The Great Trumpets Project: This is how Bennett won the heart of the left-wing press

The former prime minister ran over everything he believed in, preached to him and in whose name he was elected since entering politics.

When he fell in the polls, the media said he enjoyed every moment.

When he failed to put up a majority, he was reported to be in high spirits.

When members of the right left, they explained that they were problematic

Kalman Liebskind

30/06/2022

Thursday, 30 June 2022, 23:14 Updated: Saturday, 02 July 2022, 21:48

• Share on Facebook

• Share on WhatsApp

• Share on Twitter

• Share on Email

• Share on general

• Comments

  Comments

In the video: Bennett announces that he will not run in the upcoming elections and Ayelet Shaked will lead her right (Photo: Contact and Yifat Rosenberg)

Naftali Bennett is stepping down from the stage after a short term, and in recent weeks he has been working hard to instill in us the understanding that this has been the most wonderful year in our history.

The media, it must be said, are cooperating with great joy, with this marketing project he has taken on, and in general, the conduct of the "mainstream" media in recent days is no different from what it has adapted since the incoming prime minister took office.

Most of the leading political commentators continued, even after the formation of a first government without Benjamin Netanyahu for many years, to beat the previous prime minister, as if no election had been held here, as if no government had been replaced here, as if the executive arm was still under his control.

Last weekend's newspapers were just one bad example of what has been going on here in the press over the past year.

My colleague Ben Caspit wrote, "Thank you, Naftali Bennett," stating that he was a "good prime minister," and rebuked Netanyahu for bringing him down.

Yossi Werter, his colleague from Haaretz, recited the compliments given to him by Bennett ("I think I was a good prime minister", "I put Lapid in a country in a much better condition than I received", etc.) while sailing with sticky praise for his humanity, for His fairness, his integrity, his friendship.

Nahum Barnea, in Yedioth Ahronoth, is not left behind.

"Bennett is a decent man," "Bennett is in euphoria," "He ends his term of his own free will, in his style."

Barnea reported that Bennett was "proud of his achievements," and it was clear to him, in writing, that he himself was proud of them.

When Barnea compliments the outgoing prime minister on his "businesslike", "cultural", "restrained" and "unifying" style,

For a year the political writers vomited into their columns everything Bennett had dictated to them in the briefing conversations he had with them.

Here and there, embarrassingly, they found themselves writing the exact same words.

Too many opportunities in the past year have not been necessary to read all the commentators.

You read one, you read them all.

It was the embarrassing year of the press.

One of the great liars known to Israeli politics.

Bennett (Photo: Paul, Alex Kolomoisky)

In recent years, journalists who support Benjamin Netanyahu have won the insulting title of "trumpets."

With the end of Bennett's tenure, it should be said that a comparison between Netanyahu's and Bennett's trumpets brings out the best of these bibists.

They did what they did out of support for Netanyahu, and out of a belief that he was the man worthy to lead the country.

Bennett's trumpets, on the other hand, did not vote for him in the past, and will not vote for him in the future.

Is for them the donkey of Messiah.

What they did for him, they did with the understanding that he was the only one who, in the circumstances that arose, could keep Netanyahu away from them hated.

A little less than two months ago, Ben Caspit and I were arguing here about the Bennett government.

Mercury thought she was great, I thought she was bad.

In response to a column in which I explained my position, Caspit replied in his own column.

In this column, the name of Benjamin Netanyahu appeared 32 times, another 5 times the name of Natan Eshel, only 14 times the name of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, around whom the entire discussion revolved.

And that's the whole story on one leg.

It seems to me that even if a geranium flowerpot had been appointed prime minister after Netanyahu - Werter, Caspit and Barnea would have praised him for his performance.

It's not him.

It's them.

They and Netanyahu.

Week after week they sold us Bennett without a word of criticism.

When he fell in the polls, they told us he enjoyed every moment.

When he failed to put up a majority, they reported that he was in an upbeat mood.

When his party members abandoned him one by one, they explained to us that they were the problematic ones.

A lie is true, black is white, crooked is straight.

More on Walla!

Do not weep over his fate: Bennett was a good manager, but a bad politician

To the full article

Fake unity

Know what?

Let's say, just for the sake of discussion, that last year's Bennett, and not the one running for election, is the just Bennett.

Let's say it's right to sit with RAAM and with Labor and with Meretz and with Lapid, and not as Bennett explained to us but a year and a bit ago. For someone who turns over like this, like a steak, and in matters of ideology, from one day to the next?

Take, for example, the position he presented in his retirement interviews, according to which the State of Israel needs a broad coalition, from Ben Gvir and Smutrich to Mansour Abbas, because "a right-wing government, in the current sense, is a disaster."

After all, only two years ago Bennett ran with Bezalel Smutrich on the same list, and only a year ago he ran for the Election Commission to demand the disqualification of Mansour Abbas on the grounds that he supports terrorism.

So how can one take seriously a politician who after such a short period of time looks at who he saw yesterday as an accomplice, and who he saw yesterday as a supporter of the murder of Jews, and now presents them as extremists on both sides?

Is there a greater conversion treatment than this?

As mentioned, I put aside the question of what is right.

You know what, maybe the new Bennett is the one who is right, but how can one not despise someone whose only thing that separated the previous ideology from the current ideology is that the current one has arranged for him the post of prime minister with six seats?

After all, one must be blind not to see that the "all Israel friends" claim adopted by the "right" people a moment after the election came only with the political need to join the left in order to win the prime minister's job.

They had not been there before.

Previously, Bennett and Shaked and Kahana had an opposite position at 180 degrees.

A position they had run with for years.

What is to be appreciated in this flick-plaque that was all born out of a narrow political need?

An anti-Zionist who rose to prominence thanks to Bennett.

Taha (Photo: Flash 90, Yonatan Zindel)

Let's stay for a moment with Bennett's calls for unity, for connections between the right and the left, for the need to stay away from the extremists, and for warnings from the "Sailing Garden" and the "barn burners" that bring destruction.

After all, Bennett himself, he and no other, was first and foremost to attack Netanyahu for his desire to cooperate with the leftists.

After all, Bennett himself has warned all these years that if the power is given to Netanyahu and not to him, Netanyahu will use that power to go with Tzipi Livni, or with Bozi Herzog, or with Amir Peretz, or with Amram Mitzna.

"The will of the people is a national, right-wing, stable government," he stated.

We need a "government without the left" here.

So how did his right-wing government suddenly become a "disaster"?

And what shallow, spineless press applauds such a man?

Dangerous "Sailing Garden"?

After all, there was no factor on the Israeli left that Bennett did not promote himself politically while firing at him.

Who did he not mow?

The media, the High Court, the new foundation ("they are not my brothers"), the military attorney general, the left-wing parties, and Netanyahu who introduced them to his governments. "Stop apologizing," he demanded of us, on the right.

And do not understand me no. True. A politician is allowed to change his mind. A politician is allowed to repent. A politician is allowed to explain that he has suddenly seen the light. On two conditions. That you lash out at those who do what you yourself did until yesterday, and in the way that made you get where you are, and do not present them as those who bring about destruction.

Self-conversion therapy

A press that is also interested in facts should have turned Naftali Bennett, from now on, into a synonym for political deception.

Look at what our public discourse has done to one, Rahamim Kalanter, who 66 years ago left the Hapoel Mizrahi faction in the Jerusalem municipality, supported Mayor Gershon Agron, and won the position of deputy mayor and commissioner of religion and sanitation.

"Calantrism" we have since named after him who turns upside down to win the job.

So if this man was awarded the Cain Medal for a political alliance that gave him the role of head of religion and sanitation in the Jerusalem municipality, how should one define who converted all his perceptions and promises to win the position of prime minister?

What suddenly, there will be those who say, Bennett did break his election promises, but did not change his mind.

He was a right-wing man and remains a right-wing man.

Well, this is a lie that many journalists are careful to echo, which is why it is important to dismantle it.

First, assume that Yossi Werter and Nahum Barnea and Zehava Gal-On are not idiots.

If they, as leftists, applaud Naftali Bennett, it is not because he was a right-wing prime minister.

I hope there will be no debate about this.

But put that aside.

Let's think for a moment - you, who explain that Bennett remains a right-wing man - what his proposal to go to a government that promises that nothing from right-wing policies will be promoted here.

We will have to put everything aside to enable the common coalition life.

The struggle for settlement, the struggle for the Jewish identity of the state, the struggle to amend the court.

Everything because of which we choose the right party and not the left party.

Such a broad government can only exist on the basis of the commitment, given also during this term, that no controversial decisions are going to be made.

So what is left of the right-wing Bennett, if he is now preaching to the government that it will not be able to promote anything important to the right?

What is left of the right-wing Bennett who attacked Netanyahu who did not evacuate Khan al-Ahmar, who promised to regulate the young settlement on his first day as prime minister, and who swore in his election propaganda that Ayelet Shaked would correct the High Court

? To the national camp, in a government in which Meretz and Labor and Yair Lapid and Ra'am are partners?

What is left of all the ideology with which Naftali Bennett has been running for ten years?

What is left of the days when he served as CEO of the Yesha Council?

And how can one, after all this, explain that he has not changed anything in his positions, when reality proves that nothing remains of his positions?

And if something remains, then he announces in advance that he is voluntarily giving up the desire to promote it?

It should be understood that Bennett tried to instill a new consciousness here, according to which a government can be good to the right, even if it does not seek to move the ship even one millimeter to the right.

Even when it allows the Palestinians to continue to take over C-zones, which he needs to fight for, he has made a huge mileage.

Even when it does not fix anything in the justice system, that the need to fight flaws he sold us election after election.

Anyway, it's very nice to sit in one government with everyone.

After all, we are all brothers, and there is no good and no pleasantness from both brothers.

But why are we bothering ourselves at the polls on Election Day - right and left, religious and secular, Jews and Arabs - if not to advance some ideology we believe in?

What kind of democratic regime is the one where the majority is asked to part with its dream of directing the country in the direction it believes in, in favor of a common campfire for all the guys?

And when it comes to Bennett's conversion therapy himself and his frantic changes of direction, which came with the role, it should be remembered that this is a rolling matter.

Bennett, who before the election swore that he did not sit with RAAM and Meretz and Labor and with Lapid. Already at the beginning.Now he already declares and explains that if there is a possibility of forming a right-wing government and there is another possibility of forming a government with the left and with the RAAM, he prefers the second option.

What began, ostensibly, as a urge and a constraint, became an ideology.

So it's really nice that he's being photographed by Dana Weiss, when the members of Kibbutz Bari on the left praise and glorify him.

But what does this say about the man who was elected by the right, when the right despises him, while Caspit Warter and Barnea and Zehava Gal-On and the kibbutzniks from Bari finish praising him?

That he remains a right-wing man?

And in general, does not it seem ridiculous to you that the journalists who did not think of voting for him in the election, are the ones who are now trying to convince the "right" voters that Bennett did not break the promises he gave them?

Conscious damage

I do not know who contributed more to security or the economy as Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu or Naftali Bennett.

In these matters, there are no clear and sharp answers, certainly not after such a short term.

Anyone can easily find the examples that will serve him.

Bennett recounts the incendiary balloons that ran out, forgetting the wave of bloody terrorist attacks on city streets.

Netanyahu talks about the cost of living, and ignores the price charged by the decision not to transfer a budget.

The great damage of the Bennett government, therefore, should not be examined precisely in its actions, but more in the mental damage it has brought with it.

Until a year ago, it was clear to all of us that the Israeli government could not rely on an Arab party, which is not naturally Zionist.

Naftali Bennett came, shattered this convention, and appointed Walid Taha, chairman of the Interior Committee, who sees Zionism as a "racist brutal project," who believes that the murderers of the Jews in prison are "ideological prisoners of freedom and prisoners of conscience who paid for our just Palestinian cause." The walls, when we fought Arab terrorism in Gaza and Jerusalem, demonstrated with the other side and accused us of "defiling al-Aqsa," and those for whom the Palestinians, unlike the Jews, are "owners of this land, and did not come to it from Russia and Ukraine."

For decades there was no need to explain that supporting terrorism is a red line.

Bennett came, and in favor of a narrow political need, made an alliance with Said al-Kharoumi who went to identify with the rioters in Acre, those who murdered and burned and carried out lynchings on Jews, and with Mazen Ghanaim, who made a pilgrimage to Raed Salah, the leader of the Islamic Movement.

I put aside everything the RAAM people did before entering into a coalition with Bennett. I only refer to what they did under his rule, when he chooses to close his eyes. Conscious processes do not take place in a day. They are slowly brewing. To this dish, in which one gradually becomes accustomed to a reality in which anti-Zionists are legitimate partners, and relying on supporters of pogroms against Jews is a matter that can be lived with.

And this habituation, to what until yesterday seemed to us all the ancestors of impurity, is the greatest sin of Naftali Bennett and his associates.

It is the most severe violation of the Jewish, Zionist, Israeli, patriotic, and moral consciousness.

And from this point it is impossible to go back.

What you have made kosher will not become prey again tomorrow morning.

And all this, without forgetting that the person who started RAAM's training was Benjamin Netanyahu.

An anti-Zionist who rose to prominence thanks to Bennett.

Taha (Photo: Flash 90, Yonatan Zindel)

But it does not end here.

Under Bennett's auspices, they gathered into this government, the great settler haters and the great ultra-Orthodox haters and who were his mother's biggest rivals when it fought for the state's Jewish identity.

Bennett gathered all these from the fringes of Israeli politics, and gave them a place of honor at the cabinet and cabinet table, as no one before him had done.

From this point, when they complained about "settler violence," he could not answer them, lest they overthrow him.

From this point, when they picked up from the boards Abu Mazen, who was financing Jewish murderers, and made a pilgrimage to him, and gave him honor and precious, and invited him to the house of the Minister of Defense, he could not argue with them, lest they overthrow him.

From this point, when they demanded that he stop planting trees in the Negev, he was forced to fold.

From this point on, when Ra'am made a muscle, reinforcing the false plot of "Al-Aqsa in Danger," a plot that led to the outpouring of much Jewish blood, he was forced to remain silent, knowing that his fate was in their hands. Who did or did not do, or from some housing units he built or did not build.And whoever does not understand that Oslo was not born out of nowhere, but was the end of a long process of brainwashing - will not even understand the tremendous damage Bennett has done in the past year.

A decent man?

really?

And three more final remarks:

1. For a long time we heard harsh and harsh journalistic criticism of those who exerted pressure and demonstrated against MKs Edith Silman and Nir Orbach.

Sorry for the question, but if someone sets up a tent in front of Auerbach's house and makes sure to remind him daily of the election promises he's breaking, is something wrong with him?

Could it be that I missed some update on new rules in a democracy?

And what is the difference between those who demonstrated against Orbach, and those who demonstrated in Balfour against Netanyahu, and came again and again, and made noise, and shouted and pressured Netanyahu to leave?

And in general, how did the protesters against Orbach and Silman become bad people, while the Balfour protesters were presented here for a long time as the beautiful face of freedom of expression?

Were there a few protesters here and there who crossed the line of good taste?

It seems to me that there was no shortage of such in Balfour either.

When Bennett explains that "in retrospect, I should have hugged Silman, told her 'it's okay,' and been with her more."

With a hand on heart, if it were not for this, would we not consider this statement an ugly chauvinism?

What, is this a silly, mindless girl that all she needs in life is a soothing hug?

If it had only come from Bennett's direction, fine.

But look at some commentators echoing this nonsense that this government is falling just because Bennett did not devote enough time to stroking the herd of idiots from his party.

3. A final word on the new Prime Minister, Yair Lapid, and on the romantic journalistic reports that told of the exciting, loving, and fair manner in which Bennett handed over power to him.

"He stood by my side and kept everything he promised me, and he deserves it," the outgoing prime minister said.

About a year ago, Bennett was asked by someone who was asked if he trusted Torch.

If he sleeps well at night when Torch is prime minister.

Let's move on to the next question, he asked.

The Israeli prime minister is not a nice gift to decent friends, nor is it a child's play given to someone for three months.

You gave him a word and decided to stick to it?

Well, you gave a lot of words to a lot of people and you did not stand in any of them.

I swear to the citizens of Israel that if they give you their vote, you will in no way use it to turn Lapid into a prime minister.

Seven seats also believed you when you said that.

Kill me if I understand how, after all this, journalists manage to portray Naftali Bennett as a decent man, and not as one of the great liars known to Israeli politics.

• news

• Opinions and interpretations

Tags

• Naftali Bennett

• Dissolution of the Knesset

• Elections