The Bolsheviks in Stalinist Russia had an old anti-Semitic saying: “Strike at the Jews and save Russia.” The bolsheviks of the Israeli media embraced a similar slogan: Strike at Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu and the Right and save Israel.
Since the beginning of the election campaign, Yedioth Ahronoth and Haaretz newspapers have been operating as if they were campaigners whose main objective is to topple the government and close Israel Hayom. The reason is that in just a few years, Israel Hayom has succeeded in breaking these newspapers’ monopoly over knowledge and information in Israel, causing them significant losses.
The Israeli public rejected media outlets that have slandered the Israeli government from dawn to dusk in an attempt to convince the public of the righteousness of its enemies, and induce collective depression. These newspapers created a bleak atmosphere that may have motivated many Israelis to exercise their rights to seek foreign passports from France, Spain and Portugal, as descendants of expelled Jews from these countries.
Former Prime Minister Menachem Begin said that until 1948, Haaretz was pro-state. Now, at the colleges where I teach, one can find obsolete piles of Yedioth Ahronoth, which is handed out for free, but which the students will not touch, because they are intelligent and do not suffer from chronic masochism.
After running for the title of “the country’s most miserable,” Ynet has now launched a new contest for “best tabloid,” and the public has been asked to provide juicy gossip on the Netanyahu family through the ages, opening the way for numerous ridiculous stories that made huge headlines. From sunrise to sunset the public was force-fed a mess of pottage in an attempt to steal Netanyahu’s birthright.
But this tremendous smear campaign has failed. The Israeli public was deeply offended by Yedioth Ahronoth’s attempt to belittle its intelligence. Thousands of years in exile have taught the Jewish people to distinguish the wheat from the chaff, recognize truth and lies, and tell malicious gossip from solid principles. The Israeli public did not just blindly follow Yedioth Ahronoth’s crusade of deception, and every so-called scandal that was published just increased the support for Likud.
As the gossip waned, the artillery barrage was aimed at Netanyahu’s scheduled speech before Congress. Even U.S. President Barack Obama failed to understand why Yedioth Ahronoth was so offended on his behalf. Those who have been reading and listening to the Israeli media could have received the impression that the U.S. is about to declare war on Israel, or at least sever all diplomatic ties with Jerusalem.
These desperate, frustrated newspapers were beside themselves when they found out that many Israelis understood that Netanyahu’s address seeks to reflect his responsibility for the future of Israel. The Iranian nuclear bomb does not take into consideration U.S. presidency terms. U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro has already announced that there is no crisis in U.S.-Israel relations, and Yedioth Ahronoth’s entire building was enveloped in the hot air leaking from its self-inflated balloon.
This time, the target is Israel Hayom. Who could ever imagine that a day would come that Yedioth Ahronoth, which ridiculed the paper as Netanyahu’s mouthpiece, would put so much energy and resources into a fight against a newspaper that it has referred to as “meaningless”?
If the paper is meaningless, why close it down? Israel Hayom influences the public’s opinion in Israel and it is highly important for the public to have a voice that genuinely expresses its state of mind. That voice became lost in a whirlpool of leftist media, including Army Radio. The truth is that the Israeli Left only acknowledges its own freedom of speech and Yedioth Ahronoth is only interested in financial reports and not the fundamental values of Israeli society.
It seems as if Haaretz has some unfinished business with Israel Hayom. For years, Israel Hayom was printed at Haaretz’s printing house. Haaretz’s primary financial resource dried up when Israel Hayom acquired its own printing house. Foreign funding did not bother Haaretz so much when it enjoyed its benefits, but all of a sudden it does.
Haaretz had better remove the blinders before talking about foreign funding. Its partners’ Nazi ties are well known, as well as other partners’ financial sources that are shrouded in mystery. All of a sudden Haaretz has become sanctimonious. Well, best of luck to them.
Obama, Jewish-American leftists, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh would be happy to join Yedioth Ahronoth and Haaretz’s campaign against Netanyahu and the Right, because they all share the same interest in having a weak leftist government in Israel.
The public’s general frame of mind says this objective will not be achieved. The majority of the Israeli public is no longer willing to be duped by naive politicians dreaming of peace, media moguls, or megalomaniacs. At the moment, it appears that the Right will continue to lead Israel, while the Left will continue to lament in a garden of diverging paths.
The main problem for IL is: the US Liberal Jews.