For years, he has been kicking the Israeli media, weakening it and turning it into a punching bag. For more than 20 years, he has been waging a fierce struggle against it, first as communications minister and then by appointing ministers who do his bidding. What motivates him is revenge. He feels that the media is "looking" for him, understands that controlling the narrative is controlling the public agenda and worldview of Israeli citizens.
The coalition clause that prohibits the coalition partners from opposing any move related to the media market – the struggle against the corporation, the harsh statements against it, and the obsessive preoccupation with the coverage that led him to become criminal defendants – tells one story: Benjamin Netanyahu does not want to see a free media in Israel.
Everyone involved in the media understands this. The corporate captains, Channel 13 and Channel 12, are all brilliant people who understand politics. Still, over the years, editors and journalists and the owners of these media outlets have engaged in incessant flattery to the prime minister, normalizing extremists such as Itamar Ben-Gvir. No matter how much Netanyahu stepped on them and how much contempt he showed them, they always opened the studio to him, sat people on their panels whose sole job was to deliver the prime minister's message, and slowly got rid of serious journalists, field coverage and investigative reports in favor of studio shows, a screaming circus between right and left, endless and shouty babble disguised as journalism.
Netanyahu being interviewed only on Channel 14? We will invite as a substitute MKs and ministers whose sole job is to protect him. Does the channel completely deviate from the license powers granted to it? None of the other channels dares to take action to prevent the contempt for the law. Is Ben-Gvir busy? We will interview his wife even though she does not hold an official position and turn her into a celebrity. Did Netanyahu recall all the channels on the occasion of the elections? Excellent, just because he's been refusing us for four years doesn't mean we'll refuse him once.
Then comes Minister Karai, with a plan to eliminate what little is left of the free Israeli media, which is clear that if it materializes, none of the existing channels will survive economically. Karai had already threatened the corporation, and they immediately equipped themselves with a human protective dome imported directly from Channel 13. But now it comes in a package, boom, there isn't even an attempt to create a semblance of faith in a free media.
Qari is working to eliminate television channels that still dare to criticize the government, or, God forbid, cover the protests without calling the protesters "anarchists." The goal is to erase discourse, to create a "renewal," as George Orwell called the language invented by the regime in his book "1984." In a totalitarian country whose inhabitants are under the watchful eye of Big Brother 24/7, the goal is to erase as many words as possible from the lexicon and reduce the discourse. Speaking practice, from the throat to the outside, and not from thinking or analysis. Independent thinking is a threat to the regime, a danger to its stability.
But the blame lies not only with meat or Netanyahu, but also with the channels, which for years flattened the discourse and provided a platform for a sacred balance that no longer exists. They did not stand by their journalists, but believed that flattery and caressing the regime and the regime would save them on the day of orders.
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