mida is an Israeli online magazine of news, commentary and analysis, published in Hebrew and English at mida.org.il and based in Jerusalem. Founded on 1 September 2012 by the philosopher and publicist Ran Baratz, it was created to provide an intellectual platform for a right-wing conservative worldview, and for information and positions that are not common in the discourse of most Israeli media outlets. In its own description, the site's worldview is conservative-liberal: it supports individual freedom alongside a place for national identity. Its main service is opinion and analysis — in the Hebrew classification, publizistika — rather than breaking-news reporting, and it is the most explicitly ideological title in this category of Israeli online news.

Founded by Ran Baratz on 1 September 2012

Mida was established on 1 September 2012 by Ran Baratz, with the stated aim of providing an intellectual stage for a conservative right-wing outlook and for material that does not prevail in the conversation of most of Israel's media. Baratz is also the chief executive of the association El HaPrat, the non-profit body that operates the site. The founding model is therefore that of an ideas magazine run by an association, not a commercial news company: Mida exists to change the terms of Israeli public debate, and its measure of success is influence on that debate rather than speed or traffic alone.

The timing is significant. Mida appeared in the years when Israel's media argument was dominated by the rise of the free daily Israel Hayom, the decline of the old Maariv and continuing argument over the perceived liberal consensus of the established press. A conservative intellectual magazine, publishing long-form argument in Hebrew on the web, was Baratz's answer: rather than another news portal competing for flashes, Mida would supply the essays, research-based commentary and ideological analysis that a conservative camp needs if it is to argue on equal intellectual terms.

The founder: philosopher, officer and publicist

Ran Baratz's biography explains the magazine's character. He was born in June 1973 in Petah Tikva, and at the age of seven his family moved to Ra'anana. He served in an airborne intelligence unit of the Israeli Air Force. He holds a first degree in philosophy and psychology from Tel Aviv University and second and third degrees in philosophy from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; his master's, completed in 2002, treated the philosophy of history in the late thought of Husserl, and his doctorate, completed in 2008 under the supervision of Shmuel Shkolnikov, treated the philosophy of nature of Parmenides. In 2008 he advised on the Zionism Index report of the Im Tirtzu movement, which argued that a significant gap existed between the views of the Israeli public on nationalism and Zionism and the intellectual discourse promoted in Israel's political-science departments — an early statement of the gap Mida was later founded to close.

Editor, columnist and teacher

Baratz is a founding editor of Mida and a regular contributor to the conservative newspaper Makor Rishon, where he has a regular column in its Hayoman supplement. He is a faculty member at the College of Statesmanship, has taught as a lecturer at the Hebrew University and lectures in the National Vision organisation's public-leadership programme, and he also teaches military doctrine at the IDF's National Defense College. The Tikvah Fund's podcast programme, introducing a 2023 conversation with him, describes him in those combined terms: founding editor of the Israeli magazine Mida and regular contributor to Makor Rishon, speaking as a conservative thinker about the roots of Israeli public argument. Mida's authority inside its camp derives substantially from this profile: its founder is simultaneously an academic philosopher, a former intelligence serviceman and a working conservative columnist.

A conservative-liberal worldview

Mida defines its outlook as conservative-liberal, supporting the freedom of the individual alongside giving a place to national identity. English-language descriptions of Baratz capture the same combination in biographical form: he supports Zionism, conservatism, human freedom and the free market, and promotes those values through lectures and writing in Mida and other media. Foreign commentary has reached for an American comparison, describing Mida as an online Hebrew-language magazine in the spirit of Commentary — a journal of argument and ideas for a political camp, rather than a newspaper of record.

The editorial agenda in practice

In practice that worldview produces a recognisable editorial agenda: criticism of judicial activism and of the legal establishment, defence of free markets and scepticism toward economic intervention, support for Israeli sovereignty in contested territories, criticism of the Israeli left and of progressive cultural politics, and scrutiny of the Palestinian Authority and of international institutions. A documented example is the Mida article by Judith Bergman, published in English in September 2018, on the Palestinian Authority's punishment of Arabs who sell land to Jews — life imprisonment with forced labour — which was cited and republished by Palestinian Media Watch, an Israeli media-monitoring organisation. Another is Mida's coverage of European politics from a conservative Israeli vantage point, for example its analysis of how the extreme left conquered Berlin, tracing Die Linke's connections to pro-Palestinian activism. The magazine's subjects range from military doctrine — Baratz's critique of postmodern thinking in the IDF General Staff is argued in his Mida-founded capacity across Israeli media — to culture, law, economics and history.

The Baratz appointment affair of 2015 to 2017

Mida entered national news directly in November 2015, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sought to appoint Baratz as head of the National Information Directorate, the government's public-diplomacy chief. The appointment ran into immediate difficulty. Offensive Facebook posts by Baratz about various figures were published in the press, among them President Barack Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry and President Reuven Rivlin. After the storm Baratz apologised for his words. Reporting of the affair quoted from his Mida writing as well, including his post-2012-election judgement that a pro-Arab, anti-Israel president would rule for four more years, and his description of Kerry, in a column, as a man whose mental age did not exceed 12.

United States officials found the comments offensive, members of the government distanced themselves and urged reconsideration, and the appointment was ultimately disqualified by the Civil Service Commission on the grounds that Baratz did not meet the criteria. In July 2016 he nevertheless joined the Prime Minister's Office as acting head of the information effort, and in January 2017 he announced his decision to resign from that role. Throughout the affair Baratz also expressed support for freedom of speech, including in controversies over statements by Arab members of Knesset: ahead of the 2013 elections, when some demanded that MK Haneen Zoabi be disqualified, he wrote that it was the public's right to decide, and that the war on radical and unconventional opinions empowers them — a position consistent with the liberal half of Mida's conservative-liberal definition.

Hebrew first, with an English presence

Mida is primarily a Hebrew publication, listed in reference works with the language and the founding details above, but it publishes in English as well, and a share of its English material travels. IsraelSeen, an English-language site republishing Israeli commentary, maintains a Mida category carrying English versions of its pieces, signed by Baratz as editor-in-chief. Palestinian Media Watch and other monitoring and commentary sites cite Mida articles as sources. That secondary circulation is characteristic of an ideas magazine: a Hebrew essay written for the Israeli argument is translated or cited abroad because it states a position in the international argument over Israel with unusual clarity.

Its contributors are drawn from Israel's conservative intellectual and journalistic circles — academics, former officials, lawyers and columnists associated with the national camp — and its form is the essay, the analysis and the documented commentary rather than the news report. Where a news site in this same category, such as Hamal, publishes an event in two lines within minutes, Mida publishes its meaning in two thousand words within days; the two formats are opposite answers to the same crowded Israeli media market.

Place among Israel's ideological media

Israel has always had party and ideological press, from the historic labour and religious papers to today's camp-based digital titles, but the internet changed its economics: a magazine no longer needs a printing plant or a party, only an association, a founder with a doctrine and a website. Mida is the clearest Israeli example of that model on the right, as Local Call and HaAyin HaShevi'it are examples from other positions in the same online-news category. Its founding in 2012, its survival and continued publication, its founder's near-appointment to the state's highest information post and the citation of its articles by other organisations together document a real, if deliberately partisan, institution.

For the directory reader, the essential facts are these: Mida is an online magazine in Hebrew and English, based in Jerusalem, founded on 1 September 2012 by Dr Ran Baratz and operated by the El HaPrat association, publishing conservative-liberal commentary, reporting and analysis on Israeli politics, society and culture, with the declared purpose of giving an intellectual platform to a right-wing conservative worldview that its founder judged absent from most Israeli media discourse.