The Likud Youth intend to continue to hold protests outside Yedioth Aharonoth House in Tel Aviv, as the newspaper continues to publish front page stories that besmirch the Prime Minister's wife, Sarah Netanyahu, regarding bottle deposits she supposedly pocketed.
David Shain, Chairman of Likud Youth, told Arutz Sheva that the demonstration held last week outside Yedioth House was only the first in a series, meant “to protest against the tack being followed by the newspaper against the prime minister and his family, involving mudslinging and distortion of reality.”
“This is not a newspaper, but yellow journalism,” he argued. “And what we want is that the paper expose its agenda, that they are leftists and they want to bring down Netanyahu's government, and let the public be the judge.”
He weighed in on the ongoing war between pro-Netanyahu Israel Hayom and Yedioth, and said that while the warm relations between Netanyahu and Israel Hayom publisher Sheldon Adelson are a well known matter, “here there is a paper that seeks to topple the Prime Minister, and publishes front page headlines against his day after day, without stating who it truly serves. These are the same people who wanted to shut down Israel Hayom for purely financial reasons, supposedly in the name of democracy.”
Israel Hayom was established by Adelson as a counterweight to the rabidly anti-Netanyahu press in the Jewish state – and specifically, to daily newspaper Yedioth Aharonoth, which was the nation's leading daily for decades.
In response, Yediot Aharonot and other publications declared war on Israel Hayom. A bill was introduced in the Knesset last year, with the aim of shutting down the freebie paper, a favorite at train stations and shopping centers, which its rivals call “the Bibiton” – a welding of Netanyahu's nickname with the Hebrew word for newspaper – “iton.”
The bill – which passed in the preliminary reading – was seen as proof that Yedioth still wields huge influence among politicians, and as a factor that led Netanyahu to call early elections.