Eldad Yaniv (Network 13)
"When are you writing about Eldad Yaniv?".
You will not believe how many times I have heard this question in the last few weeks, in many variations.
I've been writing articles in various media since the last millennium, but I can't remember a topic where so many people advised me to write about it.
The climax came when the medical secretary of the Maccabi Health Insurance Fund linked my name to the website you are browsing at the moment, and immediately responded: "Saloni, how come you haven't written anything about Eldad Yaniv yet?".
The truth is that I haven't sat down for a long time to write a column on a topic that I really don't want to write about like Eldad Yaniv.
In fact, even the combination of the words "Eldad Yaniv", which I have just written for the fourth time in a few lines, is starting to give me involuntary kebs feelings.
To avoid similar feelings of nausea from readers (and myself), from now until the end of this column, I will refer to it as "T-1000", after the advanced model of the shape-shifting terminator from the "Terminator" series.
Unlike the T-800 (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger), the T-1000 is made of a special liquid metal, which allows it to solidify and mimic any person it comes in contact with.
Cabbage feelings.
Eldad Yaniv (photo: screenshot, Channel 14)
So what has changed so much about the T-1000 model in question that has so many people raving about it around the web?
The truth is, nothing.
At least nothing interesting.
For those who missed the events of the previous episodes, we will remind you that T-1000 was a young and ambitious lawyer, who later became Ehud Barak's consigliere and slowly built himself up through capital and government connections and became the poster boy for governmental corruption in Israel.
A whore of tycoons.
That's what he says, not me.
"I think that in the very not too distant future, people will be put in prison for things I did," he told Gidi Weitz in an interview in the "Haaretz" newspaper a decade ago, "the things I did will be considered crimes, things that are destructive and terrible in their meaning. For many years I was at the heart of discrimination. There is no other definition for it."
I never exchanged a word with him, even though from the outside he seemed like a pretty nice guy.
Calculated, articulate, ambitious - and yes, an opportunist.
is very.
Shmuel Al-Safari based on him the mythological character of Kuzo Avital, the brilliant political consultant who cunningly works his way up to the chair of the government secretary in the semi-imaginary universe of "Polishok".
In a series full of political puppets, Cuzo was the undisputed king.
The tail wagging the dog.
In that sense, the T-1000 hasn't undergone any real change.
Yes, the designer suits and Gucci shoes were at some point replaced by a cap and jeans - but whoever chose to believe that he had repented as an anti-corruption protest activist always did so on his own accord.
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At the demonstrations at that time in 2017 (Photo: Niv Aharonson)
The leftist Twitter feed is full of comparisons of the T-1000's explicit statements from two years ago or less, to things he has been saying in recent weeks.
Those who repeatedly called for a civil war are suddenly mocking the protests.
The one who established himself in the call for the passing of the "laws of the accused" that would prevent Benjamin Netanyahu from running for the prime ministership, suddenly scolds the protesters who do not respect the democratic rules of the game.
Guy Zahar even dedicated an entertaining segment to him in "Mahtat Ha'i" on Khan 11 and again justified the existence of public broadcasting.
Yesterday, I saw the T-1000 again in Tzur, Channel 13. On Sharon Gal's show, the place where female workers come to die, he is still marked as the panel's "pet leftist", which is a pretty lame joke even by the show's already low standards.
The fact that the T-1000 uses the words "in my camp" every second of his sentences does not mean that he is part of the left, which threw him out of it with the appearance of the first symptoms of Bibism.
This is doubly true when he appears on channel 14, where his metamorphosis seems to have been successfully completed, when he seems to manage to confuse even Yanon Magal with his flexibility of opinions.
Not that the latter has reason to worry about his place.
The more sophisticated bibists mostly joke about the T-1000.
Compared to leftists, who enjoy hearing someone on the screen who says they are right, rightists are much more suspicious of people who a year ago insulted their undisputed leader and suddenly turned around and called to respect and protect him.
And the bottom line is, there's nothing to be angry about with the T-1000.
First of all, a person is certainly allowed to change his mind.
He doesn't even have to justify the change.
There is no lack of "sobers" who have changed their views from one end to the other in recent years, whether for personal or ideological reasons.
But the T-1000 didn't really get sober for anything, but remained loyal to the thing most important to him: his own personal advancement.
This is exactly what he did when he tried to turn the tent protest in 2011 into a political force, and discovered that the people were not really buying what he had to sell.
He founded a party that received disproportionate media coverage, yet received a paltry number of ballots.
Later he tried to compete in the primaries in the Labor Party - and again remained outside the House of Representatives.
He probably doesn't forget it to friends from "his camp".
The T-1000 realized that he could only preserve his power through the screen.
He did this in the highly publicized demonstrations in Petah Tikva against the then-Owner Mandelblit, and later even appointed himself as the unofficial spokesman for the spontaneous Balfour demonstrations, although it is doubtful that the desperate young people who demonstrated in Jerusalem against Netanyahu even knew who this man was who spoke for them on television. But as long as He said the right things, it didn't bother anyone. The left-of-center got an eloquent and sharp speaker (which is his), and the T-1000 got its permanent seat on every panel.
Didn't get sober for anything.
Eldad Yaniv (photo: screenshot, Network 13)
Along the way, he still had time to flirt with Hadar Mokhtar's troll and present it as the "Party of the Pensioners 2.0", and of course tried to lead the "Corona Disaffected".
Then came the results of the last elections that stunned most of the Hark-la-Bibi camp, but not the T-1000, who even before the soldiers' votes were counted managed to liquefy and solidify again as the first protest activist to oppose the demonstrations.
Even then it seems that his political and media experience gave him a clear understanding: the local news channels will broadcast anyone who agrees to sit in the studio and eloquently attack leftists.
Everything he did in the past, for better or for worse, doesn't matter at all.
The videos that prove he changed his opinion 180 degrees in a year and a half are of no interest to anyone in the ratings camp.
Don't blame the T-1000 for being a cold android that changes its ideology every time the wind changes direction, blame the method.
And maybe, for a change, we'll blame ourselves for even agreeing to consume these shallow entertainment programs that we mistakenly call "new releases".
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Eldad Yaniv