WarSclerotic

When it comes to Yedioth Ahronoth’s dirty game over the Iran issue, anything goes. I have spoken with serious contacts who know a thing or two about U.S.-Israel relations, and they know the media well too. They don’t believe the reports by the paper’s top columnist Shimon Shiffer. Do you really think that America would pass on a message to Iran through the “most covert” and “most sensitive” channels only for Shiffer to scupper the move by publishing it? If the leader of the free world really did ask the ayatollahs to spare America and its strategic interests in the Persian Gulf, then we’re in really big trouble. But everyone knows that this report is nonsense. And indeed, the White House vehemently denied the story, saying, “It’s incorrect, completely incorrect” and “false,” reiterating that Israel and the U.S. are in close cooperation on the issue.

In any case, it’s worth taking at look at how this newspaper, which once touted itself as “the nation’s newspaper,” has turned into a channel for statements from liberal sources in the U.S. whose goal is to taint the Israeli government. Everything is permissible for Yedioth. Even this week’s publication of an anonymous letter in which the author pleads for the life of her pilot husband, who may, God forbid, be sent to strike Iran. According to the headline, the letter was penned by the wife of an Israeli air force pilot, but the real identity of the author is absolutely unclear. What next for Yedioth? A letter signed by the wives of pilots who believe that the existential threat posed by a nuclear Iran should come before their own personal interests? Where’s the responsibility?

The same edition brought us a lamenting column from senior commentator, Nahum Barnea. His hopes for a happy new Jewish year are upset by “serious credibility problems … the future does not bode well … we’re at the edge of the abyss.” How typical. Left-wingers are always so ready to believe in villains and dictators. But not when it comes to their own society — it is always on a slippery slope as far as they are concerned. In particular, when they aren’t the ones running the country, and their visions of peace have been refuted through blood and fire. We never came across such statements during the Oslo Accords, even though the future then certainly did not bode well. Who could have seen beyond the euphoria that Yedioth and its associates had left us with armed gangs that had entered into the western side of Israel under the guise of a peace agreement?

According to Barnea, “the necessary battle against the Iranian nuclear program,” has become, “a personal argument between leaders and a diplomatic crisis.” He apparently believes Shiffer’s stories. And in any case, the crisis is not over a serious issue, but rather benefits “[Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s American donors who hope for a Republican president, and of course, Iran.” With a few strokes of his keyboard, Barnea creates a venomous correlation between the oppressive Iranian regime and Netanyahu and his supporters.

Wait for it — there’s also a sop to the voodoo doll that Barnea’s clone, Channel 2 TVs Amnon Abramovich, likes to stick pins in during his “analysis”: the settlers. Constructing settlements, didn’t you know, is the sacrifice “of Netanyahu’s relations with foreign governments for the sake of the extreme Right — both in Israel and America.” The settlement of the Land of Israel is not a Zionist, Jewish or security need, but rather a whim of the “extreme right.” Do you need any further evidence of where Yedioth’s top journalist places on the political scale? Deep down on the Left. From there, everything looks extreme — even the Labor party and its leader, Barnea’s loathed nemesis.

When faced with the global recession, according to Barnea, “the government preferred to party.” Let’s look back, shall we? Wasn’t it Yedioth and its internet site that led the social justice protests and egged on the demonstrators against the “capitalist” government that does not heed the public’s cries? And how can we continue without repeating the false propaganda that the Right’s “tycoons suffocates the free press with its money.”

How much longer will the public have to be fed falsehoods? Yedioth Ahronoth is a free press? Can something be written in that paper that publisher Arnon (Noni) Mozes would not approve of? Alongside Barnea’s piece was an article by Emmanuel Rosen of Channel 10, viciously attacking former Attorney-General Menachem Mazuz for his “witch hunt” against former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. While swiping at Mazuz and defending Olmert, Rosen does not forsake another darling of Yedioth, former Minister Haim Ramon, and he slams Mazuz for calling Ramon a “liar” before the ruling in that case. On the surface, a free press, but could you imagine someone at Yedioth publishing an article by Rosen that supported Mazuz and attacked Ramon, for example? There’s no need for an answer.