Netanyahu’s black magical thinking

How bad are things for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, beset on all sides by legal troubles and scandals and now news that a mogul known to have given him gifts is being investigated for bribery?

Things are so bad that Israel Hayom, the newspaper that is accused of having Netanyahu himself as its true editor in chief, the newspaper that went as far as erasing its archives to try to keep people from looking at how much influence Netanyahu has, that paper features the suspicions against the prime minister front and center on its front page, along with the country’s other major Hebrew-language dailies.

Things are so bad that even a photo op of Netanyahu for the opening of a new train line connecting the northern city of Karmiel goes from gimme to gimme a break, with Haaretz noting that it’s the third time the train has been inaugurated, with it still not open to the public.

But train delays are small potatoes compared to the news that Israeli Hollywood bigwig Arnon Milchan was questioned under caution by police in London, which is the top story in every major paper, and not because Milchan is a big deal in Hollywood. It’s because a case that Netanyahu’s supporters had dismissed as much ado about some gifts of cigars is now looking much more sinister.

Yedioth notes that this is the first time Milchan has been investigated as a suspect in the probe known as Case 1000, and that cops surprised him when he met them at the Israeli embassy in London with the news that he could be arrested.

“The question investigators are trying to find out now is if in exchange for the gifts Netanyahu helped Milchan’s business interests,” the paper reports, adding that his testimony helped bolster the case against Netanyahu.

Haaretz gives some more details about what Netanyahu is suspected of helping Milchan do, noting that the movie producer was implicated by billionaire Len Blavatnik, who like Milchan owns a stake in Israel’s Channel 10. “One of the suspicions being investigated is if Netanyahu meddled in the sale of Channel 10 to Blavatnik, and if that sale helped MIlchan’s business interests,” the paper reports.

Israel Hayom may have Milchen and Netanyahu suspicions on its front page, but inside, the story is simply a sidebar to coverage of the submarine scandal, which has sunk many top aides and army officials but has yet to reach Netanyahu. The paper also plays up the attorney general rejecting demands that Netanyahu testify in the probe or that more information be revealed.

“The state argued that the petition is part of a ‘campaign that is designed to pressure the law enforcement agencies,’ and added that the petitioner, who is a Labor party activist, ‘wants to meddle with the investigation on the move, without having the complete picture that law enforcement agencies have, only the partial reports that have been published in the media,’” the paper reports.

On Yedioth’s op-ed page, though, Aviad Kleinberg joins the ranks of those pundits nonplussed that everyone around the prime minister could be corrupt and he could be clean as a whistle, recalling the joke of a Hassid who bragged that his rabbi was so powerful that if he was traveling and Shabbat began, it would only be the holy day of rest around him but remain a weekday where he was.

“It’s amazing. Our holy rabbi Netanyahu has corruption in front of him and behind him, corruption to his right and corruption to his left, and he is clean as crystal,’ Kleinberg writes. “It’s unbelievable, and indeed it’s hard to believe what the rabbi’s foolish followers believe. The mud and sludge are flying everywhere. The fans, which were hit by the shit, are dripping and scattering the stink, and the decision maker, the man whose eye is on everything, from whom nothing is hidden, doesn’t get touched at all? It’s easier to believe in the power of the sage who can travel on a weekday during Shabbat,” he writes.

Netanyahu’s followers may believe in magical thinking to keep their prime minister clean, but they are also not even speaking the same language as other Israelis, according to Haaretz op-ed columnist Uzi Baram, who gives the left-leaning paper’s readers a taste of the new dictionary used by Netanyahu and his followers — in which those who support good relations with Arabs are anti-Zionist, and those who don’t support Hebron shooter Elor Azaria are hypocritical defeatists.

“In his battle for survival, Netanyahu is uprooting every accepted norm and is scornful any criticism of the fact that he is ‘the prime minister of the right.’ His behavior and the messages he is conveying have become so extreme that we are risking the genuine, existential danger of dividing the Jewish people into two nations – one in Israel, the other in the Diaspora – which are hostile to one another,” Baram writes, accusing the prime minister of having a “dybbuk of Trumpism” take him over.

Trumpism also means deflecting blame and pointing fingers at journalists. Israel Hayom, which does represent many of Netanyahu’s followers’ thinking, reports on an attempt to do just that, with a Freedom of Information request from a right wing media watchdog to expose phone calls between Yedioth published Arnon Mozes or Haaretz publisher Amos Schocken and politicians, after Netanyahu’s calls to Israel Hayom were revealed, showing close cooperation between them.

The paper reports that Israel Media Watch “is asking that the publishers’ meetings and call logs with key politicians during that same period be exposed to determine whether the two promised or gave good press in exchange for supporting” a bill that would have outlawed Israel Hayom’s free model.

The tabloid doesn’t only support Netanyahu, but also US President Donald Trump, as evidenced by an op-ed by Shmuel Sandler chiding media organizations for seeking to expose wrongdoing at the White House, and predicting that they won’t find anything because there’s nothing there, at least not enough to impeach.

“Media outlets threatened by Trump will continue to hope incriminating evidence, negligible as it may be, is found against Trump,” he writes. “Now we must wait and see if what worked with King Charles I and Nixon in the past will also work with President Donald I.”