There’s Too Much Speech in Israel! - by Matthew Continetti

The Israeli left cannot accept that their country is far less isolated, far more stable, far more liberal, and far more democratic than it has been in decades. Israel is not only secure. It has also withstood efforts to isolate it internationally even as its economy grows and diversifies, its population increases, its culture matures, its society variegates. Israeli media have long been the left’s redoubt, but here, too, the walls are crumbling, they are losing their grip, and they can’t stand it. Margalit quotes a journalist who says, “Sometimes competition is the refuge of the antidemocrat.” How incredibly wrong that is. The last refuge of the antidemocrat isn’t competition. It’s the New York Times.

Matthew Continetti..
Commentary Magazine..
11 August '16..

Over summer vacation, the New York Times ran an essay by U.S.-based Israeli writer Ruth Margalit. Headlined “How Benjamin Netanyahu Is Crushing Israel’s Free Press,” the article accused Netanyahu of attempting “to control the country’s pages and airwaves” while engaging in “a broader attack” on “Israel’s democratic institutions.” Netanyahu, we are led to believe, exercises a Svengali-like hold over the Israeli media, intimidating reporters and editors and broadcasters and shaping the news to further his agenda and ambitions. So terrifying has the situation become, it would seem, that Israeli journalists must turn to the most influential newspaper in the world to have their voices heard.

Finished laughing? For anyone even remotely familiar with the Israeli media landscape, Margalit’s charges are absurd. But they are also deeply revealing—of a bankrupt Israeli left that is powerless, isolated, unpopular, unlamented, and vengeful. Defeated at the polls, the left in Israel mobilizes external pressure—the diaspora, J Street, President Obama, the U.N., nongovernmental organizations, foreign press—to compel the Israeli government to enact the very policies the Israeli public rejects. It is a strategy of delegitimization, of convincing world opinion, such as it is, that Israel is neither liberal nor democratic and therefore undeserving of moral sanction, foreign aid, and other forms of diplomatic support.

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(h/t Haaretz) How Israel is finally becoming a true democracy - by Vic Rosenthal

...The government doesn’t have to delegitimize the ‘peace camp’, which has delegitimized itself by its refusal to face reality, and – yes – by selling itself to foreign interests. And it doesn’t have to ‘build a consensus’ because there already is one. It is the one that democratically elected Netanyahu and will democratically elect a right-wing government in the next election.

Vic Rosenthal..
Abu Yehuda..
13 June '16..
Link: http://abuyehuda.com/2016/06/how-israel-is-finally-becoming-a-true-democracy/

Aluf Benn, the editor of the Israeli Left’s flagship publication Ha’aretz, has done a wonderful job of explaining to the rest of us the frustration and fury of those who used to run the country and don’t anymore.

Here’s his thesis [subscription]:

Israel—at least the largely secular and progressive version of Israel that once captured the world’s imagination—is over. Although that Israel was always in some ways a fantasy, the myth was at least grounded in reality. Today that reality has changed, and the country that has replaced it is profoundly different from the one its founders imagined almost 70 years ago. Since the last elections, in March 2015, a number of slow-moving trends have accelerated dramatically. Should they continue, they could soon render the country unrecognizable.

Already, the transformation has been dramatic. Israel’s current leaders—headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who metamorphosed after the election from a risk-averse conservative into a right-wing radical—see democracy as synonymous with unchecked majority rule and have no patience for restraints such as judicial review or the protection of minorities. In their view, Israel is a Jewish state and a democratic state—in that order. Only Jews should enjoy full rights, while gentiles should be treated with suspicion. Extreme as it sounds, this belief is now widely held: a Pew public opinion survey published in March found that 79 percent of Jewish Israelis supported “preferential treatment” for Jews—a thinly veiled euphemism for discrimination against non-Jews.

Like most of his left-wing associates, Benn is purblind to both Zionism and reality.

Israel’s declaration of independence describes the new state as a “Jewish state” but besides declaring that it will be open for the “ingathering of the exiles,” doesn’t detail the meaning of this. It does say that all inhabitants will have “social and political rights” regardless of religion, race or sex. Benn simply ignores the “Jewish” part, as did Israel’s Knesset and Supreme Court when they wrote and approved the Basic Laws – still far from completion – that substitute for a true constitution.

It is certainly possible to interpret Jewishness and democracy in such a way that they are inconsistent, and then, as Benn does, to remove all but symbolic content from the Jewish part. This was clearly not the intent of the founders of the state and indeed would negate the basic idea of Zionism. What could it mean to have a Jewish state if there is no distinction between Jewish and non-Jewish citizens? And how could the Law of Return be justified in such a state? Some have called for a “law of return” for ‘Palestinians’ as well as Jews. If democracy is everything and Jewishness nothing, then why not?

A distinction has to be drawn between the rights granted to all citizens – their civil rights – and the rights conferred by ownership, what can be called national rights, which accrue only to the Jewish people. This isn’t “radical” or “extreme” and it doesn’t constitute “discrimination” any more than my exclusive right to live in the house I own discriminates against non-owners.

There is a Basic Law concerning democracy. But attempts to pass a “Jewish State” basic law that would define and protect the Jewish nature of the state have failed, in part because lawmakers know that a meaningful law would be abrogated by the Supreme Court. Meanwhile the Arab minority, the Obama Administration and liberal American Jews, the European Union and its NGO clients, and the left-leaning Israeli media continue to pressure Israel to be less the nation-state of the Jewish people and more a ‘state of its citizens’.

The “secular and progressive” Israel for which Benn is nostalgic was a more homogeneous Israel, where the majority of its Jewish citizens (and virtually all of its ruling elite) were secular socialists and communists of Eastern European origin. There were religious and right-wing minorities, but they were excluded (sometimes violently) from power. The government was solidly in the hands of the Labor Party from 1948 until 1977, and an unelected superstructure of cultural, media and legal elites came into being, all from the secular, left-wing Ashkenazi sector.

The new majority of Mizrachi Jews wrenched political power away from Labor after the disaster of the Yom Kippur war, and in 1977 elected Menachem Begin. Later, immigration from the former Soviet Union – folks who knew all about socialism and had seen enough of it, thank you – made the rightward shift permanent. But the unelected elites in control of the media, the arts, academia, the legal establishment and even the army were not so easily dislodged. Benn notes with approval that this preserved the Left’s influence against the wishes of the electorate:

…[Begin’s] revolution, important though it was, was only a partial one. Under Begin’s leadership, Israel’s old left-wing elite lost its cabinet seats. But it preserved much of its influence, holding on to top positions in powerful institutions such as the media and academia. And the Supreme Court remained stocked with justices who, while officially nonpartisan, nevertheless represented a liberal worldview of human and civil rights.

That’s putting it mildly. Although Israel has had right-wing Prime Ministers for 31 out of the last 39 years, the elites still managed to bring us the Oslo accords and to fiercely resist political, social and cultural changes desired by the growing right-wing majority. The Supreme Court has been especially potent in this regard, taking for itself itself the power of judicial review of laws passed by the democratically elected Knesset, while appointments to the Court itself have been controlled by the legal establishment.

Guess what? No one has a monopoly on values - by Boaz Bismuth

...The media must always remember that here, the people are sovereign. We should remember that the chosen people (I suppose that this makes me a condescending fascist) is also the people that chooses, and its vote counts for more than ratings.

Boaz Bismuth..
Israel Hayom..
22 May '16..

No one has a monopoly on values, including the Left and the media. Nearly 40 years ago, in May 1977, the media witnessed the victory of Menachem Begin's Likud, the fulfillment of what was for it an apocalyptic prophecy. Almost 40 years have passed, the Likud is still in power (and an "unimportant" peace deal was signed with Egypt on the way), and the media still doesn't understand how the people can choose differently. Since the media is never wrong, it takes care to create an imaginary reality for us in which the citizens of Israel are dying of hunger in the streets, the survivors are fascist occupiers, and those who believe in the sanctity of the land of Israel are messianic or right-wing extremists. There is no other option.

After claiming a monopoly on values (just like the Left, and sometimes part of the Right), the media consistently tries to bring the latest person to leave the Likud into its ranks. In the past, it was Roni Milo, Ariel Sharon (both before the disengagement from Gaza and after it), and Gideon Sa'ar, and now outgoing Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon. Things must be really dreary on the Left if the media needs to pick on the Right time after time.

The desire to present current events (the Hebron shooting of an immobilized Palestinian, the speech by the deputy IDF chief) as watershed events in the history of relations between the military and the state is factually incorrect. Unpleasant to say, it's even nonsense. We've known much harder periods in terms of the military's relations with the country as a whole -- after the Yom Kippur War in 1973, for example, or the disengagement in 2005 -- but memories are short.

Do you remember that war more than four decades ago, in which 2,600 soldiers were killed due to a serious intelligence failure? Back then, people really did leave the country. They didn't just threaten to, they simply left. "A fallout of weakings," the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin called them. The schism was immense. The darkest scenario had come to pass: Society lost faith in the army. Is that the situation today?

Today, they are trying to create a new reality, like in 1973 after the war, but the opposite -- the upper military echelon has lost faith in the people. Yes, you read that correctly. The Middle East is so quiet that those in uniform have free time for a new pedagogical role -- handing out grades to society. The media, of course, welcomes it, because this conduct fits in with its own agenda.

Let's suppose for a minute that the Left was in power, and senior officers were to take matters of value and morality into their own hands, but in the other direction: to the right. Would the media embrace them in that case, too?

In the reality in which we live, a senior officer (major general) who compares processes taking place here to the Germans in the 1930s is a man of values, but an officer who invites his soldiers to pray before an action in Gaza? That's darker, even reminiscent of Iran. It's a shame that Albert Einstein isn't here to test the theory of moral relativism in our country. Perhaps we should recall Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower's command prior to the invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944, when he called on all Allied soldiers to "beseech the blessing of Almighty God" before the operation?

There won't be any military revolution, and no remedy is needed, either - by Dr. Gabi Avital

...So what do we do about large sections of society going back to their roots? What remedy does Barnea intend to give against people holding fast to the main source of strength in holding on to the country we came to from the Diaspora -- the Bible and its main character, God? I won't be taking much of a risk if I say that there won't be any military revolution, and no remedy is needed, either.

Dr. Gabi Avital..
Israel Hayom..
15 May '16..

Columnist Nahum Barnea's piece in Yedioth Ahronoth on Friday, about his fear of religiously observant IDF soldiers' and commanders' faith taking over, can be summed up by these sentences: "It could be that 10 years from now, the entire General Staff will look like [Col. Ofer] Winter. We need to act before it's too late." This continues Barnea's fear over the process of "heroization" taking place in the IDF.

A large picture hangs on the wall of the offices of the major general Barnea visited, which shows three of our air force jets flying over a Polish death camp. Barnea can't help himself, and launches what he calls an "embarrassing" conversation about why it was even necessary to fly over Auschwitz. To him, it's vital that we understand the message, so he quotes an academic, Professor Yehuda Bauer, who deemed the flyover "childish and unnecessary. Cemeteries are for weeping, not for holding showcase flyovers." We should mention here that the commander of the flight was Maj. Gen. Amir Eshel, today head of the Israeli Air Force, and it was then-IAF commander Maj. Gen. Eliezer Shkedi who distributed the image. Neither of them is observant.

What irks Barnea? And how does this relate to Tzvi Bar'el's battle cry in Haaretz about the necessity of a military revolution, despite that the two calls contradict each other? Let's go back to the days Barnea is talking about, the days of Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014. The deep worry for the soldiers' safety was expressed in many ways. Some of us, obviously, prayed, while others paced like caged lions. And there were officers, like Winter, commander of the Givati Brigade, who chose to encourage and spur on their troops before heading into battle through prayer: "I lift my eyes to heaven and call out, together with you: Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one. 'Lord God of Israel, grant success to the path on which we walk and stand to fight for Your nation Israel against the foe that blasphemes Your name. In the name of IDF soldiers and especially the soldiers and commanders of this brigade ... together, and only together, will we win."

Why do people still back Netanyahu? The question the left refuses to face

...a stellar record? No. But neither is it a bad one. And I’d take it any day over the disastrous grand initiatives of Rabin, Barak and Sharon. This, then, is the question leftists must answer if they hope to woo Likud voters: Why should we believe that the diplomatic initiatives and/or unilateral withdrawals you advocate today won’t make our lives significantly worse, just as those earlier ones did? I’ve yet to hear anyone provide a convincing answer. And that’s why Misgav and his fellows would really rather not know why many Israelis still support Netanyahu. Because dismissing Likud voters as idiots is much easier than having to honestly confront that question.

Evelyn Gordon..
Analysis from Israel..
24 February '15..





Why do people still back Netanyahu? Because in statecraft, as in medicine, the first rule is ‘do no harm’

The outcome of next month’s election is currently anyone’s guess. But if Benjamin Netanyahu ends up becoming prime minister again, it will have a lot to do with the attitude exemplified by Haaretz columnist Uri Misgav.

In an op-ed earlier this month, Misgav wrote that he could understand voting for any other party, but “I find it very difficult to explain what is going through the minds of those who are planning to vote for Likud headed by Netanyahu … Despite serious efforts, I am unable to understand them, or even to imagine their ideological and emotional world … In the name of God: Who are you, Likud voters, and why?”

A week later, another left-wing Haaretz columnist, Kobi Niv, published a blistering retort. Too many “members of the broader Ashkenazi liberal Zionist camp” simply dismiss Likud voters as idiots, and that’s no way to persuade them to switch their allegiance, Niv wrote. Nor are any of the common variations on this theme: that people vote Likud “because they came from countries without a tradition of democracy … because their parents didn’t found the state, because they don’t know right from wrong,” etc.

But the problem goes much deeper than the patronizing attitude Niv correctly skewered. Because after all, Misgav is a journalist, and obtaining information is the essence of a journalist’s job. Thus if he truly wanted to know the answer to his question, one would expect him to make some effort to find it – for instance, by tracking down a few Likud voters and asking them. Yet his column offers no indication that he did so.

And that’s no accident; it’s the heart of the problem: Many Israeli leftists don’t want to know why people vote for Netanyahu, because confronting the reasons would force them to honestly confront the problems created by their own policy prescriptions. People who still believe in territorial withdrawals with religious fervor don’t want to admit that the results of previous pullouts could pose legitimate questions about their wisdom. Yet that’s precisely what most Likud voters would tell them if they asked.

None of the Likud voters I know – myself included – are big Netanyahu fans; we’d happily vote for a better candidate if we saw one. We all think he’s done some things he shouldn’t have done and failed to do some things he should have done.

But he also hasn’t perpetrated any major disasters on the scale that almost all his recent predecessors have. And in statecraft, as in medicine, the first rule is, “Do no harm.”

The Return Home to Beit Shalom. Yes, the Peace House

...Recent events and the failure of the peace process did not do the Left any good. It has become divorced from reality. It is time for a reality check. To the pioneers of Hebron, we welcome you to the Peace House. May He who makes peace in the heavens grant peace for all of us.

Dror Eydar..
Israel Hayom..
14 April '14..

"Our correspondent at the 'Dispute House' tells us that the High Court of Justice has decided on the fate of the building -- a big win for the settlers," said the anchorwoman. Later a local resident was interviewed. "Here is one Palestinian who says that where there are settlers, there's dispute and tension. He will tell you how bad the Jews, er, settlers, are," the reporter said.

The newscast continued on and on. The rhetoric did not change.

To my fellow journalists and broadcasters, just who do you think you are? On what grounds do you unilaterally decide on a change to the nomenclature? Why call it the "Dispute House" if the owners call it the "Peace House"? It would be akin to calling the Azrieli Towers in Tel Aviv "those eye-popping skyscrapers whose owners have dubbed them the Azrieli Towers." How would that sound?

What about calling Peace Now the "left-wing movement that has been dubbed 'Peace Now'?" We all know that movement's peace credentials are just one big hoax. So why call it the "Dispute House"? The media is once again doing the Left's bidding.

So what if the High Court of Justice ruled that the Jews of Israel were the rightful owners of that property? They own it, they can name it, but who cares, right? What matters is the prism through which the Israeli Left views certain areas that lie beyond an imaginary line, a line that allegedly demarcates contested territory that we have somehow usurped. Hebron, where our people first settled, has always been an open wound for the Left.

The World According to Shimon Shiffer and Others

...Only at Yedioth Ahronoth and Haaretz is Israel considered a foreign country in its own homeland -- the cradle of Jewish people. But if only "for the sake of fairness," at least read the data.

Dror Eydar..
Israel Hayom..
05 March '14..

He doesn't understand. How did Obama embrace Netanyahu? Why, we were promised a cold shower and contempt in the interview with Jeffrey Goldberg. I am talking about Shimon Shiffer, the tireless analyst of Yedioth Ahronoth, the paper that once had a country. The only explanation he had for the hug was that Obama was "troubled by the situation in Ukraine" and so "left Netanyahu alone." What a shame. Shiffer is not alone. Zehava Gal-On, head of the Meretz party, released a statement complaining about the applause Netanyahu received at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference. It's not enough they didn't crucify the prime minister, they even applauded him. They've gone mad.

This was not enough for Shiffer. In his column, he strengthened the Palestinian (and left-wing) narrative: Whatever happens, Israel is to blame for the absence of peace. It doesn’t matter that for 100 years we have been ready for a compromise or that over the last 20 years we have agreed to measures that any rational examination would see as a recipe for political and security suicide. And still, Shiffer's favorite moderate, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, fled in horror from agreements, even the most reckless of them, presented by former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Just this week Gal-On heard those same songs of defiance in Ramallah. So what?

Because why isn’t there peace? Why has Abbas refused for 20 years to concede anything for the sake of his people? Here is Shiffer: "At the same time, the Central Bureau of Statistics released data that showed an increase in construction in the territory of the future Palestinian state." And therefore "so long as this is the situation, it is comprehensible why Abu Mazen [Abbas] and his people refuse to join the dancing." And his conclusion: "As long as there is there is no leader in Israel who can threaten the stability of Netanyahu's seat," there is doubt the two-state solution will ever happen. And this is the disgraceful reason of the paper's existence, a paper dedicated to one purpose: to wage war against the global threat named Benjamin Netanyahu.

But that already happened, Shiffer. Your beloved Olmert, who is currently spending time in the courts offered Abbas everything, and nothing changed. The only thing the left wing can do -- if it ascends to power -- is a unilateral withdrawal. Like in Gaza. God forbid.

It is worth noting the storyline Shiffer uses to rationalize the Palestinian defiance and which is hashed out in the media: The jump in construction in Judea and Samaria by 123 percent in 2013, compared to the rate in other areas in country. Had the certified analyst peaked at the charts provided by the CBS, he would have discovered the bluff.

Is the extreme left-wing of Israel's media capable of covering Iran?

Yisrael Medad/Eli Pollak..
Media Comment..
Jpost..
22 August '12..

On Tuesday, during an interview by a sports reporter a politician commented that: “political reporters are a lot like sports reporters. They’ve all got opinions, even if they never played.” That politician was US President Barack Obama, and the interview was broadcast over the Des Moines, Iowa, KXNO sports radio. In Israel, the term we would use would surely be “kibitzing.” But there’s a multi-pronged barb in Obama’s words, which are applicable to our local media and those who run it.

As we understand it, this political contender for office knows well that reporters are not objective. It is only a matter of the degree to which they insert not only wrong information, through sloppy work or otherwise, but a bit of bias, whether through omission or commission. In addition to opinions that sometimes insert themselves into the reporting of news, there is also the lingering concern as to whether reporters are truly knowledgeable about their beats. Are they sufficiently experienced “players” who can take to the field to compete not only with rival journalists but also with the people and events they cover?

This last point is especially relevant to the tom-tom beating that has been going on, at ever-increasing volume, in certain media quarters covering the possibility that Israel’s government may be forced by circumstances to employ military alternatives to curb the nuclear weapons program of Iran.

Iran is the country whose supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, recently announced that Israel will disappear from the “landscape of geography” and that its land will be returned to the Palestinians.

A few days later, on the occasion of Al-Quds Day, he characterized Israel’s administration of the disputed territories and, for good measure, the formation of Israel as the root of evil in the Middle East, which was a “conspiracy [of] colonialists and oppressors.”

This past Friday, in a speech marking Iran’s Quds Day broadcast on state television, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke of “the Zionist regime and the Zionists” as “a cancerous tumor.” And he added that the nations of the region will soon finish off the “usurper Zionists” and that “in the new Middle East there will be no trace of the Americans and Zionists.”

The Israeli media’s response to the Iranian challenge is perhaps surprising. Haaretz, not known as a great fan of either Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu or Defense Minister Ehud Barak, outdid itself over the past few weeks in presenting a fair and rather comprehensive picture of the dilemma created by Iran for Israel’s political leadership. Its headlines were typically factual. Some examples are in order.

Can we hope for sobriety in the White House

Ira Sharkansky
Shark Blog
18 March '10

It is not possible to find a more left-wing, large circulation media outlet in Israel than Ha'aretz. It is as close as anything Israeli comes to the New York Times: not in the quality or extent of its coverage, but in having as its readers the intellectual, political, and economic elites of the country, and being severe in its criticism of what they are doing. Amira Hass has lived in Gaza and Ramallah, and can be counted upon to fill a page or more with one or another kind of Palestinian misery. Gideon Levy and Ze'ev Sternhill do not pass up an opportunity to scald their country for a lack of humanity and wisdom. The banner headline in the midst of the Biden scandal--that Israel is planning for the construction of 50,000 homes throughout East Jerusalem--reflects the paper's passion. The article made no mention of construction for Arabs, or how many of the claimed 50,000 apartments are at an advanced stage of planning or suitable for market projections extending over several years.

There is an occasional op-ed piece by Moshe Arens to gain the paper a fig leaf of balance, but the thrust is far to the left of him.

Given the critical nature of Ha'aretz, today's cartoon is instructive. It shows the president and secretary of state watching television coverage of Palestinian rampage, with the president saying, "It doesn't look like they are approaching face to face discussions."

A late report is that Obama is reiterating the close rapport between the United States and Israel, and describing the Biden incident as a quarrel between friends. That is a lot better than what we heard earlier, including reports that General Petraeus has said that Israel's stubborn resistance to the United States peace initiative threatens his country's national interests, and his soldiers' lives throughout the Muslim world. That was too close to the anti-Israel line used by Arab autocrats to distract their own masses from serious problems, and suggests the classic practice of scapegoating the Jews.

Israel has friends in the United States, but it would be another cheap shot to ascribe the moderation of White House rhetoric to Jewish political clout. Facts as well as pressure matter.

If any party has shown itself unready to negotiate, it is the Palestinians. The rejection of what Ehud Barak and Bill Clinton offered in 2000, and what Ehud Olmert offered in 2008 is indication enough that Ramat Shlomo or other construction in Jerusalem is not the core of the problem, and maybe not even a significant element.

The disproportion between public pressure on Israel and insistence on engagement with Iran and Syria is so bizarre as to be potent politically. Some Members of Congress might be wondering if an administration so unbalanced in its foreign policy could be counted upon for the contents of a health bill too large and complex to be understood before having to vote on it.

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