Sara Netanyahu & And the End of the "Liberal" Israeli Press

The third wife of far-right Israeli prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu has come under strong criticism, some may say attack, in the Israeli press.

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In a front page, Israel's leading circulation reported that Sara Netanyahu is known for being a horror in the treatment of maids and servants (whom are public employees when she is in the prime minister's residence) and for interfering with great influence in the nation's politics - an undue role given that she in not an elected official.

A housekeeper seeking a suit alleged: “She demanded that I address her as Mrs Sara Netanyahu. If I called her Sara she would scream at me…Whenever I saw her I had to tell her how clever and pretty she was…She phoned me at home at two in the morning to complain about a cushion cover…She insisted I bring four sets of work-clothes: for doing the laundry, for cleaning the loos, for cleaning other rooms and for working in the kitchen.”

The housekeeper's claim, which may initially be dismissed as at least exaggerated and motivated by monetary considerations, have beenbacked up by secretary who worked for mrs. Netanyahu when her husband was first prime minister in the late '90s: “Every word rings true. She would shout at me six times a day, at the press secretary three times, and at Bibi once…I’m still traumatised.”

Beyond the house tyranny, many Israeli officials close to the premier state that positions in government, including prominent ones, often serve at the behest of mrs. Netanyahu whose influence is such that she can ruin a career.

Naturally, mr. Netanyahu has come to the defense of his wife. He has implored the press to attack him instead, argues that his wife is kind and that the only influence she has is benign: “Be more attentive to other people. Be attentive to the elderly, to children, to Holocaust survivors. Be a better father, a better son, a better friend.”

Netanyahu has also hinted that the recent press criticism (or attack) on his wife is motivated by a new reality in the Israeli media: the traditional 'left-wing' press (the term is relative to the overall right-wing nature of Israel) is losing ground and has been losing ground to a new assertive far-right media often founded by Jews living abroad:

In its heyday a decade ago, Yediot [the paper criticizing Sara Netanyahu] sold more than all Israel’s other newspapers together. It is still a formidable power but has lately been challenged by a feisty new free-sheet, Yisrael Hayom, published by a Jewish-American billionaire, Sheldon Adelson. He and his paper ardently back Mr Netanyahu. Yisrael Hayom’s new weekend edition is threatening Yediot’s advertising and circulation.

So conspiracy theorists, privately egged on by both Netanyahus, say that Yediot is targeting Sara as a warning shot to her husband that he should somehow rein in Yisrael Hayom. “I have no doubt”, the prime minister hinted darkly, “that the truth behind this calumny will soon come out.”

Adelson is known for his funding of far-right Zionist causes. His opposition to the two-state solution is such that he ceased support for AIPAC, the main pro-Israel lobby and an organization known for being far-right, when it began to pay lip service to a two-state a few years back.

But this trend in the Israeli press has a long contemporary history and reflects the changing dynamics of Israel:

Upon first coming to power in 1977, Israel's right-wing parties set out to tame what they called the "Leftist Mafia," the liberal, dovish and mainly Ashkenazi (European) journalists controlling the country's main news organizations.

The Likud campaign against the press took on uglier dimensions during the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon and, again, after the intifada broke out. The architect of the Lebanese campaign, then-Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, described Israeli journalists who opposed his military adventure and who pointed out his responsibility for the Sabra-Shatila massacre of Palestinian refugees as a "poison" and accused them of "stabbing Israel in the back." He was particularly irritated by the high visibility accorded anti-Sharon demonstrators on Israeli television's evening news programs.

The Israeli press, especially journalists who covered the West Bank, were accused of sympathizing with the Palestinian uprising and weakening public support at home and abroad for Israel's policies in the occupied territories. A group called "The People Against Hostile Coverage" organized demonstrations and distributed bumper stickers criticizing reporters covering the West Bank, who also received angry letters and obscene phone calls and occasionally were physically attacked.

Killing the Messenger

Because the Likud could not get rid of most of the publishers of the major newspapers, who tended to be ideologically in tune with Labor, it directed much of its fire against the state-run Israel Broadcasting Authority (IBA), which enjoys a radio and a television monopoly. Until recently, the only competing broadcasting outlet was a radio station operated by the Israeli military.

Under Labor governments, the IBA quite frequently came under political pressure, but it had maintained a certain professional independence. The Likud government, on the other hand, did not hide its plan to turn Israeli television and radio into its principal political outlet.

In 1980, Begin appointed Uri Porat, his press adviser and a Likud activist, as director of the IBA. Porat restricted the coverage by television reporters of developments in the West Bank and Gaza, and did not allow them to interview Palestinian mayors and activists "identified with the PLO." Many radio and television journalists were fired. Others left of their own accord, unable to cope with the political pressures.

It did not take long for Israeli television to turn into a Soviet-style media organization. Under Porat and later under the leadership of IBA director Arie Mekel, broadcast reporters were forced to call the occupied territories by their Biblical names, "Judea and Samaria," and the intifada was referred to as "disturbances." The brutality used to suppress the uprising was rarely seen on television, and journalists were prohibited from interviewing such topranking Palestinian leaders as Faisal Husseini. IBA's Likud-controlled board of directors even adopted a resolution calling for "steps to be taken" against television journalists "who are serving the enemy's propaganda."

Many television journalists resigned to protest the restrictions, while those who remained "have turned into the puppets of the government, which destroyed their professional integrity and personal dignity," according to Ha'aretz columnist Uzi Benziman. What the Israeli public now watches on television "is the product of government pressure and terror," he wrote.

Likud directed much of its fire against the state-run Israel Broadcasting Authority.

One of the journalists who suffered the most was Rafiq Halabi, an Israeli Druze television reporter, who became a symbol for Likud activists of the "pro-Arab" orientation of Israeli television. Halabi was harassed by the Likud-appointed heads of the IBA, who tried to fire him from his job.

The end result was that during the Likud era, as Israeli reporter David Erlich put it, the Israeli television viewer "was deprived of a complete picture of the intifada." This is why so many Israelis have been stunned, during visits abroad, to see for the first time on television the bloody confrontations between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian demonstrators.

Targeting the Print Media

As the Likud expanded its control over the broadcast media, it began through its business surrogates to make inroads on the privately-owned print media. Beginning in the 1990s, declining readership and rising labor costs have placed major economic pressures on Israeli newspapers and magazines. Families and business groups that owned some of the mostly liberal print media were forced either to close down or to sell them to the highest bidders.

Davar and Al Hamishmar, two dailies owned by the Labor movement, have survived mainly thanks to the infusion of money from Labor-controlled business and industrial establishments. Lacking similar sources of subsidies, an anti-Likud weekly, Koteret Rashit, folded in 1989 after seven years of publication. Its editor, Nachum Barnea, said that its liberal Ashkenazi readership could not provide a viable economic base for the paper.

Worse, from the point of view of the peace forces in Israel, was the fate of the weekly Ha'olam Ha'zeh. It had been published and edited since 1951 by bearded Uri Avneri, Israeli journalism's enfant terrible. He turned the magazine into a muckracking publication which exposed corruption in high places, and challenged some of the most sacred institutions in Israeli political life.

Avneri, author of Israel Without Zionism, called for negotiations with the PLO and the establishment of a Palestinian state and shocked the Likud government when he met and interviewed PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat in Beirut during the Israeli invasion. By the end of the 1980s, however, declining advertising and readership forced Avneri to look for new investors. Finally he sold the ultra-liberal magazine to none other than Arie Genger, an Israeli businessman from New York and one of Sharon's political advisors. Genger turned Ha'olam Ha'zeh into a Likud organ and Sharon mouthpiece.

For years, Ma'ariv was Israel's largest afternoon newspaper. In 1989, after losing circulation and advertising to its rival, Yediot Ahronot, the paper was put on the market. The highest bidder was the late British press tycoon Robert Maxwell, who was intent on enhancing his political and social status in Israel.

Maxwell, a Czech refugee from Hitler who had joined the British forces in World War II, was an assimilated Jew who converted to Christianity, joining the Anglican Church. Late in life, however, Maxwell suddenly became a born-again Zionist, establishing close political ties with Israel's political leaders and, according to investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, providing occasional services for the Mossad, Israel's CIA.

Immediately after purchasing Ma'ariv, Maxwell told a shocked editorial board that the newspaper would cease attacking the Likud government and, like the IBA, would reduce its coverage of the intifada. As a result, some of the staff, including editor Ido Dissentshik, left Ma'ariv.

But the Likud's major media victory was the sale by a Labor-owned consortium of Israel's only English-language daily, the money-losing Jerusalem Post, to Hollinger, a Canadian media conglomerate. Hollinger president David Radler appointed a pro-Likud Sharon ally, Yehudah Levi, manager of the prestigious newspaper.

Levi, in turn, fired most of its liberal writers and editors and hired Likud propagandists, who have turned the paper into an Israeli equivalent of the Baghdad Observer. The development was welcomed especially by American-born West Bank settlers who had been appalled by the Post's critical coverage of annexationist Likud policies. However, the Post's credible source of information on Israeli developments, began dropping their subscriptions.

Israel has always been a racist and militarist society. But it is a question of to what extent. The Israeli left is recent years has moved to the idea of accepting a Palestinian state - although one whose sovereignty is underneath Israel, but an 'idea' of a state no less. The right-wing is still opposed. So the changing discourse in the media should not be overstated given Israeli wars, crimes and racism under both left and right governments, but seen in context of Israel becoming more dogmatic and violent. Thus less appealing to the world.

Let your enemies shot themselves in the photo.