Israelis are paying, and they do not even know it. Israeli society has been inundated by fake news for many long weeks, more than all this season's floods combined. News that is foolish, twisted, detached from the truth, and lacks facts, is flooding the media, and no one is saying a word.
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Where to begin? Let's start with the Temple Mount. The Biden administration did not condemn National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir's visit to Judaism's holy site, which contradicts the best commentators' reports. International criticism of Ben-Gvir's tour of the Temple Mount was not even "sharp." There was one Jordanian reprimand, several hiccups in the Arab capitals and the United Nations, and that was it. Every routine construction in Judea and Samaria receives a harsher rebuke from the West. Not to mention that not a single rocket fell in Israel, thank God, and this is what is most important.
Moreover, Ben-Gvir's visit to the Temple Mount did not cause Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to the UAE to be postponed. This is because a visit had yet to have been planned. Generally speaking, the UAE has already invited Israel's head of government for a visit. The two states have a mutual desire for this visit, but the timing is still being coordinated. Ben-Gvir also did not "stand down" or "postpone his visit atop Temple Mount after supposedly being urged by Netanyahu to do so," as media outlets reported on Monday evening. Therefore, they ate crow on Tuesday morning.
But not only regarding Ben-Gvir. The orthodox "Netzah Yehuda" battalion has been sent to the Golan this week to upgrade its abilities and to become an organic part of the IDF. In contradiction with reports by "Haaretz," this was decided long before the incidents in Judea and Samaria that it was involved in occurred.
What else? Transportation and Road Safety Minister Miri Regev did not close the carpool lanes, as was claimed. Rather, she only stated she would examine the matter – a necessary move to be made by a new minister who identifies a problem. Finance Minister Betzalel Smotrich did not have Finance Ministry director-general remain in his position – this nonsense was also written this week – but instead brought in the brilliant lawyer, Shlomi Heisler, and the list goes on much longer.
And the procession goes on
The weekly chain of lies continues the pile of nonsense that has been written about the new government since the elections. What have they not said? That Israel will cease being a democracy, that the government will harm the LGBTQ community, that the police will become political, that the IDF will recruit 70 reserve battalions, that Smotrich ruined the IDF's chain of command, and that MK Orit Strock would endorse denying medical treatment of homosexuals by certain doctors.
And lo and behold, the government was formed, and its first act was 30 Orthodox Knesset members, national Haredi and right-wing, including the slandered Strock voting in favor of a gay speaker of the Knesset. Neither the US nor the UK, neither France nor Spain placed an LGBTQ representative third in line in the governmental hierarchy. Even the Left has not done this whenever it was in power.
The Likud – a national-liberal party – was the one to initiate the precedent and did not even need to argue over it with its religious partners. But hey, why let facts ruin a good story?
The great tragedy is that many good people fall for these prophecies of panic. Even right-wing voters and Likud supporters have forgotten that the ones who are currently feeding them with all this nonsense regarding "the most extreme government in the history of Israel" are the same ones who forecasted the "political tsunami" last decade or said in the current decade that "Bibi (Benjamin Netanyahu) will not procure even one vaccine."
The bitter reality is that most of the Israeli media works for the opposition. This is how things always were. This week, they were the ones that inflated Ben-Gvir's visit to the Temple Mount to alarming proportions. If not for this dramatic media coverage – which Ben-Gvir did not suffer from – the 13-minute trip on the tenth of the Jewish month of Tevet would have been relatively uneventful.
Take, for example, the US's response. First, Tom Nides, the wonderful ambassador – who prays at the Western Wall every week – did not even respond to the visit. He did not tweet, send a message or initiate any other action. What did he do? He only responded to the media outlets that requested one from him. In other words, the media outlets and the reporters decided to put Ben-Gvir on the front page after he visited the Temple Mount. But what's more, when Nides responded, he did not condemn Ben-Gvir. Neither did the US State Department. They indeed expressed their doubts and praised the status quo. But they were cautious in their words. They knew Israel did not violate the status quo since Ben-Gvir was not the first minister to visit the Temple Mount.
What's more, according to American values, opposition to the visit of Jews to the Temple Mount constitutes a violation of every person's freedom of religion. So, according to their own codes, Americans have difficulty condemning a legitimate religious action. Therefore, they chose their words carefully and even prepared to veto a United Nations Security Council if the need to do so would have risen.
But there was no need. Neither was there a crisis. There was anticipated, calculated criticism, and that was the end of it. If only all diplomatic crises with Israel would be like this. The thing is that only in Israel do the facts not bother anybody when writing a good story.
An Irresponsible Opposition
The media's reception of Netanyahu, Interior Minister Aryeh Deri, and their coalition partners contradict those same reporters' and commentators' dedication to the previous government. When then-Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and then-Foreign Minister Yair Lapid held the reins, you could have, for example, read flattering articles about the excitement with which the government offices received them and about the sweet tours the two held with the enthusiastic workers to show their interest in them. Wonderful.
However, the ministers who just took office visited the government's branches and departments. They, too, were received with starry eyes in several cases. I attended two Changing of Ministers ceremonies on Monday and spent hours at the Knesset. You could have easily seen many people's enthusiasm. After all, most of the public, especially the Jews, voted in favor of the new coalition. If so, what were they so happy about? Nevertheless, it was impossible to read about it in the media. The headlines focused on "the Likud's jobs"; how could they not?
In addition to the media problem, the warped media coverage causes damage to reality itself. First, it does so on the security level. Former MK Yehuda Glick warned on Twitter that "the incitement against Ben-Gvir on the media and across the globe is the tailwind to terror and a wink to all, hinting to throw him to the dogs!" Glick finished with an almost macabre joke, "don't ask how I know." Remember that he miraculously survived after a terrorist shot him because of his activity for the sake of the visit of Jews to the Temple Mount.
Second, the political level. Let's imagine that instead of squeezing the already-dry lemon of attacking Netanyahu, Leader of the Opposition Lapid would have taken a moral and responsible stance. Let's assume he would have said, "Freedom of worship is a basic right, certainly in democracies. Although I oppose this visit, it does not violate the status quo."
A statement such as this from the former Prime Minister would have caused a regional and international domino effect. The UAE – a tolerant country that sanctifies the freedom of faith and has built a magnificent inter-religion complex, including a mosque, church, and synagogue – could not have disagreed with his words. In the face of such a clear voice from the Israeli opposition, they might even have been embarrassed to act against Israel in the United Nations. Even more so, the Western nations would lessen their criticism even more. A responsible stance on the part of Lapid would have echoed in the Israeli media choir and the foreign media afterward.
But Lapid decided to attack, providing legitimacy to the anti-Israeli food chain, from the left of him (Lapid) to the Gaza Strip. This is the price we are paying for the fabrications congesting the biased public discussion. We are lucky that this round's price was not too steep.
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