One of the most powerful journalistic moments of the October 7 broadcast happened precisely when a journalist stripped himself of the limitations of his position: Tamir Steinman, who received more and more panicked messages from his friends in the envelope, gave up the responsibility that the profession requires and began to read them live – in the hope that this would help align the forces, some of which arrived late every. The circumstances at the moment are more political than military, but they are just as critical. And Steinman’s place was taken this time by his News 12 colleague, Yaron Avraham.
After seven months full of wretched anonymity among political officials, security officials and one senior political official – Avraham chose to do the right thing, even if the non-journalistic one, and expose the manipulation that has been transparent to everyone for years. “I refuse to cooperate with this game,” he announced after summarizing two horrified and panicked messages that a “politician” issued during the Sabbath, at the end of another week in which each edition opened with a headline about “critical hours.” Now, it seems, they are more critical than ever. Avraham explained to the last of the viewers that they had not yet understood that “the political party is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who issues this announcement from his office.” He even emphasized that “this announcement is not based on the opinion of the entire War Cabinet.”
While Abraham removed the mask that should have been removed a long time ago – and just before quoting a “senior security official” (somewhat ironic) and his commentary on the damage caused by Netanyahu’s messages – Tamar Ish Shalom on News 13 employed a similar tactic. Both of them will probably get a poison attack on the head in the next few days, Maybe she has already started. But the late courage of these two journalists, and of the systems that probably backed them up, is not just a small victory of the truth over the lie. It is also a loss of the worldview that leads Netanyahu Model 2024: surrender. Surrendered to the members of the cabinet on the right, surrendered to the members of the cabinet on the left, surrendered to the pressures of Biden, surrendered to the manipulations of Sinwar. Surrender every time he throws out the slogans “No Hamastan” (then “Total victory”, then “Rafih”) when he knows he has been trolling his supporters for months. Surrender when the beacon ceremony is cleared of the citizens of Israel, and perhaps of the representatives of the Knesset, just to please its narrow and fragile government. After in previous crises he could overturn his refusal to be interviewed by the media, this time he doesn’t even come to Channel 14. Here, he surrendered again.
It is not certain that Netanyahu is really preventing a deal proactively and for political reasons. It is doubtful if there is a person in Israel who does not want to see as many abductees return as possible, as healthy as possible and as soon as possible. But instead of the leadership, the media and the citizens having a mature and reasoned discussion about it – a senior political figure thinks that everyone is so stupid. That it is possible to be briefed anonymously to calm the members of the coalition, that it is possible to turn a blind eye when cease-fires are announced not from podiums but in leaks to American newspapers, that if he continues to ignore the abductees who were released, the families of those still there, the survivors of the kibbutzim, maybe they will simply stop being a nuisance. So soon they will announce that Yaron Avraham is part of the left bloc, that he has ceased to be a journalist. Meanwhile, on the planet of reality, the only thing he has ceased to be is a tool for a politician’s speaking set.
And there is nothing to delude ourselves, May 4th will not be the last day of the unnamed factors in the news reports. Even so, it is likely that soon there will be elections, then primaries in Likud, and then all the party’s senior officials will peek out of their hiding places to leak cowardly quotes without standing behind them. Even the new champions of the Joint Chiefs of Staff will probably soon learn how much fun it is to incite riots when you don’t sign them. But it may be that May 4 is not a day like any other, but a day when the fall will indeed fall where we are going. And if these hours are as critical as all parties want Let’s think, this is not the day to speak in the name of “political parties”. Let those who are afraid and surrender, let them understand that at least for today, Tamar Ish Shalom and the other commentators who mentioned the N They did an anti-journalistic action today, precisely because of it they became senior journalistic figures.
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