\u201cTel Aviv offered a rare chance to topple Netanyahu,\u201d wrote journalist Omer Benjakob on Twitter. A golden statue of the Prime Minister had been erected at Rabin Square by a then-unknown artist, and crowds arrived to take selfies, give the statue the finger and eventually to topple it.
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But to the consternation of those celebrating his fall, \u201cKing Bibi,\u201d as Time anointed him in 2012, is still standing in Jerusalem. (Golden Netanyahu statue causes stir in Tel Aviv (Reuters))
\u201cThe golden statue merely bolsters Netanyahu among his supporters who see the \u2018Tel Aviv bubble\u2019 going wild,\u201d wrote commentator Ravit Hecht.
The toppling and debate about it fed into the spotlight that is on Netanyahu, because of his personal conflict with various Israeli media personalities and outlets. His Facebook page regularly takes swipes at individual journalists.
Channeling Donald Trump\u2019s frequent claims that enemies in the media have low ratings, Netanyahu slammed Channel 10 in a Facebook post on December 4, accusing it of being full of \u201cradical leftists,\u201d and of frequently criticizing his family. \u201cNo wonder the ratings are so low.\u201d
\u201cThe Israeli media allows itself to systematically discredit the sons of Prime Minister Netanyahu,\u201d was another accusation published on his Facebook page on a different occasion, \u201cever since they were young,\u201d arguing that families of other prime ministers had been left alone.
The conflict with the Israeli media is conducted in Hebrew by the prime minister. In contrast, when he wants to remind the foreign public of his role in working with Christians and African states, highlight Israeli innovation or post about his experiences as a young fighter in the General Staff Reconnaissance Unit, he blends Hebrew and English. Abroad, particularly in the United States, he is seen as a popular statesman, but at home the prime minister appears under siege.
It is also a known fact that Netanyahu prefers avoiding interviews with the Israeli media, although he sits down with their foreign colleagues, as he did just recently on 60 Minutes.
\u201cTHERE WAS always tension,\u201d says Yoaz Hendel, who was director of communications and public diplomacy for Netanyahu in 2011-2012.
\u201cThere is a well-known clich\u00e9 that if even paranoids have enemies, he is paranoid and he has many enemies. Columnists and reporters critique him for things he has done and hasn\u2019t done, for that reason one should first of all understand there is a real reason for the sensitive treatment that Netanyahu gives to the media.\u201d
Netanyahu\u2019s team is very cognizant of his defensiveness, and his staff have experimented with new social media strategies in the last year. Videos, disseminated over the summer and fall, widely credited to his spokesman David Keyes, received tens of millions of views. Over the summer the prime minister also attempted outreach through meetings with journalists in Israel.
\u201cWhat happened in the last two years since the [2015 election] campaign, the shift, or change, is that he did it more publicly and bluntly, and mentions media outlets and people by name,\u201d says Raviv Drucker of Channel 10. He says there is a major difference between the past tensions with Israeli media, and the use of social media that began before the election and culminated in a Facebook post on Election Day about \u201cArabs flowing to the ballot boxes\u201d and being bused by the \u201cLeft\u2019s NGO.\u201d
\u201cThe fact is he won the election after he made this change\u2026 in his mind he figures this is the way to do it and why not continue, and now he is doing it more aggressively than ever,\u201d says Drucker, who has been attacked on the prime minister\u2019s Facebook page seven times in two months. The prime minister, says Drucker, has become \u201cpreoccupied\u201d and obsessive.
SHUKI TAUSIG, editor of the Seventh Eye \u2013 a Hebrew news outlet that focuses on all aspects of the (mainly Hebrew) media in Israel \u2013 says that \u201cNetanyahu didn\u2019t invent this hostile and abusive approach of political and personal attacks on media.\u201d
But Tausig argues that since the last election, Netanyahu has sharpened his attacks and gone beyond the historical norm.
\u201cI would say that it is like a copy of Trump, the quality and quantity of his reactions to specific journalists in the last few months ago is becoming unique.\u201d
What makes Netanyahu\u2019s approach historic, in Tausig\u2019s view, is that he is fighting an unconventional war against a series of opponents, and he risks wielding his torch in such a way as to burn down the whole institution of journalism. To win individual battles everything can be sacrificed.
Tausig argues this approach is similar to how Netanyahu approached the gas-deal controversy and other government regulators, willing to erode the institution to get his way.
BUT IT seems that Netanyahu\u2019s approach is working partly because the public in Israel is suspicious of the motives of some journalists.
\u201cThe media overplays events in many areas, especially in its overly zealous pursuit of its political rivals,\u201d wrote Israel Harel at Haaretz on December 9. \u201cA growing number of Israelis see it as a group that, rather than seeking justice, is seeking the head of Prime Minister Netanyahu.
The influence of the press is on the decline.\u201d
A survey by the Edelman Trust Barometer and Debby Communications found that only 35% of Israelis trust the media (compared with a global average of 49%). A 2014 Israel Democracy Index survey found that only 28% of Jews and 37% of Arabs in Israel trust the media.
It was the least trusted institution (by contrast, 88% of Jews trust the army and 60% of Israelis trust the Supreme Court).
Attacking the media historically was political suicide. Mark Twain once quipped, \u201cNever pick a fight with a man who buys ink by the barrel,\u201d a witticism successful politicians such as Bill Clinton often referenced. In relations between the media and public, British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli said the best approach of a politician was \u201cnever complain, never explain.\u201d Richard Nixon\u2019s chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, gave similar advice to Nixon\u2019s team in the wake of the Kent State massacre in 1970.
But in the age of social media, these old maxims are being pushed aside. The world of social media and online media is sometimes called the \u201cfifth estate\u201d to contrast it with more traditional \u201cfourth estate\u201d mainstream media.
Using social media, where politicians may have more followers and \u201clikes\u201d than old media have, allows them to reach the public directly.
\u201cI don\u2019t see a threat to freedom of speech or freedom of journalism,\u201d says Hendel, \u201cbut I see the process that Netanyahu has done\u2026 his reactions and treatment and behavior to those who criticize him in the last two months changed everything.\u201d He compares it to behaving like a \u201ctalkbackist\u201d \u2013 referring to online reactions people write at the bottom of news articles and other online publications \u2013 which has reduced the prestige of the office of the prime minister.
\u201cWe all lose,\u201d says Eli Pollak, a professor and former chairman of Israel Media Watch. \u201cNo one is relating [to Netanyahu] in a professional way and we all lose \u2013 those who want to replace him lose and those who want him in power lose.\u201d
Dr. Tehilla Schwartz Altshuler, a research fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute who heads the Media Reform project, and a lecturer in public policy at the Hebrew University, agrees that the public is the real victim in this battle.
\u201cWhat bothers me is the fact that this delicate point of equilibrium between checks and balances of state and government and the fourth estate has been taken off. This is really something that hurts the Israeli public.\u201d
Michael Freund served as deputy director of Communications and Policy Planning in the Prime Minister\u2019s Office, and was an adviser to Netanyahu from 1996 to 1999 during his first term. He dealt closely with the local and foreign press. He too feels that the \u201cmedia landscape has changed completely in the last two decades, as politicians now have ways of reaching the public that were simply inconceivable in the 1990s.\u201d
He explains that Netanyahu\u2019s media strategy has also shifted accordingly: \u201cBack then he did a lot more interviews than he does today, as that was the primary delivery mechanism available at the time. The strategy of the past few years has seemed to be more measured in that sense\u2026 he has employed social media and other means to get his message out… And it\u2019s not just him \u2013 many politicians in Western countries have embraced this model.\u201d
In a sense, Netanyahu is a forerunner of Trump, not the other way around.
\u201cPersonally, I think that many of the media elites simply do not give him a fair or balanced opportunity in terms of how they cover him and his family,\u201d says Freund, echoing a sentiment among many who have worked with Netanyahu over the years. \u201cAnd that in part is rooted in ideology. Most of the media in Israel as you know have long been dominated by people with left-of- center views, and that comes across quite clearly in the manner in which they cover things.\u201d
Freund argues that in Israel it was \u201ccommon practice at the Hebrew dailies for someone to be both a news reporter as well as someone who writes opinion pieces for the same paper. This inevitably creates a situation where it is very easy for someone to slide into opinion when he should be reporting the news, which affects not just the journalistic quality of the product but the balance and objectivity that is supposed to be brought to the subjects being covered.\u201d
FOR ALL the criticism of the nature of Israeli media, which itself is a source of the conflict, the reality is that since the foundation of Zionism, many leading Zionists had a journalistic background.
Theodor Herzl, David Ben-Gurion, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi and A. D. Gordon were all contributors to newspapers. Zeev Jabotinsky was a journalist and editor at Do\u2019ar Hayom , while Davar, once the leading Hebrew newspaper in the country, was founded by the Histadrut.
Gershon Agron, founder and editor of The Palestine Post , forerunner of The Jerusalem Post , eventually became mayor of Jerusalem.
Media were closely affiliated with political parties in the early days of the state. But the papers that went on to survive to the modern era \u2013 Yediot Aharonot , Haaretz and Maariv \u2013 were not.
Both Yediot and Haaretz are connected to historic newspaper families, Mozes and Schocken. By the 1990s, Yediot \u2019s circulation had reached 350,000 on weekdays, controlling more than 65% of the market according to the Government Press Office in 1994.
While old party newspapers such as Davar (associated with Mapai and the Histadrut) were closing down in the 1990s, the television market was opening up, with the new Channel 2 (1993) and Channel 10 (2002).
Israeli radio was a closely controlled government monopoly.
Indeed, many assert that Netanyahu\u2019s conflicts with institutions such as the Israel Broadcasting Authority stem from this long history in which institutionalized journalism is seen as inimically hostile to the political Right.
Netanyahu\u2019s colleagues remember him as always being deeply involved in crafting his media image. \u201cI know from my experience in the 1990s that there are many politicians who have very little to do with the speeches they make beyond the fact the words leave their mouths, but that was absolutely not the case with Netanyahu,\u201d says Freund.
\u201cHe was actively involved in crafting the thoughts and words that he said\u2026 in many cases Netanyahu would make a lot of edits, he would change things, and he was involved from the very beginning in terms of deciding what to include, the points and turns of phrase, even structural issues, which is something that a lot of people don\u2019t do.\u201d
FOR FREUND, a source of the hostile feelings goes back to the Oslo peace process.
\u201cMuch of the media served as cheerleaders for the Oslo process,\u201d he says. \u201cWe know there were journalists who knew about the secret talks with [Yasser] Arafat and kept quiet. Even though it was a major scoop, they sat on it, as they wanted to see a deal reached with the PLO,\u201d asserts Freund. \u201cSo the fact that Mr. Netanyahu led the public charge against the disaster of Oslo placed him in a position where many in the media viewed him as a threat to their dream or delusion that peace was at hand, and I don\u2019t think they ever forgave him for that.\u201d
Daniel Seaman, who worked at the Government Press Office in the 1990s and was the deputy director-general of the Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs Ministry in 2013, says Netanyahu\u2019s relationship with Israeli media was always problematic.
\u201cI knew him from the 1980s when he was ambassador [to the UN]; he was an expert in the media,\u201d says Seaman, adding that Netanyahu carefully worked on his mannerisms and sought training to craft his image and improve his natural ability to give speeches.
After being elected Likud leader in 1993, Netanyahu was the main voice against Oslo. After Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated, Netanyahu was blamed for standing by as an incitement campaign led to the murder of the prime minister, a sentiment that still prevails today among many circles on the Left.
In November 2015, Nehemia Shtrasler wrote that Netanyahu was \u201cchief among them\u201d who \u201cstood on a balcony above Jerusalem\u2019s Zion Square and inflamed the crowd. They [politicians] saw the posters of Rabin in an SS uniform, but did not protest… Nor have we forgotten the march at the Ra\u2019anana junction led by Netanyahu, who did not stop the carrying of a black-draped coffin bearing Rabin\u2019s name.
\u201cThen came the 1996 election,\u201d continued Shtrasler in his article, \u201cwhen Netanyahu beat Shimon Peres by a hairbreadth (30,000 votes). That\u2019s why it\u2019s clear that if Rabin, who was far more popular than Peres, had faced Netanyahu, he would have won easily and continued the Oslo process. We would now be in an entire different reality, of peace alongside a Palestinian state.\u201d
Many in the press mourned not only the prime minister, but what they saw as the harm done to the peace process.
Several years later, when Netanyahu ultimately lost to prime minister Ehud Barak, he blamed the press in a famous rally, claiming \u201cthey are afraid.\u201d
At the Government Press Office\u2019s annual New Year event with the foreign press on December 20, Netanyahu was asked about his use of Facebook to critique the media, and whether it was an effective strategy.
\u201cIt\u2019s fun, I enjoy it,\u201d Netanyahu responded, adding that he supported a free press, and came from a democratic tradition of support for a critical press.
\u201cA free press should critique and monitor the government\u2026 criticize anyone who comes into the government and whatever they want to say, it\u2019s up to them\u2026 it\u2019s their prerogative.\u201d However he added a proviso: \u201cThat means that the media market should be open\u2026 and not monopolies, I\u2019ve been busting monopolies, that\u2019s why it\u2019s wrong, it outgrew.\u201d Then, without elaboration he moved on, leaving the implication that he feels media monopolies have outgrown their power and that his critique is merely reining them in.
WHILE DRUCKER, who has been in journalism since 1993, acknowledges that Netanyahu has long been obsessed with coverage, he doesn\u2019t think it colors how journalists today see the prime minister.
\u201cI don\u2019t think it is about the 1990s. We suffer from a short memory regarding everyone. Shortly after [Ariel] Sharon came to power in 2001, no one mentioned the Lebanon War \u2013 which was such a trauma \u2013 anymore. Netanyahu may think it [the anti-Rabin incitement accusation] harms him, and some remind him of it around November 4 [the anniversary of Rabin\u2019s assassination], but most of the time it is really not part of the debate.\u201d
For those around Netanyahu, the critical crowd is centered in the Tel Aviv \u201cbubble.\u201d But there is also a paranoia that has seeped in since the 1990s that is comparable to that felt by Nixon toward a hostile press. \u201cHe sees himself as Churchill, but there is a lot of Nixon in him,\u201d said one media professional who has worked with the prime minister.
Altshuler also sees the origin of today\u2019s conflict beginning 20 years ago. \u201cMay 22, 1996, saw the opening of a circle whose outcome we see today. By the end of that dramatic night, Netanyahu understood he won the election; he also won the negative stigma, the media delegitimization…\u201d
She argues that Yediot played an outsized role as a near monopoly in the 1990s, and that Netanyahu came to understand the media\u2019s power to influence the public discourse.
\u201cIt took 11 years, but the idea of I srael HaYom was born, and since then Yediot has been collapsing. The elections of 2015 took place because of the Israel HaYom legislation, and we got very directly the destruction of influence of media ownership on framing of news and agendas…\u201d
In 2014, a \u201claw for the advancement and protection of written journalism in Israel,\u201d known as the \u201cIsrael HaYom Law\u201d was proposed to prevent distribution of a large free newspaper, and it began to work its way through the Knesset with broad political support from Netanyahu\u2019s rivals, including on the Right. Elections were called, and the law died in the Knesset.
Launched in 2007 as a free daily newspaper with support from Sheldon Adelson, Israel HaYom \u2013 widely dubbed \u201cBibiton\u201d (a combination of Bibi and the Hebrew word for newspaper \u2013 iton) \u2013 became the most widely read newspaper in Israel in 2010, according to the Target Global Index (TGI). Although its weekend edition was still surpassed by Yediot , its power in the marketplace was unique.
In a study conducted by +972, Noam Sheizaf in 2010 saw the \u201csharp anti-Netanyahu tone of Yediot \u201d as connected to the rise of Israel HaYom .
\u201c Yediot is constantly publishing articles attacking the prime minister, his staff and even his wife. Star pundit Nahum Barnea is especially hostile to Netanyahu. In fact, I think there is only one columnist in Yediot \u2013 Hanoch Daum \u2013 who is an open Netanyahu supporter and a proxy to the Netanyahu family.\u201d
In a 2014 meeting with the foreign press, the prime minister mocked journalists for taking selfies and photos. \u201cI\u2019m the only one here without all these electronic devices, I\u2019m a free man and you all are slaves,\u201d he told them.
But Netanyahu soon grasped the power of new media. \u201cHe has now aligned himself with people in the circle such as Ran Baratz and David Keyes,\u201d Seaman notes, referring to top media advisers. \u201cThe way he handles the press now is what got Trump elected, not backing off, not being apologetic, taking them on… It can only benefit him,\u201d he adds. \u201cMedia is on the defensive.\u201d
Seaman traces a connection between the way the public lost faith in politicians in the 1970s with scandals, and how today the public has lost faith in major media not only in Israel and the US, but throughout the world.
WHILE SOME sympathetic voices see Netanyahu as trying to open up the media landscape, critical voices accuse him of exactly the opposite \u2013 trying to shut down free media.
Igal Sarna, a columnist at Yediot, argues that in the hands of Netanyahu the state has changed dramatically.
He doesn\u2019t want \u201cany kind of opposition and criticism; any kind of different idea is seen as being a kind of treachery.\u201d
For Sarna and other critics, the behavior of Netanyahu is akin to that of Turkey\u2019s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
He sees no checks and balances on the current government\u2019s right-wing leaning.
\u201cIt has gotten worse, there is a kind of escalation\u2026 he is more and more paranoid, and after a very long period of being prime minister he feels he can do whatever he wants. He doesn\u2019t behave like a democratic prime minister, he looks up to Vladimir Putin and Erdogan, his models.\u201d
Sarna argues that Netanyahu used the lack of rules regarding Facebook and YouTube during the last election to spread his message on Election Day, claiming that Arabs were voting in large numbers at the polls.
\u201cHe is not a great expert in Internet and cyber, he uses people who do it for him,\u201d said Sarna. \u201cHe is very active in Facebook. We are now in the middle of a really very crucial conflict between Netanyahu and free speech and free journalism. Israel isn\u2019t going to stay the only democracy in the Middle East [if this continues].\u201d
The consequences of this approach will be long-term. Hendel says that several years ago Netanyahu would not have approved the kinds of reactions that his advisers are putting out in social media.
\u201cToday someone shows him these reactions, and he accepts it as part of his strategy to attack journalists themselves, to delegitimize the delegitimizers.\u201d
Hendel hopes that those on the Right will eventually realize the strategy is potentially harmful.
Drucker sees the delegitimization of media as continuing after Netanyahu leaves power. It will harm the economic prospects of the media that do exist, he believes.
Altshuler, on the other hand, says that both Netanyahu and his critics need to internalize the need for pluralism.
\u201cNetanyahu needs to realize that in the history of the free world, no leader succeeded in controlling the media, this comes with counter-affects and he needs self-restraint.\u201d
She mentions the case of Ilana Dayan, who aired a program critiquing the prime minister and his family.
Netanyahu sent a response: \u201cIt would be interesting to see whether Ilana Dayan, who portrays herself as a knight of freedom of expression, will publish our response in full, uncensored.\u201d
Dayan read the entire response on air: \u201cThe time has come to unmask Ilana Dayan, who has proven once again that she has not even a drop of professional integrity. Ilana Dayan is one of the leaders of a concerted frenzy against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, aimed at toppling the right-wing government and leading to the establishment of a left-wing government.\u201d
Altshuler compares this behavior to Trump\u2019s victory in the US, which has involved erosion in trust of major media and the spread of fake news.
\u201cYou need to understand that enhancing lack of public trust in crucial social institutions, such as the Supreme Court or media, removes the cement that glues blocks of democracy from crumbling. So this is what I\u2019m concerned about,\u201d said Altshuler.
\u201cIt isn\u2019t clear how the Israeli media and Netanyahu can be extricated from this cycle,\u201d says Yisrael Medad, a commentator on media in Israel since 1995 and columnist at the Post .
\u201cThe media have failed,\u201d adds Eli Pollak, another commentator on media for the Post , \u201cnot so much that Netanyahu is successful. They have gone so far in their constant criticism that the public is sick and tired, they realize it is nonsense, they accept him more than they accept the media.\u201d
Asked to comment on the article\u2019s subject and concerns, a source close to the prime minister, who requested not to be identified, responded: \u201cIsraeli media, which have been woefully unbalanced toward the prime minister, have failed to persuade the public to take on the left-wing policies they support. Unable to beat him on policy, they attack the prime minister personally to try to bring him down in the hope of installing a left-wing government. The prime minister understands the importance of a free press in democracy. It\u2019s unfortunate that so much of the media have been so blatantly partisan and deceitful about him.\u201d
WHEN JOURNALISTS ran to cover the toppling of the golden statue in Tel Aviv, Haaretz ran a cartoon by Amos Biderman showing the Labor Party hosting a news conference about Netanyahu\u2019s \u201chidden taxes\u201d and bulldozers advancing on Amona, an outpost in the West Bank, whose looming evacuation has been in the center of public attention lately, as it may lead to a change in state policy regarding illegal outposts. The implication of this cartoon was that the media were happy to see a false idol crushed, but they were ignoring real stories in their quest to have catharsis over harm done to Netanyahu.
As Itay Zalait \u2013 the artist who erected the statue in Rabin Square \u2013 plainly stated just after the event: \u201cTime will tell if it will be a provocation or a prophecy.\u201d
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