The PM’s game of chicken worked. He beat his rivals in the battle over the state broadcaster, and caused ‘chaos’ in Israel’s media landscape
- Times of Israel
Sword of Damocles, 1812, oil on canvas. Richard Westall. Ackland Museum, Chapel Hill, North Carolina (Public domain)
For the past two weeks, Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has appeared to some to be acting like a
paranoid lunatic. Hoping the attorney general would hold off an
indictment against him in two ongoing corruption investigations, he had
surely, his critics said, manufactured the political crisis over the
future of Israel’s new public broadcaster in order to force his
coalition partners to quit the government and go to new elections.
Or
perhaps, unable to let go of a grudge against his current finance
minister for quitting the Likud and stealing 10 of his Knesset seats, he
was seeking elections as a form of revenge against Moshe Kahlon, who he
knew would be damaged even more than his own party by a snap ballot.
Maybe he was even being pushed by his wife and
son who, prone to emotional and rash decision-making, were telling him
that the country saw him as the weak partner in the coalition. He must
go to elections to prove to his political rivals that he, and only he,
sits at the top of Israel’s “House of Cards,” they were whispering.
Again, according to the critics.
How else could his threat to dismantle the government in order to liquidate the new broadcaster make any sense.
Yes, the country forgave him for going to
elections over a different media issue two years ago, when he is said to
have been infuriated by dissent over the Yisrael Hayom bill. That
legislation, which was never approved, is currently at the center of one
of the investigations into the prime minister, who allegedly offered to
help pass the bill in a quid pro quo deal with Yedioth Ahronoth
publisher Arnon Mozes.
But surely Israelis wouldn’t forgive Netanyahu
again for calling elections after not getting his way. Would they? As
several ministers in his own cabinet have pointed out, most of the
public don’t even know the new broadcasting corporation exists. So why
go to the polls about it? And most importantly, elections would not
prevent it from beginning transmission on April 30, as required by law.
Netanyahu could only torpedo the new broadcaster through fresh
legislation. Elections would in fact ensure the opposite result to the
one he was ostensibly seeking.
What on earth was he up to?
Coalition bonding
Netanyahu’s coalition, as any in Israel’s
history, has been no stranger to crises in the 20 months since the
government was sworn in, having quashed a number of potential hazards
that could have spelled disaster. But the deal signed Thursday between
Netanyahu and Kahlon to strip Israel’s new public broadcaster of its
entire news division ended what seemed to be the most real threat, thus
far, of its collapse.
‘Netanyahu got exactly what he wanted. He has created absolute chaos in the public media’
It also proved that Netanyahu didn’t want elections at all. His true goal was to cripple the broadcaster. He was playing chicken after all.
Netanyahu and Kahlon have publicly clashed for
months over the planned launch of the new broadcaster, which was set to
have unprecedented editorial independence. After supporting the 2014
reforms that created “Kan,” Netanyahu led efforts to bury it. Kahlon,
however, opposed Netanyahu’s plans to instead revamp the ailing
predecessor, the Israel Broadcasting Authority, disparaged as
increasingly costly and irrelevant.
Two weeks ago, after Netanyahu publicly berated Kahlon at a so-called “coalition bonding” event, the two men reached
a compromise that would have seen Kan go ahead on April 30. Netanyahu
had agreed to drop his opposition in exchange for Kahlon’s support for
legislation that would roll back some of the key reforms and give the
government increased oversight of all television and radio stations in
the country.
Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (right) with Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon
during the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem, February 19, 2017.
(Olivier Fitoussi/Pool)
But in an astonishing about turn, Netanyahu said
just days later that he had “changed his mind,” and reportedly told
ministers that unless the broadcaster is aborted, “we’ll go to
elections.”
Having thrown his own coalition into turmoil,
he promptly left the country for a week-long trip to China. Claiming it
inappropriate to deal with petty politics while signing trade deals with
the most populous nation on earth, Netanyahu refused to comment on the
crisis for an entire week, leaving both his rivals and allies to stew
over the reasons for his belligerence.
Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (2nd L) looks on during his meeting with
China’s President Xi Jinping at Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing on
March 21, 2017. (AFP Photo/Pool/Etienne Oliveau)
And stew they did, pondering the conspiracy
theory-esque idea of a crazed prime minister willing to do anything for
his own survival and image, including sabotaging his own party’s 30-seat
stronghold in the Knesset.
Even when he came back from China, Netanyahu
canceled the marathon coalition talks aimed at defusing the crisis,
citing ill health.
By the time he was ready to negotiate, it seems, Kahlon was ready to give him what he wanted. As with the Sword of Damocles hanging over Dionysius, the fear of Netanyahu made the finance minister beg for his own mercy.
‘Principles, not ego’
According to the deal announced Thursday,
while the new broadcaster will be able to begin transmitting with just a
two-week delay, it will be stripped entirely of its news division. In
its stead, a separate broadcast entity will be established to deal with
all current affairs offerings, staffed “primarily” by former IBA
employees.
While Netanyahu has claimed to have been moved
by “heartbreaking stories” from employees set to lose their jobs when
the IBA closes, the deal will likely offset those saved jobs with
redundancies at Kan.
‘This agreement prevented the passage of legislation that would have advocated for supervision of the press,’ Moshe Kahlon said
And with the new, separate news corporation
only set to get off the ground in November, when Kan broadcasts onto
Israeli televisions and radios in mid-May, the news will still be
provided by the IBA.
“This whole point of Kan was to create a
professional news department,” one employee who asked not to be named
told The Times of Israel. “Let’s not kid ourselves, with no news, Kan is
nothing.”
Kahlon, in a brief press conference aimed at
presenting the deal as a success, pointed to the fact that Netanyahu had
dropped his demand to pass legislation enforcing greater government
oversight on the media.
Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon during a press conference at the Finance Ministry in Tel Aviv on March 30, 2017. (Flash90)
“It ensures freedom of the press, freedom of
speech and it is keeping with the budget. According to the framework of
the agreement, there will be no political influence [on the
corporation],” he said. “This agreement prevented the passage of
legislation that would have advocated for supervision of the press — a
bill that [threatened] freedom of the press and terrorized many
journalists.”
But Kahlon exuded anything but satisfaction,
sitting unusually stone-faced and abruptly leaving the press conference
without taking questions.
Looming fear
The original reforms, advanced by
then-communications minister Gilad Erdan (who is now public security
minister), exempted Kan from oversight rules that apply to most other
public corporations, severely curtailing the ability of politicians to
intervene in content and senior staff appointments. And this is what
Netanyahu was said to fear.
“Netanyahu got exactly what he wanted. He has
created absolute chaos in the public media,” said the Kan employee. “It
doesn’t matter any more what the deal says, Netanyahu has shown that he
has no boundaries and will do anything to limit us. That itself gives
him the power.”
While Kahlon sought to make clear that the
deal will not affect the oversight rules for Kan or the new news
corporation, the last two weeks have shown that Netanyahu’s influence
over the media goes beyond the limits imposed by government regulation,
according to the Kan employee.
The
newly-built control room at the offices of the Israeli Public
Broadcasting Corporation, in Tel Aviv. August 29, 2016. (Miriam
Alster/Flash90)
Elections are off. Shaky coalition partners
are back on board. Lurking Likud rebels have been humiliated. And
opposition efforts to turn loyal allies against the prime minister have
been once again relegated to the realm of the ridiculous.
After the bafflement over his motives and the
rumors of mental deterioration, it appears that it was all one big ruse.
Netanyahu was playing chicken with his coalition partners and media.
And it was all planned according to Cicero’s understanding of the Greek
legend of Damocles, “There can be nothing happy for the person over whom
some fear always looms.”
