A top headline in Ha'aretz today blares the "news" that a top leader in the Jewish settlement enterprise in Judea and Samaria agrees that Jews will agree to leave their homes for a fair price.
Ha'aretz says it is publishing today, and will continue to do so tomorrow, selections from the "Israeli file" of Wikileaks. As its entrée today, its headline quoted Danny Dayan, head of the Yesha Council of Jewish Communities in Judea and Samaria, as saying that "settlers will agree to be evacuated in exchange for a fair price."
Deeper inside the story appears a more accurate version of the quote. "I am an economist," Dayan actually said, "and I know that there are people who will agree if the price is fair."
Dayan explained to Arutz-7 today, "Here's a scoop: The laws of economics apply in Judea and Samaria too. It is a fact that the more the State of Israel bribes Yesha residents with more money, the more there will be some people who are baited into cooperating with the economic expulsion. I have said this dozens of times in open forums; you don't have to go to Wikileaks for this, it's enough to use Google."
"The main thing I said [at the meeting with American officials cited by Wikileaks] and on many other occasions," Dayan said today, "is that even if they offer bribes up to the sky, the number of people who will agree to accept it will be negligible – but that, Haaretz didn't say."
"Only via ugly manipulation of my words and cutting off my sentences in the middle was Ha'aretz able to create a top headline at my expense," Dayan said.
"Apparently I'm doing something good on behalf of Jewish settlement and against the establishment of an Arab state in the western part of the Land of Israel if it was important to Ha'aretz to place me in their gunsights and press the trigger," Dayan added.
Danny Dayan, 56, made Aliyah as a child from South America. Not religiously observant, he joined the Land of Israel movement after growing up in Tel Aviv. His brother Aryeh was once a reporter for Ha'aretz, and his cousin Ilana Dayan is a popular broadcaster on IDF Army Radio.