Spins, and the spinning spinners who spin them

Savvy readers of the Hebrew press know that navigating the news on any given day is an exercising in threading a way through a shadowy minefield of spin, poorly sourced reports and leaks.

On Sunday, though, all three burst out from behind the shadows to center stage, as the media covers a series of reports, some of them damning, on government failures in the lead up to and execution of Operation Protective Edge, settlement building and (gasp!) politicians lying (kinda), and the government’s response to them.

A story in Yedioth Ahronoth on the Gaza war report focuses on rising pressure on the government to release the State Comptroller report, which reportedly comes down hard on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, and then IDF chief Benny Gantz over the fact that they did not keep the cabinet in the loop about plans to go to war with Hamas.

The criticism might be easily dismissed were it just coming from blowhard political opponents. But with the parents of those killed in the war speaking out, and given the timing mere days before Memorial Day, when the country stops to remember its fallen soldiers and war or terror victims, the affair takes on some added heft.

“I trust the State Comptroller more than Netanyahu,” Shachar Yauri, whose son Amit was killed in the 2014 war, is quoted telling Yedioth. “Everyone knew they ignored the tunnel issue and management of the war was a failure.”

Not surprisingly, Israel Hayom’s coverage of the affair, which leads its papers, lasers in not on the criticism but on Netanyahu’s furious anger over the report getting leaked, running the front page headline “The leak: Lies and distortion.”

Inside, the paper sheds yet more light on what Netanyahu wants you to think about the report on the report, which it confirms was leaked but still says is full of lies.

“There’s no similarity between what has been reported and what is in the draft,” the paper quotes as said in the ghostly ether surrounding Netanyahu. “Even the draft changed a lot from the final report after answers to the draft were given. Without getting into details, the comptroller also noted that the prime minister spelled out the tunnel threat as a central threat long before the operation and ordered all systems to act against the threat. The draft was leaked and lied about by those with political interests, including irresponsible politicians that were in the cabinet, that know the truth and prefer to distort in for political needs.”

The prime minister’s inability to take criticism is cause enough for Haaretz to pen yet another lead editorial calling for him to step down.

“Instead of welcoming any probe aimed at improving future performance, the PM’s aides reacted with hostility to the publication of details from the comptroller’s draft report,” the paper writes. “Leaders are also judged on their ability to listen to and implement criticism. Netanyahu’s resistance to being the subject of criticism is additional proof that he is not suited to be premier.”

In Israel Hayom, though, Dan Margalit tries to find a happy middle between the government and bereaved parents and other critics.

“The government waged the war correctly, but it didn’t explain what was going on to the public well since it wasn’t popular and wasn’t a total victory but rather an interim arrangement lasting as long as possible,” he writes. “The right answer to the watchdog report is this summation: Israel does not want to capture the Strip. An occupation like that is a Pyrrhic victory, which will harm our security and our international standing and raise the number of casualties.”

The column strikes at the heart of Netanyahu’s image of himself as the great communicator, a leader who believes he or his government can talk its way out of any situation.

Hence the lead Haaretz story, which reports that Israel is trying to get an upcoming Quartet report on settlement building to soften its tone, not by changing any policies (the paper even reports that a new settlement may be in the offing) but by lobbying officials to change their minds.

“A senior official in Jerusalem said that Israel is in contact with all members of the Quartet to try to soften the report. The contacts are being coordinated by Netanyahu’s representative Isaac Molho, who is holding frequent talks on the subject with the American envoy Frank Lowenstein.

Senior Foreign Ministry officials are holding similar talks with representatives of the United Nations, the European Union and Russia,” the paper reports. “Israel has also conveyed various documents to the Quartet to try to provide information that will soften criticism of Israel or at least increase criticism of the Palestinians.”

Netanyahu may have a tough time winning any brownie points with the White House, though, when Israel Hayom, which is seen as closely linked to him, reports on a New York Times profile of National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes as “adviser of lies.”

The occasion for the pejorative? The New York Times profile of Rhodes in which he says he spun the Iran nuclear negotiations as having begun under President Hassan Rouhani, when in fact they began under Ahmadinejad.

One man’s misleading media spin, though, is another man’s outrage, and that man is Boaz Bismuth, who pens a column excoriating Rhodes and Obama and accusing some of his fellow pen jockeys of being White House transcribers, an interesting charge coming from someone who so often just parrots Netanyahu’s line.

“Obama raised the international and regional standing of Iran in order to avoid his commitments to US allies in the Middle East, including Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey,” he writes. “The Obama administration made use of journalists ‘27-years-old without any knowledge or experience’ (the ‘cordial’ description used by Rhodes himself) to repeat to the world whatever chorus the government chose. Even more experienced journalists like Jeffrey Goldberg (Atlantic) and Laura Rozen (Al-Monitor) turned, on the Iranian question, into nothing more than stenographers for the government.”