Obsession. There is no other way to describe the way the Israeli Left, particularly the media, treats Mrs. Sara Netanyahu. They don't need any actual story to slander Mrs. Netanyahu, or information, or even a serious, well-thought-out position – baseless, almost ridiculous speculation is sufficient grounds for a lead item, bolded and under a slanderous headline.
Take, for example, the latest story about a request for an armored car for Mrs. Netanyahu. The Netanyahu family doesn't decide on its own security measures. The prime minister is protected by the Magen Unit, and it's an external committee that decides on the level of protection he is to receive. It's no secret; anyone familiar with these matters knows the facts. This didn't stop the absurd news item from ballooning out of proportion.
The Prime Minister's Office applied to the accountant general in the Finance Ministry for an armored car for Mrs. Netanyahu. At this point, there are two possibilities: Either this is a security-related request that comes from the experts in the Finance Ministry or the prime minister's wife wanted to be driven around in a big, impressive car, and therefore requested an armored one.
The item reached the Haaretz newspaper, where no one bothered to look into whether it was an important story or something that should be relegated to the gossip column. Instead, they chose to publish it as news and add the innocent-sounding sentence: "It is unclear whether the request came from [Mrs.] Netanyahu herself or was initiated by the security branch of the Prime Minister's Office."
In other words: We have no idea whether we've got a scoop or a worthless item, but we're reporting it anyway. Why? The answer has nothing to do with reason. It has to do with the aforementioned obsession. The past 20 years have taught us that anything goes when it comes to blackening the Netanyahus, particularly Sara Netanyahu.
In any case, what is behind the obsession? In part, it has to do with the difficulty many on the Left have in dealing with the replacement of their old guard elite. The real "revolution" didn't take place in 1977 when the Likud was voted into power for the first time. That was when the first crack appeared in the dam, but about seven years later Shimon Peres from the Labor Party was back as prime minister, in a rotation agreement. Yitzhak Shamir was appointed prime minister in 1986, and six years later vacated his seat for then-chairman of the Labor Party, Yitzhak Rabin.
In 1996 the Likud returned to power for a short three-year term, until Ehud Barak and Labor won. In 2006 the Right was back in power, a period that saw a miserable end in the disengagement from Gaza and four settlements in northern Samaria in 2005. Netanyahu has now been in power for over nine years, with no end in sight, marking the first real continuum of right-wing governments, and it's starting to compare to the 29 straight years of Labor governments in the early years of the country. Netanyahu has been in power longer than any prime minister in the history of the country. Since the revolution of 2009, when Netanyahu was re-elected, the Left has been losing hope, and the more time passes, the harder it is for them. The attacks on the prime minister's wife express the frustration at the inefficacy of their attempts to attack the prime minister himself.
Sara Netanyahu also causes people to feel personally frustrated. There were some on the Left who hoped that the prime minister's wife would push Netanyahu into the Left's ideological embrace, if not immediately, then at some point – as was the case with former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. But it appears that Sara Netanyahu has a strong ideological backbone, which is fuel on the fire of the obsession with her and her family.
