The media sought out cheap Arabist manipulators who tried to bring depth to their analyses and assert that the fires were linked to terror.

Salman Masalha ||

The Israeli Media Is Hostile

Everyone knows that the evil man at the top of the government pyramid avoids the media like fire. That being the case, why was this night different from all other nights?

This was the night that went up in smoke and flames. And – what a surprise – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came out of his warm Facebook hiding place and surged in a secured convoy to the line of fire: in front of the media he despises. Not only was he dancing on the flames, he barked out orders and was even willing to answer questions.

Israeli journalists should learn some self-respect from their colleagues at The New York Times, who didn’t run after Donald Trump; it was the president-elect who came to the paper’s offices for a conversation totally on the record. Israeli journalists should stop cooperating with a man who scorns them and has been boycotting them for years.

Bold media outlets would leave him to Facebook’s sewers, where he shows up occasionally to post a video in that virtual space. That’s his favorite corner, the perfect place for a man who acts as if he’s merely giving his say in an online article’s comment thread.

After all, the prime minister doesn’t plan to call a press conference and give straight answers to questions. The convoy to the emergency command post in Haifa was meant to serve one purpose, his favorite purpose: to convene the media and release the racist (Jewish) genies collected in the bottles that have piled up in his residence in recent years.

To put it another way, that’s the winning card he keeps in his pocket. He has no other cards. That’s the card that serves him whenever he encounters a problem.

He knows the hearts of his voters and he knows how to supply them with the intimidation drug that unleashes the tribal demons. The man who considers himself an expert on terror lets loose all the obvious slogans on the airwaves: “We’re facing terror arsons,” “Every arson or act of incitement is terror,” and other abject nonsense that pollutes his political lexicon.

In the flurry of fire and live broadcasts from the field, the media seized the opportunity and put its stage at the disposal of the chief manipulator and his minister-buddies. From time to time it made reports from the talking points sent to the media on this or that arrest.

In addition to this establishment propaganda, the media sought out cheap Arabist manipulators who tried to bring depth to their analyses and assert that the fires were linked to terror. But what did these Arabists serve up? There were almost no fires in the West Bank or Jordan, said the Arabist on Channel 2. To him, that was proof that this was a new kind of intifada, a “firefada.”

But you only have to look at the lay of the land to understand why there were few fires in the West Bank or southern Lebanon. The mountains and hills on the other side of the border are totally bald, except for small patches of natural vegetation. Neither Palestine nor Lebanon have an institution like the Jewish National Fund, which brought European trees here and planted them in a Middle Eastern climate foreign to them.

What else did the worthless Arabists bring us? Two or three videos of two or three degenerate Arabs from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and God knows where else expressing schadenfreude over the fires. Such videos are presented to the Israeli viewer with a bad translation into Hebrew as if these people were part of the local Arab scene, and the average degenerate Jew avidly consumes them and draws the necessary conclusions.

What if anything is the connection between these degenerates from the Arab world and Israel’s Arab citizens? We don’t talk about that. Now go prove to the degenerate Israeli counterpart that you don’t have a sister.

No one is talking about this media deception. Given this, there’s no choice to but to come to the obvious conclusion from the Hebrew-language reporting on the fires: The media is indeed hostile.

It isn’t hostile to the prime minister or the right-wing government; on the contrary, it’s a tool in their hands. This media is hostile to Israel’s Arab citizens. Such media outlets should be condemned.

Haaretz, November 28, 2016

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