New Netanyahu media czar takes flak for anti-Rivlin rant

It didn’t take long for the prime minister’s newly minted spin doctor to get his first media crisis to manage: his own appointment.

Ran Baratz, announced Wednesday as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s pick for new spokesman, came under fire after it emerged he publicly berated President Reuven Rivlin on Facebook a week ago.

Baratz, who was tapped as media adviser and head of public diplomacy and media in the Prime Minister’s Office said on October 25 that Rivlin was an insignificant figure, after the head of state flew back to Israel from the Czech Republic in coach.

“I think it says a lot that the president flies in economy class, goes around the plane and shakes hands with everyone,” Baratz wrote in a Hebrew-language rant. “In particular it says that he’s such a peripheral figure that there’s no concern for his life.”

Baratz went on to suggest sending Rivlin over the Syrian border on a paraglider, as an Israeli Arab recently did.

“A day later they would return him with the desire to open negotiations to return immediately to Iraq,” Baratz rambled, “just take him, upon our lives, Israelis, your president goes around the camp shaking everyone’s hands, trying to speak to us in Arabic he doesn’t know, tells us to unite because it’s a shame we are divided thus into tribes.”

Rivlin is fluent in Arabic and his father was a prominent Arabic scholar in Jerusalem who published the first Hebrew edition of the Quran.

The President’s Residence quickly responded to a report exposing the Facebook post, saying that the president viewed Baratz’s remarks gravely and “demands to know if his statements were known to the prime minister when he decided to appoint him to the post.”

The Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement later Wednesday night that it had not been aware of Baratz’s comments and that Netanyahu viewed them as unbecoming. Asked for clarifications, Baratz told the PMO the comments had been made as a private citizen and that his new state position demanded more restraint. Baratz also said in a late night interview with Channel 2 that he was sorry if Rivlin was offended.

His appointment will still need to be approved by the cabinet next week.

Baratz was previously founder of Hebrew conservative news website Mida, and faculty at the Ein Prat Academy outside Jerusalem.

He said in a statement after the announcement that public relations was the “main factor in the struggle over Israel’s standing.”

“The challenges that face us are many and include expanding public diplomacy activity in the new media in the international arena, as well as providing Israeli citizens with more effective access to the work of the prime minister and the government,” he said.

Baratz, a resident of the West Bank settlement of Kfar Adumim, formerly taught Greek philosophy at Hebrew University, but was dismissed, according to a Maariv report in 2010, because of his “affiliation with the right wing of the political map.”