On the 15th anniversary of Israel's flight from southern Lebanon, Arutz Sheva discusses the role of former radio broadcaster and current Labor party MK Shelley Yachimovitch in bringing about the order to surrender.
Yechimovich, who grew up in a communist household and admitted to
having voted for the communist party in at least one national election,
started her journalistic career as a reporter for now defunct radical
socialist newspaper Al Hamishmar.
She ascended to dominance as an activistic journalist who became
known as a leading spokesperson for radical feminism – a creed also
referred to as genderism, and defined by neo-conservative Professor Ruth
Wisse as “if not the most extreme then certainly the most influential
neo-Marxist movement in America” – which was imported into Israel in the
1970s and 80s.
Yechimovich's genius was the framing of demands for withdrawal from
the IDF's self-styled security belt in Lebanon as products of a
"feminine wisdom" that was lost upon Israel's “macho” decision-makers.
By doing so, she brought the considerable power of Israel's genderist
journalists into play, and these were joined by male journalists, too,
in a uniform chorus clamoring for a swift retreat.
Another editor in Kol Yisrael's newsroom, Dr. Hanan Naveh, would later disclose in a public speech that three editors in Kol Yisrael's
newsroom had decided to bring about the withdrawal of the IDF from
Lebanon. He mentioned Yechimovich and her colleague, Military Affairs
Reporter Carmela Menashe, as spearheading the effort. Naveh made clear
that Kol Yisrael amplified reports on casualties and setbacks
suffered by the IDF in southern Lebanon. This reporting sapped public
support for the war effort.
Through near-daily interviews, Yechimovich and Menashe succeeded in
turning a tiny group of four peaceniks from northern kibbutzim – the
Four Mothers – into a hugely influential movement. This campaign began
in 1997 and kept going until the withdrawal from Lebanon.
Israel Radio has behaved in this manner regarding other issues. It's no secret that Israel's government-funded broadcast media is particularly Leftist. For that matter, so are other parts of the Israeli media. And while Yachmiovich gets a lot of 'credit' for keeping the 'Four Mothers' campaign in the news, she's far from the only one at fault.
At the end of the day, Israel's media makes the news rather than reporting on it and displays an extreme left-wing bias. While Yachimovich was guilty of giving the Four Mothers far more exposure than they deserved, she was far from the only one at fault. Many others had the opportunity to stop the bias or to give alternative explanations an opportunity to be heard.
So much for the Prime Minister's expected bounce in the polls as a result of his address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday: Channel 2 is reporting that it was 'modest' at best.
Israeli
Channel 2 news said Netanyahu’s Likud party had increased its likely
support by one seat in the parliament. On rival Channel 10, Likud had
gained two seats to tie its main challenger.
In answer to Channel 2’s question, “Did the speech strengthen or weaken
support for Netanyahu?” 44 percent of the respondents said it
strengthened support, 43 percent said it had no influence, and 12
percent said it weakened support for the premier.
Israeli political analysts had predicted that Netanyahu and Likud would
probably see at least a small bump in support after he warned U.S.
lawmakers to reject President Obama’s draft deal to curb Iran’s nuclear
program.
...
It is too soon to know whether any electoral boost that Netanyahu gains from the speech will be sustained.
The real scrum of the election has just begun.
Likudniks are hoping the boss’s address to Congress will pull them
ahead of their main challenger, Labor Party leader Isaac Herzog and his
running mate, former justice minister and peace negotiator Tzipi Livni,
who are running under the banner of the Zionist Union.
Herzog and the Zionist Union plan to hammer away on the theme that
Netanyahu’s address to Congress may do nothing to change the Iran
nuclear deal but has spoiled relations with Washington.
Israeli newspapers and TV were filled Wednesday with images of House
Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi looking vexed during Netanyahu’s address.
“I was near tears throughout the prime minister's speech — saddened by
the insult to the intelligence of the United States,” Pelosi said
afterward.
You don't think the newspapers and TV are pulling for Herzog, do you?
In the next war, perhaps Hamas should reconsider its ban on Israeli reporters
Yonit Levi and Udi Segal look at the difference between what the world saw on television during Operation Protective Edge and what Israelis saw. They seem to believe that if Hamas would only allow Israeli reporters into Gaza, we too would sympathize more with the civilians Hamas uses as human shields than with our own people seeking shelter from Hamas' rockets. And they worry that after what Israelis saw this summer, most of us will not be foolish enough to support another 'withdrawal.'
During the 50 days of the war in Gaza,
Israelis, and the rest of the world were watching two completely
different wars. In Israel, the country was under attack and it was all
happening on live television: The camera leaped between different cities
being targeted—showing the rocket’s trajectory from the Gazan border,
the subsequent sirens, and civilians taking shelter in Israel and,
often, the rocket’s interception by the Iron Dome anti-missile system
several minutes later—moments of deep anxiety, followed by relief, over
and over, throughout the day. Israeli networks co-operating with the
IDF’s Home Front Command aired banners clearly stating which region was
under attack, and in some areas where the sirens weren’t loud enough,
this turned out to be life-saving information.
It might be difficult for an outsider to understand, but when your
child is spending their summer vacation running to find shelter—with
merely a 15-second warning in the south, 90 seconds in Tel Aviv—one has
limited emotional capacity to see what is happening to the children on
the other side. When you add to that the fact Hamas controlled all data
and information coming from Gaza—and banned Israeli reporters—you see
the juxtaposition emerging. The world showed the war in Gaza, and its
effect on Gazans, while on Israeli television Gaza was a sidebar.
Thus, while the world castigated Israel for using excessive force, on
Israeli television the prime minister was upbraided for not doing
enough—lengthy studio discussions brought forth the opinions of former
generals and, astonishingly, sitting cabinet ministers, saying more
could and should be done. Indeed, television was the only place the
phrase “we should reconquer Gaza” was stated over and over again, while
in reality no one in the Israeli government even came close to
contemplating such a move (although when asked about it in interviews,
even left-wing ministers made sure to stress that “all options” were on
the table).
Ten days into the war, when Hamas rejected a cease-fire offer and
sent terrorists through a tunnel into Israel, the IDF’s ground operation
began. Here, too, it is important to note the disparity: The
international media sees Israeli soldiers as legitimate military
targets, while to Israelis they are quite literally “our boys”—who are
sent off at the age of 18 into mandatory military service. In this war
Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon’s close friend lost his son, the grandson
of a prominent left-wing politician was severely injured, and every
anchor or reporter knew someone who was fighting in Gaza. In Israel
there is often only one degree of separation.
Not only were Israelis watching a different war on television, but
the pictures they saw were embedded in a different narrative that, in a
nutshell, was this: We left the Gaza Strip, dismantled all settlements,
completely retreated to the 1967 lines, and the outcome was that Hamas
took over Gaza and we got rockets, which at any moment might strike our
homes. The world, in contrast, heard the story of Israel bombing
innocent civilians in an Israeli-made prison—and saw pictures of the
devastation inflicted by our military might.
I don't buy this. First, Israel is probably the most wired country in the world. While 40% of the country may have had the television going all the time as Levi and Segal claim (a figure I find hard to believe), I would bet that far more were using the web and social media and saw everything being aired by CNN, al-Beeb and all the other international media that is seen as so biased against us as to lack all credibility. And we weren't moved by it at all.
Israelis were promised that there would be no rockets from Gaza once we 'disengaged' in 2005. Those who warned otherwise were subjected to ridicule. Personally, I was called a 'Kahanist' on a certain 'conservative' web site (from which all conservatives have since been banned) for opposing the 'disengagement.' But we see that we were right. And most Israelis are not going to be fooled twice, no matter what our media tells us.
So yes, we will oppose withdrawing the IDF - and probably oppose withdrawing revenants from Judea and Samaria. But not because we were saturated with war coverage this past summer. We will oppose it because unlike Israel's Leftist media we have awoken and smelled the coffee.
Oh my... Haaretz op-ed admits that the Left is free to speak in Israel but cannot make a case
An op-ed in Haaretz debunks an op-ed in the New York Times that claims that the Left in Israel has been terrorized into silence.
As I write this, the most-emailed post on the New York Times website is a short piece called “How Israel Silences Dissent,” by Mairav Zonszein who, like me, moved to Israel from America where she was born. And like me, she is a leftist and a political activist. Zonszein describes a small group of thugs who mixed it up with Tel Aviv peace demonstrators at the start of the Gaza war, a death threat phoned into a theater against a renowned 75 year old stage actress, Gila Almagor, after a newspaper reported that the grotesque murder and immolation of a Palestinian teen in Jerusalem left her embarrassed to be an Israeli, the cancelling of an endorsement deal for a gifted comedian, Orna Banai, after she expressed sympathy for Gazan kids, and threats against a Haaretz journalist, Gideon Levy, who described Israeli pilots as war criminals. All these, Zonszein wrote, demonstrate “the aggressive silencing of anyone who voices disapproval of Israeli policies or expresses empathy with Palestinians.”
The thing is, they don’t.
Don’t get me wrong; they’re terrible.... My stomach churned when I watched, heard and read all these things, just as Zonszein’s did.
But then, that’s the point: I watched, heard and read all these things. The criticisms reached me. The criticisms of the criticisms reached me. Discussion of the criticism and of the criticisms of the criticisms reached me. No one was silenced. The week after thugs punched three demonstrators, there was another demonstration, this one larger, and protected by more police. The actress, the comedian and the journalist received hours of airtime and hundreds of column inches. The murder of the Palestinian kid in Jerusalem was condemned by multitudes, including the parents of the three Israeli boys who were murdered weeks earlier.
Although most Israelis supported the war in Gaza, especially at the start, there were voices of dissent in all media and especially on the internet....
The simple fact is, a lot of the media, and a lot of academia, and a lot of NGOs and civil society in Israel lean left, and sometimes far left. We have ways of expressing ourselves, and we did express ourselves. I was not intimidated. The thugs did not keep me away from the demonstrations, and did not make me too fearful to bring my kids along. If we’re honest, the dozen right-wing bullies shouting threats infuriated lots of us, but they intimidated no one. Leftist Israelis may not have shown as much anguish or empathy as Zonszein thinks we should have. But that was not because we were aggressively silenced. Perhaps we were too silent, but not because we were silenced.
...
But we haven’t been silenced. We’ve just failed to make our case. For a dozen years, we have failed to win a majority in the Knesset. We have failed to convince other Israelis that the cost of holding onto the occupied territories is greater than the dangers of relinquishing them. In Zonszein’s analysis, this is because a right-wing cabal has shut us up, and there’s little we can do about it.
The truth is, we’ve failed because we’ve failed, and there is a lot we can do about it. Rather than whine in the New York Times about how we’ve been silenced, we need to figure out how to speak to other Israelis so that they will listen. The answer is not to convince readers of the New York Times that Israel is no longer a democracy. The answer is to accept that Israel is a democracy, and that democracy demands that we speak to our fellow citizens and listen to them, that we persuade them rather than dismiss them. Zonszein argues that democratic politics in Israel are hopeless. The fact is, it is in Israeli democracy that our greatest hope lies.
The writer, Noah Efron doesn't seem to acknowledge the possibility that maybe the Left has failed because most Israelis have realized that its ideas are not workable. Ideas don't just fail because they're not well presented - sometimes they fail because they're just plain wrong. But at least he recognizes that the Left has had the opportunity to present its ideas. Maybe one day others on the Left will reach the same epiphany.
The video shows two Border Policemen arresting a rioter and
attempting to put him in their jeep. However, he resists the arrest, and
a group of his comrades presses up against the policemen, confident in
the knowledge that they chance they will be fire upon is next to nil.
The Border Police struggle valiantly with their captive as they are
surrounded by the mob and eventually have no choice but to let him
escape. Toward the end of the video, one of them expresses anger toward a
third policeman, who appears to have been nearby the whole time but
preferred to stay out of the confrontation.
And what has made the 'Palestinians' fearless?
Leftist infiltration of Israel's court system has led to a situation in
which even firing rubber bullets requires permission from high-ranking
officers, and the slightest use of force is pounced upon by the media,
which demands that the soldier involved be punished.
This leads to what's called Rosh Katan (literally, small head) syndrome in which everyone wants to put their head down and finish their service without getting into trouble.
Arutz Sheva is reporting that the security forces and the media are covering up what happened in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo on Friday night. This is from the first link.
Strangely, however, the Jerusalem police insisted Sunday that “it is still not clear what the nature of the attack was.”
Apparently following the police's lead, Israel's mainstream media –
which makes front page headlines out of graffiti attributed to Jews –
has not even deemed the potentially lethal attack inside the capital
newsworthy.
A Google search indicates that besides Arutz Sheva, Behadrei Haredim and another hareidi site, Kikar Hashabat, only the Jewish Press and the Maariv-NRG website reported the attack.
An epidemic of burglaries that plagued Ramat Shlomo, which is home to
about 20,000 people, has reportedly subsided somewhat recently, as a
result of neighborhood patrols that are coordinated with the Israel
Police. However, there is serious concern in the neighborhood that
security will deteriorate as a new road connecting Ramat Shlomo with the
adjoining Arab neighborhoods of Shuafat and Beit Hanina is completed.
Jerusalem Councillor Aryeh King promised to convene the city's
Committee for Emergency and Security Matters in two weeks' time and
demand explanations from police, whom he accused of neglecting the
residents' security.
Police are rarely seen in Ramat Shlomo, except for one neighborhood resident who was made an auxiliary police officer so that he can direct traffic at the entrance to the neighborhood on days when the poorly-located charity fund at the neighborhood's entrance hands out free produce. There is no police station in Ramat Shlomo - residents are meant to call Ramat Eshkol or Neve Yaakov.
There also have been very few problems for many years. The neighboring village of Shuafat (NOT the 'refugee camp') is considered quite wealthy and its residents (who are rumored to include a small handful of Jewish families) are supposedly not interested in creating 'trouble.'
Last night, as my son and I drove back from the north, we made a bathroom stop at a rest area on Route 6 South. It was distinctly uncomfortable. The entire service area was filled with Arabs, who were behaving wildly. The restaurants were closed, the gas station was closed, and although 4-5 people were inside the supermarket, no one else was being allowed in between 6:45 pm (shortly before we arrived there) and 6:00 am. Because the traffic on Route 6 - the country's main north-south highway and only toll road - is constant, the rest areas are supposed to be open 24/7/365. By definition, by the way, the restaurants therein are not Kosher (because they are open on Shabbat), but you can usually buy pre-packaged food that is Kosher.
Sunday night was the eve of Holocaust Memorial Day. It was also one of the last days on which high school and post-high school yeshiva boys are on vacation - they return to their studies on Wednesday and are there until August. Many of them took advantage of the warm weather to go on one last trip. And many of them did not return home before sundown.
But this is the time of year when the Israeli media trains its cameras on yeshiva boys - looking for any who move a muscle during the siren (which is in the morning only on Holocaust Memorial Day - in our family, we always stand still for it) or who otherwise behave in ways deemed improper or disrespectful. Last night, one such group was 'caught' in Beit Shean, and another in Jerusalem's Sacher park. But a secular group behaving even more rowdily was ignored, because they weren't part of the agenda.
The one news site that reportedly did not veer from the annual "tradition" of hunting down hareidim "desecrating" the day was Walla!,
which on Sunday reported that "dozens of hareidi families arrived at
Jerusalem's Sacher Park, occupied themselves with barbecues, and started
the work of grilling."
What remarkably was not covered by the news source was the jovial
game of soccer held by a group of secular Israelis directly adjacent to
the hareidi barbecue.
The selective reporting angered more than a few journalists on
hareidi issues, who posted enraged responses on their Facebook pages.
Reporter Yedidya Meir, whose photographs of the soccer game were published on the site Hareidim 10, wrote sarcastically "certainly tomorrow (the soccer game) will be on (Walla!'s) front page."
"It's already played out," a hareidi businessman from Jerusalem told Arutz Sheva. "Galloping over to Sacher Park to 'trap' hareidim eating dinner has worn itself out, and I'm happy for that."
"Just like we don't expect that seculars will not hold barbecues on
Shabbat and holidays because 'they celebrate the Shabbat differently,'
the time has come for you to understand that a hareidi 'caught' eating
in Sacher Park isn't, Heaven forbid, due to the disrespect he has for
this day," noted the businessman.
It is worth noting that the date for observance of Holocaust Memorial
Day was instituted by the Israeli Knesset in 1951, and that a number of
rabbis did not adhere to the practice, arguing instead that the Ninth
of Av has been set aside as the day to mourn national tragedies to the
nation of Israel. Similarly the Chief Rabbinate previously in 1949
decided on the Tenth of Tevet as the date for memorial, given that it is
the date of the siege of Jerusalem by Babylon.
When we got back into our car last night, I told my son that the rest stop is open on Shabbat, open on Yom Kippur and open on the 9th day of Av. Perhaps it is like the edict under Jewish law that we are more stringent with rabbinic prohibitions because they are more in need of strengthening. And even more stringent with post-rabbinic (rabbis cannot make new edicts today) prohibitions that have no basis in Jewish law.
Israel's Left is seething over this interview with senior 'Palestinian' official Jibril Rajoub, which was broadcast on Friday night.
Let's go to the videotape. The interview is in Hebrew, but an English summary follows.
Anchorman Danny Kushmaro asked Rajoub why PA leader Mahmoud Abbas
turned to the United Nations unilaterally instead of giving peace
negotiations a chance. Rajoub countered by claiming that Israel was
supposed to release 104 PA prisoners and that Israel was the one that
reneged on that deal.
Diplomatic correspondent Udi Segal told Rajoub that Prime Minister
Binyamin Netanyahu was willing to carry out the fourth tranche of the
prisoner release, including terrorists who are Israeli citizens, and to
release 400 additional terrorist prisoners, and curtail construction in
Judea and Samaria. Why, he asked, did the PA decide to torpedo the talks
at the last minute? Arab affairs correspondent Ehud Yaari added his own
question: does Rajoub agree with Yasser Arafat, who said that the Jews
had never had a Temple in Jerusalem?
Rajoub answered that Jerusalem is sacred to Jews, Christians and
Muslims, and that the Muslims recognize the other religions, while Jews
are the ones who do not recognize Islam. “I cannot pray at the Al Aqsa
mosque,” he complained. Surprisingly, the secular Kushmaro retorted –
“It is I who cannot pray at the Al Aqsa Mosque, you and your friends are
free to pray there.”
Kushmaro asked what the PA has given Israel in the negotiations, in
return for the terrorist prisoners who were released. “We gave
everything,” said an agitated Rajoub. During the talks, Israel built
thousands of homes in Judea and Samaria and dozens of Palestinians were
killed, he said, yet the PA kept the peace on its side. Yaari pressed
him to cite any concession the PA has made in the negotiations. “You
don't know how difficult it was to continue in the negotiations!” –
exclaimed Rajoub.
Segal reminded Rajoub that he has called Israelis “Nazis” and has said that if the PA had a nuclear bomb, it would drop it on Israel immediately.
Rajoub replied by quoting a humorous Purim interview in which Minister
Naftali Bennett was asked what would happen if he was locked up in a
room with Mahmoud Abbas for three hours. Bennett said that Abbas would
wind up joining the Jewish Home party and added that he would ask him to
make coffee for everyone and call someone who really spoke for the PA
to negotiate instead of him.
This reply, said Rajoub, proved that Bennett sees Abbas as “a waiter whose job it is to make coffee for him.”
The interview was received with great enthusiasm by nationalists. The
grassroots My Israel called it “Jibril Rajoub in the den of lions.”
Columnist Kalman Libeskind of Maariv wrote that it was the first time in
memory in which a Palestinian official “is actually asked to answer
questions” in an Israeli interview.
"It was an unusual interview, the likes of which has not been heard
in our part of the world for a very long time,” he summed up.
May we see more interviews like this one in the future.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper was in Israel for four days this week, but if you get all of your news from uber-Leftist Israeli television, you would never have known it.
Israel's mainstream media conducted an unofficial boycott of Canadian
Prime Minister Stephen Harper's visit to Israel last week. The leading
nationwide television channel, Channel 2, devoted only a single
minute of coverage to Harper's address to the Knesset, and did so only
in the second half of the evening news program, according to Maariv's
Kalman Libeskind, who analyzed the shameful phenomenon in his latest
column. Half of that minute covered hostile Arab MK Ahmed Tibi's
heckling of Harper.
Channel 10, the second nationwide commercial channel,
completely blacked out the visit. Its news show did not cover the speech
with even a single second of airtime.
And you can probably guess why. But of course, there was no way Israel's Leftist media was going to cover the visit of a pro-Israel foreign leader who came here with his foreign minister and five other cabinet members. But Harper took it straight to the media.
Harper was quick to understand how things work in Israel, added
Libeskind. In a news conference on the day after his Knesset speech, he
berated Israeli reporters, who kept on asking him about Israeli
“settlements.”
"Yesterday in the Palestinian Authority,” Harper said, “no one asked
me to criticize the Palestinian Authority on matters of governance,
human rights or any other subject. When I am in Israel I'm asked to
criticize Israel, and when I am in the Palestinian Authority I am asked
to criticize Israel.”
Channel 10 news editor admits he celebrated beating of Jews in 'Palestinian' village
The editor of one of Channel 10's most popular news magazines admits in an op-ed in Maariv that he celebrated the beatings of Jewish youth in the 'Palestinian' village of Kusra.
The degree to which Israel's mainstream media openly identifies with
leftist politics was displayed Wednesday morning in an opinion piece by
Dror Zaresky, the editor of Channel 10 television's London and Kirshenbaum, a daily news interview show.
The article in Maariv-NRG, where Zaresky is a frequent contributor, is devoted to Zaresky's confession that he was happy to see young Jews badly beaten by Arab villagers at Kusra, in Samaria, last week.
"The reports in the media and around some of the water coolers,” he
wrote, “ran the gamut from just-the-facts to awarding a prize for
courage to the Palestinian residents of the village near Shechem who
settled a long debt with the youths of the right wing specifically, and
with Israel the occupier in general.”
"I will admit the truth: I, too, had to fight the smile that spread
on my face when I heard the reports from the village,” Zaresky added.
“When I first heard about the 'price tag' action gone bad in the wadis
of Samaria, I could not hide my smile. Unlike many of my friends in the
media, I do not see these actions as disastrous for the country;
proportionality was abandoned long ago, in the way we report these
incidents of graffiti and flat tires. And yet, there is no doubt in my
mind that the right wing criminals are trying to disrupt the lives of
many Palestinians – and on the way, they may just succeed in setting fir
to our calm neighborhood in the Middle East.”
Zaresky went on to compare the event to a group of thugs from an
organized crime gang who come to collect protection money from shop
owners, somewhere in the desert – and instead are ambushed by their
victims, who beat them up. “I imagine that you get my point. The
schadenfreude toward those who came to hurt is natural and
understandable and has nothing to do with political views of one kind or
another,” he opined, adding that he “understands” people who say it is
wrong to take the law into one's own hands, but wishes to “confer a
blessing” on those who “teach criminals a lesson” regardless.
As I have reported previously, the teenagers and young adults involved in the incident were not trying to carry out a 'price tag' attack.
At least Channel 10 isn't being paid by the government to be Leftist. Still Zaresky ought to be fired.
You will recall that my friends at LATMA were forced to shut down because of budget issues. Now, they may get a new lease on life because Israel's publicly financed Leftist media has overstepped its boundaries.
LATMA seemed to be in perpetual negotiation with Channels 1 and 2 for a position on the air. Now Channel 1 may have no choice but to broadcast LATMA because it broadcast something that broke all the rules of media bias in public broadcasting.
A new ad for a parody program on Israel Channel One has rightwing
Israelis up in arms. The ad connects the Israeli right in general with
Yigal Amir, who is serving a life sentence after being convicted of
murdering Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin in 1995, and with Baruch
Goldstein, who killed 29 Arabs at the Machpelah Cave in 1994.
The ad shows men dressed up as Amir and Goldstein, and a third man
portrayed as Yona Avrushmi, who threw a hand grenade into a crowd during
1983 rally, killing 36-year old activist Emil Grunzweig. The three are
seen dancing and singing, with lyrics roughly translated as “sometimes I
am a hero and sometimes I am a murderer. Sometimes I am an assassin and
sometimes I am a slaughterer. But no matter what, I am always a right
wing murderer.”
Channel One is the television station of the state-run
Israel Broadcasting Authority. Each year, Israelis who own a television
set must by law pay a hefty fee to finance public broadcasts; the law
allows the IBA to seize property and freeze bank accounts in order to
force Israelis to pay their bill.
As a public broadcaster, the IBA must follow a very precise set of
rules and regulations to ensure that it provides an outlet for all
segments of the population, and to ensure that all points of view are
represented. Recently, for example, the IBA refused to air satirical
pieces produced by the Latma group, claiming that it would be unfair to
show one point of view in satire – that of the right-leaning Latma group
– without having a leftwing counterbalance.
In this case, however, there was no balance for the anti-right
message of the commercial, and no right-wing program or satire is
scheduled to air in the near future to balance the satirical left-wing
content the IBA is presenting.
Zelig Rabinovich, a senior aide to the Director-General of the Israel Broadcasting Authority (IBA), told Arutz Sheva, Sunday, that the authority is considering broadcasting the right-wing satire Latma, which otherwise stands to disappear for lack of funds. Rabinovich said the authority would broadcast a satire called Hayehudim Ba'im (The Jews Are Coming), although a sketch portraying right-wing murderers would be pulled as was a promo for the sketch, following a report by Arutz Sheva.
In addition, following contact by Member of Knesset Ayelet Shaked (Habayit Hayehudi-Jewish Home-New National Religious Party) to Communications Minister Gil'ad Erdan and the IBA, the authority is seeking clarifications about the video, in which three men sing and dance as Yigal Amir - convicted assassin of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Yona Avrushmi - convicted of killing Emil Grunzweig by throwing a grenade at a Peace Now rally, and Baruch Goldstein, who killed 29 Muslims in the Me'arat Hamachpelah Cave of the Patriarchs.
I searched in vain for that anti-Right sketch on YouTube and elsewhere. If anyone has it, please send it by email.
In a Sunday interview with journalist Kalman Libskind of the radio
station Galei Yisrael, Haaretz publisher Amos Schocken set out to defend
Hass’s article. Growing flustered, however, Schocken ended up saying
that moving to a settlement was a form of deliberately endangering the
welfare of one’s children, something that in another context would
trigger the intervention of social services. As for Hass’s sympathy for
rock-throwers, Schocken refused to distance himself. “Sometimes,” he
concluded, “you have to fight violence with violence.”
The method Amos Schocken chose to defend Hass’s article, and his
defense of editor-in-chief Aluf Benn’s decision to publish the piece in
full, sheds some light on the recent changes at the once-venerable
Israeli daily. In a series of interviews conducted with current and
former Haaretz employees, some of whom held high-level positions at the
paper and most of whom still hold it close to their hearts, a consensus
emerged to the effect that the paper is undergoing a process of major
change that has led to a dramatic reduction in staff, a precipitous
decline in journalistic standards, and a willful radicalization of its
politics in pursuit of Internet traffic.
As Israel’s longstanding newspaper of record, these developments have
raised important questions about the future of print journalism,
especially in a country where a free and dynamic press has always been
at the center of Israel’s democratic discourse.
...
according to the employees interviewed for this article, all of whom
refused to be identified out of fear of the impact on their careers in
Israel’s small and insular media environment, the Amira Hass affair was a
red flag not only for the Israeli public, but also for many on the
Haaretz staff. As one former editor at the news desk put it:
Amira Hass’s article must be seen as the result of a conscious
decision to radicalize the paper, to make it something shallow,
sensationalist, and shocking, and to give it the image of a
paper—really, a website—that is courageous and groundbreaking. At the
end of the day, there is only one goal: To generate traffic. It doesn’t
matter if the piece is good or bad, what matters is that it leads to
website traffic.
Like most of the people we spoke with, the editor does not identify
with the political Right in Israel. Yet he felt a need to add the
following: “Amira Hass’s article fits Aluf Benn and Amos Schocken like a
glove. She wrote shocking things. Any editor with a minimum of
discretion would have said that it wasn’t suitable for publication. But
here? The more provocative you are—to the Left, of course—the better the
editorial staff thinks it is.”
...
An even more pointed criticism of the editors’ objectivity came from
another staffer familiar with the news desk. “There is almost no one who
is not on the radical Left, or more precisely, who hasn’t accommodated
themselves to it and suddenly become a Leftist. Except for Amos Harel
and Haim Levinson, there are almost no journalists I would allow myself
to call trustworthy. The rest are sycophants who suddenly joined the
extreme Left. Israel Harel is the token Rightist in the opinion section,
but if you look at the section in its entirety, it’s obviously getting
systematically worse.” The same staff member also took issue with Benn’s
decision to dedicate time to giving public lectures and writing opinion
pieces for the paper.
...
Though the newspaper has always taken a progressive political line, even
its ideological detractors once recognized the benefit that a newspaper
rooted in quality journalism and rigorous about its standards provided
Israeli society. As Hanoch Marmari, who served as the paper’s
editor-in-chief for close to 50 years after being appointed by Amos
Schocken’s father, Gershom, put it:
“Today Haaretz is not in the playing field. Rather, it is morphed from a
player to a spectator in the bleachers. When you are a distant observer
you do not necessarily see the complicated dynamics of the game—and you
definitely exert less influence.”
I'm sure it's just a coincidence that they missed this comment at YNet
I'm sure it's just a coincidence that YNet missed this hateful comment on its web page:
For the Hebrew-impaired, it means "put the Haredim in the gas chambers, that's much better and will improve the world."
The comment was made in connection with this article, which claims that the cost to the State of a man learning in Kollel is NIS 4100-4800 per month (of which I would guess NIS 3400 is the previously noted, non-existent 'salary') (first link in Hebrew).
As of this writing (about two hours before this post is due to go live), the comment is still up.
I trust that when - God forbid - a Kollel scholar is murdered by a secular Jew, YNet will claim they had nothing to do with it.
If you need a data point about how far Left the JPost has gotten since Steve Linde took over for David Horovitz, you now have one. In a story about the biggest snowstorm since 1992, the JPost has reported on the snow in 'Palestine.'
At least 17 people have died in the winter storm in Lebanon, Jordan,
Turkey, Israel and Palestine. Meteorological agencies in Israel and
Lebanon both called it the worst storm in 20 years.
Yes, I know, they're going to tell us that the sentence was copied from Reuters because it says 'Reuters contributed to this report,' but the byline is "JPOST.COM Staff, Melanie Lidman."
The bottom line is that the Leftist media - of which JPost has sadly become a part, is trying to subconsciously get us used to the idea that there is a 'state' called 'Palestine.'
Here's Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat talking about the snow in Jerusalem.
Let's go to the videotape.
There has not been a plow or a salt truck in my neighborhood as of 9:00 am. There are no buses, and if you must get around the only ways to do so are walking (which isn't really an option outside the neighborhood) or by car. This morning, on the way home from synagogue, I saw two ambulances struggling to make it up one of the hills, with their chains.
But then again, why would anyone expect otherwise? I live in a Haredi neighborhood. We're always the last to receive city services.
Moronic: Israel Radio observes moment of silence to identify with Maariv and Haaretz journalists
My father used to quip that in Israel, it was always the case that half the country is on strike, while the other half is watching. That has proven true again today.
Israel Radio started its 5:00 pm news with a moment of silence 'as a sign of solidarity' with the journalists of Maariv and Haaretz, two newspapers that are attempting to save themselves financially by layoffs (Haaretz) and by becoming online only (Maariv). Maariv's reporters are demonstrating today, and Haaretz's reporters will decide on Wednesday afternoon whether to block the paper from printing Thursday's edition.
Yes, yes, Haaretz the putative leading newspaper in Israel doesn't have enough circulation to make a profit. Just like its idol, the New York Times.
LATMA's tribal update studies the media's math and Egypt's honor
The Tribal Update with Flock Builder's explanation of how demonstrators
are counted. Egyptian Minister of Conspiracy Theories and fiasco expert
Yevava Ben-Whine defend Egypt's honor and about Israel's defeat in the
Yom Kippur War.
There's no internet access where I am staying, so posting will be spotty today and tomorrow.
Here's Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler.
1) "political and cultural progressivism ... virtually bleeds through the fabric of The Times"
Arthur Brisbane's term as public editor of the New York Times is ending. My view of the public editors and ombudsmen who have become ubiquitous as newspapers in recent years that they're useless ornaments. They accept all the premises of how the newsroom operates with the editors of the newspaper, so they rarely disagree with coverage of the news. They're job is less one of oversight but of describing to unsophisticated non-journalists the true wisdom of journalistic professionals. The dissents of public editors are so rare, that they make news. Brisbane, in his final column as public editor of the New York Times, Success and Risk as the Times transforms, therefore made news when he wrote (h/t Instapundit):
When The Times covers a national presidential campaign, I have found that the lead editors and reporters are disciplined about enforcing fairness and balance, and usually succeed in doing so. Across the paper’s many departments, though, so many share a kind of political and cultural progressivism — for lack of a better term — that this worldview virtually bleeds through the fabric of The Times. As a result, developments like the Occupy movement and gay marriage seem almost to erupt in The Times, overloved and undermanaged, more like causes than news subjects.
I disagree strongly his assessment of the presidential campaign. However, the executive editor, Jill Abramson took exception to Brisbane's "progressivism ... bleeds" comment. She told Dylan Byers of Politico:
But Times executive editor Jill Abramson says she disagrees with Brisbane's "sweeping conclusions." "In our newsroom we are always conscious that the way we view an issue in New York is not necessarily the way it is viewed in the rest of the country or world. I disagree with Mr. Brisbane's sweeping conclusions," Abramson told POLITICO Saturday night. "I agree with another past public editor, Dan Okrent, and my predecessor as executive editor, Bill Keller, that in covering some social and cultural issues, the Times sometimes reflects its urban and cosmopolitan base," she continued. "But I also often quote, including in talks with Mr. Brisbane, another executive editor, Abe Rosenthal, who wanted to be remembered for keeping 'the paper straight.' That's essential."
"[S]ometimes?" For the record, here's what Okrent wrote:
I'll get to the politics-and-policy issues this fall (I want to watch the campaign coverage before I conclude anything), but for now my concern is the flammable stuff that ignites the right. These are the social issues: gay rights, gun control, abortion and environmental regulation, among others. And if you think The Times plays it down the middle on any of them, you've been reading the paper with your eyes closed. But if you're examining the paper's coverage of these subjects from a perspective that is neither urban nor Northeastern nor culturally seen-it-all; if you are among the groups The Times treats as strange objects to be examined on a laboratory slide (devout Catholics, gun owners, Orthodox Jews, Texans); if your value system wouldn't wear well on a composite New York Times journalist, then a walk through this paper can make you feel you're traveling in a strange and forbidding world. Start with the editorial page, so thoroughly saturated in liberal theology that when it occasionally strays from that point of view the shocked yelps from the left overwhelm even the ceaseless rumble of disapproval from the right.
That sounds like a confirmation, not a contradiction, of Brisbane's characterization. It's a shame that Byers didn't call Abramson on it.
What does this have to do with the Middle East. Let's go back to last year when Brisbane wrote, Where Words Can Never Do Justice:
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in short, is the third rail of New York Times journalism. Touch it and burn. Ms. Chira defends The Times’s journalism strenuously but is reconciled to the fact that the subject will be a constant source of protest from readers. “I have just come to the conclusion that we are always going to have really, really angry people,” she said. In her view, some readers who take sides in the conflict view the other side not just as wrong, but as monstrously wrong on a historical scale. The usual journalistic practice of assuming a neutral posture simply won’t suffice for these readers, she believes. “To not call Side A or Side B wrong is like not calling Hitler wrong,” she said, drawing a parallel that appears often in the reader e-mail I get on this topic.
The "third rail" claim is a cop out. It's a way of saying we'll never make everyone happy. But the paper's job isn't to make everyone happy, it's to be accurate. If Brisbane admits now to "progressivism" isn't it possible if not likely that "progressivism" also affect the New York Times's Middle East coverage? A fair reading of the opinion pages shows that the New York Times is rather adversarial towards Israel. Last year as the Palestinians attempted to get UN recognition for a state, the news reporting of the paper was undisguisedly supportive.
Brisbane's admission is welcome. Still it is late and insufficient.
Day in and day out, Israelis are bombarded by gossip in the guise of reporting. Today we’re being told that the decision has been made, tomorrow – that it will wait until September when Netanyahu might meet with Obama at the UN. Mysterious “sources” report that the security establishment is against the attack – a day later you’ll learn from the same “sources” that the generals – naturally – prefer an American-led operation. The febrile atmosphere caused the usual Left-wing nuts to erupt – while the increasingly unhinged Yoram Kaniuk called on the “true Beitarim” to rise on Netanyahu and “stop” him, the assorted “progressives” started a Web petition calling on the Israeli pilots to refuse an order to bomb Iran. One of those, law school professor Menahem Mautner, cheerfully proclaimed in a radio interview that a huge difference exists between the Left and the Right with regard to the (blatantly illegal) refusal to obey lawful military orders given by an elected government. Turns out, that the Right refuses, because it wishes to turn Israel into a racist theocracy, and therefore it must be crushed, while the Left wants to preserve Israeli democracy and therefore its refusal is legitimate and must be respected. There’s of course nothing “democratic” in the idea that in a crisis, an opinion of the military bureaucrats and “intelligence professionals” must prevail over this of the civilian leaders elected by a clear majority of the people. This, in fact, is what the Israeli hard Left has been dreaming about all along – since it can no longer persuade the people to follow its suicidal course, it must utilize tools outside of representative democracy to make the will of the people irrelevant. This anti-democratic mood is fully shared by the ideological elder twins of the Israeli “liberals” in America – that’s why the “progressive” Peter Beinart’s Open Zion is willing to entertain the possibility of a military coup “to save Israel from itself”.
3) We oppose honor killings ... nice scarf you have there!
I was rather appalled by the following exchange with Victoria Nuland at the State Department last week:
QUESTION: And finally – I know you guys issued a statement regarding the money on Friday; you responded to the question that was asked by Mr. Matt Lee the day before. I wanted to ask whether you also made conditional on the judicial process in the West Bank. Because as it seems, honor killing is on the rise, and there is a loophole in the law that basically allows the killers to go free. Do you ever make – like, reforming the law to tackle this issue that is becoming a real problem? MS. NULAND: You mean linking money to this particular -- QUESTION: Yeah. I mean, you linked it to other aspects, to other good behaviors by the Palestinians, but do you ever link it to such things? MS. NULAND: I don’t have anything particular on that. If we have something – I mean, in general, as you know, this money is designed to support strong institutions of the Palestinian Authority, democratic institutions increasing their services to the Palestinian people. So the degree to which we have issues there and the way governance is handled, we obviously are clear with the Palestinian Authority. QUESTION: Is this an issue that the State Department would raise – the rise of honor killing? MS. NULAND: Obviously, it sounds like the kind of issue we would generally raise in the context of our human rights discussion, yeah. Please, Jill. QUESTION: Iraq. MS. NULAND: Yeah. The scarf is the color of your eyes, my dear.
How did Nuland comfortably switch from honor killings to the scarf of the next questioner? It appears that honor killings remain a problem in the Palestinian Authority.
Last year Mahmoud Abbas passed a law to criminalize honor killings. However Phylis Chesler noted a loophole in the law:
In typical Arab style, President Abbas has said he has done something but he has really done nothing. He has not yet signed his vow into law or published it. Abbas has used the unexpected outcry against the (non-honor) murder of a young woman who is being called a "martyr," and whose reputation was above reproach, to stage a symbolic but actually toothless response to the very real epidemic of honor killings among Arabs. According to experts, judges do not rely upon the "mitigating factor" provision when they hand down lenient sentences for honor murderers. According to Haaretz, a newspaper with which I generally do not agree, here are the facts about what Abbas did (and didn't) do:
[A] review of the draft of the presidential decree indicates that judges in Palestinian courts, who showed leniency toward murderers – handing down sentences ranging from six months to three or four years in prison in such cases – did not necessarily rely on the two problematic clauses mentioned above, but rather, on other articles not even mentioned in the presidential decree.
In addition, there is this: Aya is being presented as a "chaste" and "noble" girl who did nothing wrong according to Arab standards. What about those Arab girls and women who refuse to veil or to accept arranged marriages? Or who are seen as too "Western?" Do Abbas and Arab society still believe that such women deserve to be honor murdered? In what way are their civil and personal rights protected under the rule of the Palestinian Authority or under Hamas's rule in Gaza?
Abbas has recently appointed a commission to amend laws to protect women. How much of an effect the commission will have is an open question.
However as Palestinian Media Watch documents, there is growing popular opposition to honor killings.
Palestinian press reports about murders of Palestinian women by male family members, in so-called family "honor" killings, have been increasing. According to an op-ed in the official Palestinian Authority daily:
"The frequency with which crimes against women are committed is rising constantly, and every day more than one crime is committed against more than one woman..." [Al-Ayyam, Aug. 7, 2012]
Palestinian Media Watch notes that the murders have been widely condemned by Palestinian officials and human rights activists, some of whom have called for new legislation and longer prison terms. Others have argued that the killings won't stop until there is a change in Arab - Muslim culture.
Interestingly even an official publication of the PA has taken this issue up. (Interesting, too, that honor killings are blamed on Arab - Muslim "culture," isn't it?) Unless the latest commission develops effective legislation, not much will come from this. (Is this incident, though in Gaza, a sign that public sentiment is changing?)
If the official Palestinian media has taken up the cause of preventing honor killings, though, what's to prevent it from stopping the incitement against Israel and Jews?
4) Live in Palestine - work and vacation in Israel!
According to the report, a Palestinian construction laborer will often earn more than a senior ministry official in the Palestinian Authority or the Hamas administration. (If only Abbas knew this, maybe he wouldn't be insisting on staying in power nearly 4 years after his term in office has ended!)
In related news NPR reports If Only Briefly, Palestinians Flood Into Israel. (The accompanying photograph is disgraceful. Why no photograph of Palestinians freely shopping in an Israeli store?):
Israel loosened entry restrictions for Ramadan and the three-day Eid el-Fitr holiday that followed. Israel gave permits to 100,000 Palestinians, double the number from last year. One morning this past week, hundreds of Palestinians lined up at the Qalandia checkpoint on the edge of Jerusalem, clutching their permission slips. ... One Israeli mall manager reported Palestinian shoppers this week gave his stores a 10 to 50 percent spike in sales. At an outdoor mall in Jerusalem, Israelis were browsing alongside Palestinians.
Naturally not everyone viewed the increase in permits to visit Israel as a good thing. Ma'an reports:
National Economy Ministry undersecretary Nasser Tahboub said the permits issue was being given more attention than it deserved. "I think we are mistakenly accusing Israel of being too genius." The permits issue, he said, is a purely a political move. According to Tahboub, Israel is trying to improve its image by showing the world that the Israeli authorities do allow the Palestinians to move freely and do not deny them their right to pray in al-Aqsa Mosque.
Khaled Abu Toameh, though, argues that the detractors have their own agenda:
For years, the Palestinian Authority has been demanding that Israel lift travel restrictions imposed on West Bank Palestinians. But now that Israel has permitted tens of thousands of Muslims to visit its beaches and malls, Israel is being denounced for trying to damage the Palestinian economy. What is clear is that neither the Palestinian Authority nor Hamas wants to see Palestinians living a good life. Improving the living standards of Palestinians is something that these two parties are not interested in. They would rather see Palestinians direct all their anger and frustration only toward Israel. Otherwise, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority fear, Palestinians may vent their anger against their own leaders.
I think Israel Harel - one of the token rightists at Haaretz - is onto something.
The Israeli media does not like Mitt Romney. Even worse, however, it denigrates him. Senior reporters, particularly those who had been stationed in the United States, step into line with their colleagues, taking their cues from the American media, and favor President Obama; and both freely enumerate Romney's shortcomings. They say he's conservative, unsophisticated, fundamentalist (for saying, for example, that for him, "Jerusalem and Israel are places of divine significance" ), and he's a Republican.
And his greatest failing of all: he is incurably pro-Israel. He threatens Iran as if he were Benjamin Netanyahu and, report journalists accusingly, he makes irresponsible promises to Israel that will only encourage its aggression. The media also managed to disparage the audience that gathered in Romney's honor as conservative, simplistic, supportive of Netanyahu, and religious.
I'm convinced that these simpletons, who don't constantly speak ill of the country, represent the real Israel. They know with whom they are dealing. Despite all the problems, some nearly insoluble, and whoever their leaders may be, most of the people are proud of their country, believe in the justice of its cause and its future, and believe that its bad side - about which they hear constantly - is far outweighed by the good.
I urge you all to read this important column by Evelyn Gordon to understand that the situation with the Leftist media here in Israel is every bit as bad as it is in the US.
Because this column is behind a paywall and I got it directly by email from Evelyn, I am going to post the whole thing. If any of you would like to get Evelyn's columns directly by email, you can email her at EvieGordon@gmail.com.
The media’s dangerous failure By EVELYN GORDON 12/03/2012
We now know a politicized press fed us false information for years about a vital security issue.
State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss has done the Israeli public a great service. And in so doing, he has highlighted the glaring failure of Israel’s other self-proclaimed watchdog of democracy – the media.
Last week, Lindenstrauss published a draft report on the dysfunctional relationship between two men who headed Israel’s defense establishment for years: Defense Minister Ehud Barak and former IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi. The report wasn’t made public, but media leaks reveal that Lindenstrauss didn’t assign blame equally. Barak, he found, sometimes treated Ashkenazi badly (no surprise; his abysmal interpersonal skills are notorious). But it was Ashkenazi whose staff, with his knowledge and consent, actively dug for dirt about Barak. It was Ashkenazi who for months concealed an explosive document from his civilian superiors, despite believing it revealed a genuine effort to subvert the choice of his successor (it later proved a forgery). And it was Ashkenazi who, after the document came to light, was less than candid with both the public and the police about his relationship with suspected forger Boaz Harpaz, an ex-army officer with a checkered past.
It’s obviously deeply disturbing that the chief of staff, who ought to be devoting himself night and day to Israel’s defense, was instead busy digging for dirt about the defense minister. But it’s equally disturbing that if it weren’t for Lindenstrauss, the public would never have known: Years of media reports about our dysfunctional defense duo put all the blame on Barak, portraying Ashkenazi as simon-pure.
Worse, this wasn’t innocent human error: It was a deliberate choice driven by the media’s ideological agenda.
Put bluntly, Israel journalists don’t like either Barak or his boss, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. They loathe Netanyahu for refusing to make far-reaching concessions to the Palestinians; they loathe Barak for joining Netanyahu’s government and then splitting the Labor Party to remain there; and they loathe both men for their hawkish line on Iran. So anyone who opposes Netanyahu and Barak is guaranteed a sympathetic media ear, especially if he portrays himself as being victimized for his “moderate” political views.
And that’s precisely what the politically savvy Ashkenazi did: He told the media Barak hated him because he opposed a rash attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. And since this fit neatly into the media’s preconceived narrative, journalists lapped it up and sought no further.
Fortunately, Lindenstrauss did: He interviewed hundreds of people and listened to thousands of hours of tapes from Ashkenazi’s office (where all conversations were routinely recorded). And he concluded that the feud had nothing to do with Iran, and everything to do with Ashkenazi’s personal ambition: his desire to expand his own power and unwillingness to submit to his civilian superior.
This egregious media failure is frightening for several reasons. First, Ashkenazi’s political ambitions were no secret. And if it weren’t for Lindenstrauss, he might well have swept into office in another few years on a wave of media adulation. Out of sheer ignorance, Israelis might have elected a power-hungry officer who disdains civilian control over the military and wastes his time and energy on the lowest form of petty politicking.
Second, it precluded any real investigation of the IDF’s capabilities: Having adopted Ashkenazi as its white knight, the media could hardly risk undermining his image by seriously examining his job performance. Hence, for instance, we were assured that he had “rehabilitated” the army after the Second Lebanon War, without any real evidence: Its 2009 success against Hamas in Gaza says nothing about its ability to defeat Hezbollah, a far tougher foe.
Third, the media’s bias condemned Israel to years of an incredibly dangerous situation – one in which its two top defense officials were barely on speaking terms – by depriving Barak of the usual democratic remedy: He couldn’t simply fire Ashkenazi and appoint a new chief of staff, because the media would have crucified him. In other democracies, firing insubordinate officers is standard practice: See, for instance, US President Barack Obama’s dismissal of Gen. Stanley McChrystal in 2010. But by portraying Ashkenazi as a saint rather than the insubordinate officer he was, the media made his dismissal politically untenable, even if it were legally possible (an open question, given the Supreme Court’s 1996 ruling that “apolitical” civil servants can’t be fired without good reason: Who knows whether the court, absent Lindenstrauss’ findings, would have deemed the dysfunctional Barak-Ashkenazi relationship sufficient reason?).
And finally, it raises a deeply disturbing question: What else are we not being informed of due to the media’s ideological bias?
In an unwittingly revealing op-ed last week, Haaretz columnist Ari Shavit wrote that Ashkenazi considered his insubordination legitimate because he was “subordinate to four elected officials that the public considered illegitimate – prime ministers Ehud Olmert and Benjamin Netanyahu, and defense ministers Amir Peretz and Barak.” I have no idea whether Ashkenazi actually thought this. But Shavit clearly does, and so do many of his colleagues.
Yet with regard to Netanyahu (unlike Olmert and Peretz, who indeed hemorrhaged public support after the Second Lebanon War), this assertion is simply untenable. Not only was he elected prime minister in the legally prescribed manner (by assembling a coalition), but almost every poll taken over the last three years has shown that he will also likely form the next government, and that the public continues to deem him better qualified to run the country than any of his rivals. So on what grounds does Shavit conclude that the public considers Netanyahu “illegitimate”?
There’s only one possible answer: What Shavit means is that the media considers Netanyahu illegitimate. It dislikes his positions and doesn’t want him as premier. And therefore, all’s fair in the effort to undermine his government – even undermining Israel’s security by idolizing an insubordinate officer consumed with petty politics, and thereby precluding his dismissal.
As long as this remains true, the public has no hope of getting honest information from the media about any government action, any more than it did on the Barak-Ashkenazi feud. That’s a devastating indictment of Israel’s media – and far more dangerous to the country’s long-term health than any spat at the top of the defense establishment.
LATMA's tribal update featuring Hamas-Fatah unity and Ilana Dayan
Shavua tov, a good week to everyone.
Here's LATMA's weekly update featuring the song "Anyone You Can Fool I Can Fool Better" in honor of the unity between Hamas and Fatah's conciliation and healthy competition between them. Ilana Dayan strikes again with an especially courageous and surprising investigation.
Let's go to the videotape.
For those who weren't quick enough, the line at the end was that Caroline Glick had a baby (boy, this past Monday).
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
