“Who will investigate the media?” former Likud MK Landau asked, speaking with Israel National Radio’s Yishai Fleisher and Alex Traimain Wednesday. “They shaped the perceptions and brainwashed the minds of the people of Israel. And these same people continue to write in the papers and appear on TV and invite to their programs the very same people who for the past ten or fifteen years have been responsible for dragging Israel into the swamp we find ourselves in.”
“The leaders of the country – Kadima and [Labor Party Chairman Amir] Peretz and the like – they have come to their positions because of the media. The media did everything they could to promote the [Sharon] government and Disengagement, and conducted a purposeful delegitimization campaign toward everyone who was against it – the settlers, the religious and the entire national camp.”
Landau says that more than the government, most journalists in Israel’s media betrayed their profession, allowing their affinity for the political philosophy of concessions to interfere with the presentation of an informed discussion of the pros and cons of that policy. “We all knew and said loudly that this unilateral withdrawal under terror will bring much more terror in the north and in the south – that more weapons would be smuggled and that Hamas and the Hizbullah would politically gain tremendously. This was not brought to the attention of the people. Instead of presenting the debate to Tel Aviv, Haifa and Afula – to the entire State of Israel - they shaped the debate as between 8,000 settlers, who will pay a price but be compensated, and the rest of the six or seven million Israelis, who will enjoy peace and prosperity because of the Disengagement.
“They mocked people warning of rockets on Ashkelon. They downplayed all the alerts from military intelligence.”
Asked whether the media have not always leaned to the left, Landau said that whereas the liberal bent of Israel’s media is deeply entrenched, the willingness to disregard blatant corruption to advance their causes personified the hypocrisy that led him to issue his call for an inquiry among Israel’s journalists and editors. “They not only promoted the Disengagement agenda, but kept Ariel Sharon and his regime from any possible investigation. Israel in the past two years has surpassed all the norms of conduct with its corruption, but the media downplayed that in order not to interfere with the Disengagement process.”
Touching upon the subject of the lack of press coverage during Hizbullah’s six years of open preparation for battle against Israel, Landau said the focus was shifted to a new enemy: the settlers. “During the withdrawals of the past two years, the attention was diverted by the media toward the subject of how the national camp is the enemy of the people instead of covering how the terrorists are making military preparations to attack. They focused on combating the settlers instead of defending the State of Israel.”
Concluding his indictment, Landau summed up his charges: “Israel’s media behaved toward the national camp in the same manner that the anti-Semitic world media behave toward Israel in general.”
Landau is not the first public figure to blame Israel’s media for recent events. Just after Israel re-entered Gaza, former Chief of Staff Moshe Yaalon accused Israel’s media of blinding and drugging the public. “The Israeli public backed the Disengagement because it was blinded and drugged,” Yaalon said in a July interview. “The Disengagement was mainly a media spin. Those who initiated it and led it lacked the strategic, security, political and historical background. They were image counselors and spin doctors. These people put Israel into a virtual spin, disconnected from reality, using a media spin campaign which is imploding before our eyes.”