Yisrael HaYom, the 14-month-old free Hebrew daily that has catapulted to the third-largest in the country, wrote Sunday that the left-leaning media in Israel "has long since taken over a monopoly on wisdom." Its editorial stated, "All of the news shows are comprised of smart-alecks whose ideas sprawl from the center leftward."
It called Israeli newspapers and broadcast stations an "aggressive minority that has long since abandoned the classic journalistic stance of one who reports and tries to paint a credible picture of the reality, and has become a central player in the Israeli political debate."
Yisrael HaYom is owned by American Jewish billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who is associated with nationalist views and has publicly supported Likud chairman and Opposition Leader Binyamin (Bibi) Netanyahu.
The Maariv newspaper editorialized the same day with high praise of new Kadima chairperson Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. "She has already proven that she has the ability to shake off Revisionist beliefs and adjust herself to reality," wrote Rafi Mann. "How many more years will pass and how many more wars will break out until Eli Yishai [chairman of Shas] and his friends understand, as Livni internalized when the Beitar barricades came down, that whoever is stuck in the legacy of the past without any wisdom to compromise, endangers the future?"
Foreign Minister Livni was formerly active in the nationalist Beitar movement.