Factional friction and fictional fakery: 7 things to know for February 4

1. Slapping down Sa’ar: Internal Likud fighting is heating up a day ahead of the party primary.

• “Likud is in a whirl,” reads the top headline in Likud-backing Israel Hayom, crediting the tizzy to its publication of a list of preferred primary candidates purportedly put out by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
• Netanyahu has denied putting out any such list, but is making no secret of his desire to see former minister and potential rival Gideon Sa’ar pushed as far down Likud’s electoral slate as possible. On Sunday, he revived the conspiracy theory that Sa’ar had attempted to engineer a putsch within the party.
• Netanyahu’s office followed up the claim by sending out a statement to the press, attributable to “Netanyahu associates,” saying in plain language that the prime minister is trying to keep Sa’ar from snagging a top spot, but otherwise not intervening in the primary process (his position at the top of the party isn’t up for grabs).
• “Likud sources estimate that Netanyahu’s statements, given their timing on the eve of the primaries, will hurt Sa’ar’s chances of getting a high spot,” Yedioth Ahronoth reports.

2. No bourekas, no backing: Lower down the list, fighting between ministers like Miri Regev and Israel Katz are also taking place, exposing rifts within the party.

• Haaretz claims that the real battle isn’t taking place at the top, but lower down, among backbenchers for whom a few votes can mean the difference between a Knesset career or a life in obscurity: “Everyone knows that the places of the ministers and of returning ex-minister Gideon Sa’ar are relatively safe. The real battle is over the second and third groups of 10.”
• Israel Hayom’s Mati Tuchfeld predicts that up to nine current MKs may not get realistic spots on the party slate, including a couple of ministers. “Many of them feel this is the fight of their life,” he writes.
• One of them may be Knesset bad boy Oren Hazan, who made it in last time as the representative of Likud’s youth wing, but will have to fight harder this time to keep his place.
• Describing one Hazan appearance, Yedioth reports that attendees were disappointed to find that he had made the unforgivable error of not offering bourekas.
• “An iron rule of the primary challenger is to have food on the table. And if you’re gonna have food, it has to be bourekas,” the paper’s Oded Shalom writes. “You can have some cut veggies too, but that’s really just for show. People shove the pastries into their mouths and their bags. On the way they gladhand the candidates and promise their support. I saw Likud members promising support to two candidates running for the same slot.”

3. Taking the news out of fake: Netanyahu made his claim against Sa’ar during an interview on a Facebook channel called Likud TV, which launched yesterday with a promise by the prime minister to “take the fake out of the news.”

• Given Netanyahu’s use of the Likud propaganda outfit to put down Sa’ar, Netanyahu TV may have been a better name.
• ToI’s Raoul Wootliff calls the channel “a nakedly self-serving soapbox.”
• “While he opened by promising to provide “real and positive” coverage of the prime minister, [interviewer Eliraz] Sade focused on the latter — posing clearly pre-agreed, softball questions, peppered with praise of Netanyahu,” he writes.
• Wootliff also notes that coverage of Likud TV necessarily falls into the liar’s dilemma trap, since Likud TV says all other media is fake, hence any article about it must be fake too and thus Likud TV cannot be real.
• Turning that argument inside out, the Seventh Eye’s Uzi Benzimann asks how journalists can cover Likud TV, or Netanyahu at all, without turning into propagandists for the prime minister.
• “I’ve long wondered why outlets chase after the prime minister and beg him for an interview. They assume some verbal back and forth between them will create headlines, ratings, praise — and give them a chance to push him into a corner and pressure him for some sort of truth, some opening up,” he writes. “That’s a false assumption: As I see it, Netanyahu long ago lost his trustworthiness. My humble self does not believe a word he says, and so the journalistic chase after interviews with him seems absurd and unnecessary.”
• The Associated Press reports that the TV channel appears to be modeled on US President Donald Trump’s “Real News Update.”

4. The President and I: Netanyahu isn’t just using Trump for ideas, he’s also campaigning straight on his back.

• Massive billboards showing the two that appeared in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem garner plenty of media attention, and mocking.
• One person on Twitter notes that Netanyahu appears to have been photoshopped to look the same height as Trump.

Netanyahu's new campaign ads in Israel proudly show him shaking hands with the white nationalist's main man. Also, Netanyahu is photoshopped to show him as the same height. Trump is 6'3", Bibi is 5'11". They both lie about everything. pic.twitter.com/h1VDbfZkeC

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— Alexandra Halaby???????? (@iskandrah) February 4, 2019

• Haaretz’s Allison Kaplan Sommer writes that in most places, a Trumpian flourish like that would not fly.
• “Israel is one of the few countries in the world in which close ties to Trump carry political currency, where his tough rhetoric on Iran and the Palestinians, as well as the embassy move, have earned him rare popularity,” she writes.
• Does Trump, who doesn’t let anybody use his name or likeness without getting a payday, know he is being used this way? A Likud spokesperson refuses to tell Reuters if the party got permission from the president.

5. Honeymoon’s over: Yedioth’s Nahum Barnea writes that Benny Gantz has even bigger billboards over the two cities, with half his face looking down on the denizens. And even bigger may be the unrealistic expectations he has fostered.

• “Gantz’s speech hasn’t been forgotten yet and there’s already a wave against him: What are all these promises? There’s no chance he’ll fulfill all of them even if he forms the government,” he writes.
• Haaretz editor Aluf Benn also takes aim at Gantz, accusing him of using Netanyahu’s fear-mongering tactics.
• “Gantz promised to unite the nation and refrain from divisiveness, rifts or personal attacks, but his debut speech last Tuesday played on a range of anxieties of his would-be voters, even if his style was more refined than that of Netanyahu,” he writes.
• Israel Hayom, which has been no stranger to attacks on Gantz, continues galloping along, including in an op-ed by Eitan Orkibi who accuses Gantz of insulting the Israeli electorate by comparing the democratically elected Netanyahu to a king.
• “Well, esteemed commander Gantz, I am not a subject. My support for Netanyahu is cognizant and sober; I have applied my own sound judgment and world view,” he writes. “I don’t need you charging up the hill to rescue me from the tyrant’s clutches or from myself. Tether your steed, Don Gantzo, elections are nigh upon us, there is no need for an officers’ revolution.”

6. On the spectrum, off the rails: Netanyahu consigliere Dudi Amsalem takes it one step too far, calling Gantz “autistic” as an insult in an interview with Radio Darom.

• Yair Lapid, whose daughter is diagnosed with autism, shoots back that Amsalem should be ashamed for using it as an insult, to which Amsalem replies that his sister is on the spectrum.
• Amsalem also claims that everyone uses the term, along with disabled and blind, and it’s not offensive, so criticizing him is despicable.

Update:@dudiamsalem says that nearly everyone says "What, are you disabled?" "What, are you autistic?" or "What, are you blind?" in every day use with no intention whatsoever to offend anyone. So criticizing him for doing it "creates hatred and division" & is a "despicable act"

— Raoul Wootliff (@RaoulWootliff) February 4, 2019

• It’s true that Amsalem isn’t the first to use autistic as an insult. In 2015, Avigdor Liberman called anyone supporting Palestinian statehood autistic.
• Unlike Amsalem, Liberman apologized, though only after Jay Ruderman, head of the Ruderman Family foundation which advocates for people with disabilities, spoke up.
• This time, Shira Ruderman of the family foundation releases a statement saying, “It’s hard to believe Amsalem’s statement was made in 2019. So much prejudice, so many negative stigmas and ideas long removed from reality.”

7. Socioeconomic stances: Gantz was one of the few people to use his opening speech to tackle issues like healthcare, taxation and labor rights.

• Luckily, Haaretz has put together a handy guide of where all the parties stand on such oft-overlooked issues.
• Unfortunately, many parties refused to answer on some socioeconomic issues, or hemmed and hawed and said they did not have a platform, which if one thinks about it, says everything about how personalities, and not issues, are dominating the campaign season.