The reality here in Israel that no matter which party is “ruling” in the Knesset, the real movers and shakers are the media. The Israeli media has always been the spokesperson of the self-appointed elite. Evenhanded objective interviewing skills are neither seen nor heard nor written in Israeli media, whether television, radio or the press.
When a reporter does not agree with the person he is interviewing sic, he/she interrogates him like a TV district attorney trying to force a mass murderer to confess his/her dastardly crimes. But when the reporter agrees with the ideology of the interviewee, the oversweet fawning can put the viewer/reader in diabetic shock. Outright lies and illogic will go unchallenged when Left talks to Left.
Please don’t forget that there isn’t a Hebrew word for “objective.” When I was a high school English teacher I would ask what it meant in Hebrew, and they would answer:
“אוביקטיבי” “obyectivi“
And they could not explain at all what it meant in Hebrew words. For some peculiar reason the concept just doesn’t exist in Israeli culture.
That’s why all the publicity given to political polls must have an ulterior motive. So when I hear that Lapid’s and Lieberman’s parties are doing better than the Likud in the polls, I know that it’s a reminder to the Israeli public to get on the bandwagon.
Poll: Lapid, Liberman continue to gain strengthNew poll finds that Yesh Atid and Yisrael Beytenu are making gains at the expense of Likud and the Zionist Union.
The Likud and the Zionist Union parties are continuing to lose seats, while Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid and Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu are making gains, a Kol Yisrael radio poll released Friday found.
The poll suggests that if elections were held today, Likud would win 26 seats, compared to 30 in the elections a year ago…
But of course all these news articles leave out the fact that the Likud has pretty much always done much better in elections than polls.
And I don’t think that this time Netanyahu will make the mistake he did last time and call for early elections based on good polls for Likud, if there are any. I’m pretty sure that he will work hard to keep his bare minimum 61 out of 120 Knesset seats live for as long as possible. And I also think that the coalition members feel the same. They know that although opposition parties look good in today’s polls, according to their present numbers, none of the opposition leaders are favored more than Bibi by the public. Yes, no matter how much Israelis don’t like Bibi as Prime Minister, still more prefer him over Lieberman, Lapid, Herzog etc. And if the coalition MKs try stabbing Bibi in the back by deserting to the opposition and Bibi gets back in, he won’t forget the traitors.