Welcome news for nationalists: The Cabinet Sunday approved Bar-Ilan lecturer and conservative columnist Dr. Yoaz Hendel as Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s new media advisor.

His official title is head of the National Information Directorate (NID), and Dr. Hendel said he intends to change the department’s structure and establish a media and spokesman's directorate, which will be headed by current Channel 2 News Deputy Managing Director Liran Dan.

Hendel also was a columnist for the Hebrew-language Yediot Acharonot newspaper and military correspondent for the Makor Rishon newspaper.  

In a column last year, Hendel castigated the freedom of Arabs to build the new city of Rawabi in Samaria while Jews not only were forbidden to build new homes during the “building freeze” but also suffered a High Court order that a synagogue be demolished.

“We got used to the world referring to the war against Palestinian terrorism as apartheid, we got so used to being guilty, to the point of failing to notice that the construction apartheid happens to be directed against us,“ Hendel wrote in Yediot. “The Arabs are allowed to buy homes anywhere, while the Jews are not.”

Hendel is reserve officer and served in the naval commando unit Shayetet 13, the same unit that participated in the flotilla clash with IHH terror activists last year.

He is the fourth person to head the NID since Prime Minister Netanyahu took office less than three years ago, a fact that reflects disagreements between the Prime Minister and his media staff.