The media has an agenda when it comes to the protests for a more affordable standard of living, says Meir Indor, chairman of the Almagor terror victims' organization – and they are allowing that agenda to cloud their reporting.
Otherwise, he says, they would not – and could not – have reported that there were 30,000 participants in the demonstration for a lower cost of living held in Jerusalem last Saturday night, he says.
“On Tisha B'av, when we should be making an accounting of how we have fared when it comes to loving our fellow Jews, we see how the protests are turning into an axe being wielded by one part of the nation against another part, blaming them for economic problems – and that is being aided and abetted by the media,” Indor told Arutz 7 in an interview.
In a letter to retired High Court judge Dalia Dorner, who chairs the Israel Journalists Council, Indor said that the media was “shamelessly” promoting an anti-government agenda, seeking to cause the fall of Binyamin Netanyahu's government. “They have lost all restraint and professional ethics.”
He, along with other activists, filed an official complaint against the Council for allowing its members to engage in false reporting.
Indor based the complaint on a professional count by two teams of experts who viewed and analyzed videos and photos of the crowd that gathered in central Jerusalem Saturday night.
Using advanced imaging technology and sophisticated crowd analysis, the two teams came up with estimates that said that the crowd could not have physically exceeded 5,544 individuals.
In response, a Council official said that the complaint was being studied, but that there was little chance that the Council could do anything, even if Indor's information proved correct.
“As you know, since the establishment of the state, there has never been agreement on the exact number of participants in any demonstration or rally,” the letter added.