Likud accuses Jewish Home of Palestinian, leftist sympathies

The war of words between Likud and Jewish Home grows more frenetic today following yesterday’s dust-up in the cabinet meeting over Likud complaints that too many “religious Zionists” are being appointed to the nascent public broadcasting corporation set to launch on January 1.

Likud ministers, including Science Minister Ofir Akunis and Culture Minister Miri Regev, are complaining that the new corporation is too independent of government intervention. Under the 2014 law that established the broadcaster, the political echelon is forbidden from interfering in the hiring of senior officials or the content of broadcasts.

Regev, Akunis and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have all complained of a “monolithic” left-wing bias in the Israeli media — though the country’s largest-circulation daily, Yisrael Hayom, backs Netanyahu and some of its largest news sites, from Walla News to NRG, have long been led by right-wing editors, including such figures as former Jewish Home MK Yinon Magal.

In yesterday’s cabinet debate, Jewish Home leader Education Minister Naftali Bennett and fellow party lawmaker Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked lashed out at Likud’s accusation that they were stacking the new broadcaster with religious-nationalists — while simultaneously protecting its purported left-wing bias.

The tit-for-tat is still gathering steam. Shaked said earlier today that Likud was picking a fight with Jewish Home to push it out of the government and enable Zionist Union to join.

In response, Likud releases a statement that accuses the far-right Bennett of even worse leftist sympathies. Bennett, “elected by right-wing voters, is preserving the heritage of [Palestinian nationalist poet Mahmoud] Darwish in schools and fighting to preserve the left’s control of the media,” the statement claims.

Bennett is “digging tunnels, together with his ‘brother’ Lapid, beneath the rule of the Likud,” it charges.