Especially in these weeks leading to elections, the Israeli press is hard at work trying to shape the average voter’s sense of what is broken and what needs to be fixed. The center and the left point to all the obvious — and critical — issues. The right can’t argue that the war has gone well. It can’t argue that Iran has been vanquished. It can’t argue that Netanyahu is popular.
So what’s it to do? Today, as we’ll continue to do throughout the coming weeks, a glimpse into how the Israeli Hebrew press is seeking to shape the pre-election conversation — in ways that the English press doesn’t really cover.
It was not surprising that Friday’s Yedi’ot carried first and foremost the story of what’s been happening in Qusra. That sickening scene has sadly made international headlines, with the press reporting that Donald Trump has told Benjamin Netanyahu to publicly condemn the actions of the settlers (to which Bibi has not responded). There are also reports that the events there are high on Jared Kushner’s agenda for his planned upcoming visit to Israel.
The general story is that Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) is simply out of control. The army won’t (“can’t” is hard to imagine) get things in order, in all likelihood because the coalition cannot afford to lose right-wing votes just weeks before an election. So the political echelon may well be handcuffing the military.
Sadly, none of that is terribly new or surprising.
Yet what has really been fascinating to me in recent days is how divided Israelis are about the issue, even among those who do not support settler violence.
Last week, I met with a former government official, who worked very, very closely with Netanyahu for years (he’s now out of government). Our subject was not Qusra or politics, but of course, the conversation meandered to that.
“People reporting that story the way they are have an agenda,” he told me.
I was shocked. What kind of agenda does one need to abhor what’s happening?
“Well, the optics are pretty horrific,” I replied.
“The optics are terrible.”
“And I can’t imagine that you support violence against innocent civilians.”
“Of course I don’t.”
“And when it’s people in kippot doing it, it’s a total chilul ha-shem [desecration of God’s name].”
“It’s a total chilul ha-shem,” he acknowledged.
“So where’s the ‘agenda’ in reporting on it?”
“Well, Bedouin violence against Jews in Negev is a huge problem, and it’s no more of a threat to the rule of law. Why is no one reporting on it? And the violence in the Arab community is out of control, but Donald Trump isn’t taking an interest in that. And there are gangs of criminals run by people in kippot and no one reports on that — it’s part of the ugly crap that every society has. Qura is being carried out by a tiny, tiny, tiny fringe of what’s mostly a very law-abiding, decent population. Why is it this issue that’s got everyone up in arms? Because they have an agenda.”
He certainly didn’t convince me, but it was also clear that the conversation wasn’t going to be productive. So I dropped it and we moved on to our real subject.
But on the way home, I thought to myself: Here’s a man who’s a totally decent guy, probably wants an Israel that looks very much like the one that I still dream of, is very educated, is sick of this government, etc. Yet he looks at the same situation that makes me sick and says to himself (and to me), “Yes, of course it’s bad, but those reporting on it have an agenda.”
Wow. Is there an electorate that can topple this government? I’m far from certain.
So, now, how is the right supposed to respond?
It can’t say that it approves of the violence there. It can’t applaud what the fringe of the fringe of the fringe are doing. So … it shifts the focus to the conflict over land and populations, but elsewhere.
The story is fascinating. I haven’t seen it reported anywhere, but it certainly reads like serious journalism.
Before we get to this “new” story of Israel consciously and knowingly giving up the Galilee, first let’s look at how the “centrist” press covered Qusra on Friday. Nothing surprising there:
HEADLINE: The invasion that got totally out of control.
TEXT TO THE LEFT: Washington has demanded that Netanyahu publicly denounce the violence in Qusra, while the diplomatic damage continues to grow ⚫️ The American ambassador: “Get these Jewish terrorists out of there” ⚫️ Jared Kushner is expected in Israel later this week and plans to discuss the West Bank with the Prime Minister.
An AI-generated translation of the story above:
This is an incomprehensible story about a country that endangers itself, doing so with its own hands, willingly and voluntarily, without noticing that it is acting against its own strategic interests.
For years, the planning bodies of the State of Israel have been approving large-scale construction plans for the Arab sector in the Galilee. These plans greatly expand Arab localities at the expense of state land, place them in critical areas controlling major traffic arteries, turn the small Jewish localities established in the past into enclaves, create stretches of kilometers without a Zionist footprint, and most importantly: these construction plans are far larger than the needs of the Arab localities and their natural population growth. In other words, the state is allowing the Arab sector to take over more and more land that, even taking into account its most optimistic growth forecast, it will not need even fifty years from now.
Using planning tools as an antithesis to Zionism. Prof. Khamaisi | Photo: Chen Galili
The team at “HaKol HaYehudi” tracked for a long period the story of Prof. Rassem Khamaisi, the planning guru in the Arab sector, who is behind significant parts of this planning worldview. They gathered texts he published in Arabic, collected documentation from conferences featuring anti-Israel content that he attended around the world, and studied how he perceives the opportunity to lead a transformation of the Galilee’s landscape through the official planning bodies of the State of Israel, as part of a Palestinian national ideology.
It can be assumed that those who awarded him the “Distinguished Planner in Israel” award on behalf of the Israeli Planners Association, those who invited him to participate in drafting Israel’s National Master Plan, and those who hosted him at the President’s Residence in Israel were unaware of all this.
Two images below, you can see the cover of the Magazine Section that ran the much longer story on the subject, with the language on the cover AI-translated below that.
Above that cover, though, see this map of the doomed 1947 Partition Plan, and note how Friday’s cover is meant to evoke images of those famous maps back from almost 80. years ago.
Investigation: How the State of Israel approves massive-scale construction in Arab localities in the Galilee, promoting territorial continuity that could suffocate Jewish settlements and lead to the severing of the country in the next war.
If much of the story is true, the obvious question is “Who is in charge?” Who’s focused on the future of the country?
Among those in actual power, it turns out—very, very few.
Share Israel from the Inside with Daniel Gordis
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.