It’s now officially the silly season of the 2019 elections, when senior politicians who opt away from face-to-face debates with their opponents (in Benny Gantz’s case, even from saying anything at all about their own agenda), preferring instead to pick fights online.
Case in point: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday morning used a dumb Instagram message posted Saturday night by fashion model, actress, and TV presenter Rotem Sela, to respond with his own agenda point.
Now, don’t get me wrong, the original message, like its medium, was really dumb, and Bibi’s comment was absolutely on the money, but is this now the substitute for an intelligent debate? For a no-holds-barred press conference?
I’ll take you through it, because, well, because it’s there, but give me a break:
“When in hell will anyone in this government tell the public that Israel is a state of all its citizens, and all human beings were born equal,” Sela exploded, following a TV interview she obviously hated. “And the Arabs, God forbid, are human beings. As are the Druze. And the homosexuals too, by the way, and the lesbians and also … what a shock … the leftists.”
Like I said, Netanyahu responded Sunday morning on his Instagram page [emphasis added]:
“Dear Rotem, important correction: Israel is not a state of all its citizens. According to the Basic Law we have passed, Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people – and only them.
“As you wrote, there is no problem with the Arab citizens of Israel – they enjoy equal rights like all of us, and the Likud government invested more in the Arab sector than any other government.
“The Likud only wanted to hone the central issue in these elections: will it be a strong, right-wing government headed by me, or a left-wing government led by Yair Lapid and Gantz with the support of the Arab parties.
“[This is because] Lapid and Gantz have no other way of forming a government [except with Arab support] and such a government would undermine the security of the state and of the citizens.
“The decision is coming in a month at the ballot box. Good Day.”
The problem is not that Netanyahu took the time to respond to an Israeli celeb, it’s OK, it’s even charming.
The problem is that this is all he does: he now even started his own Facebook TV channel where shameless so-called journalists are lobbing such softballs at him, one wonders who actually watches this drivel.
With zero solutions to increasing, daily terrorism both in Gaza and Judea and Samaria, with a spending deficit that’s pushing 4%, with an approaching deal of the century that’s sure to split Jerusalem in half, with humiliation to the Jews on the Temple Mount, with outrageous yet needless poverty, with crumbling hospitals – the list goes on and on – our prime minister refuses to answer legitimate questions from knowledgeable reporters, hiding instead behind cute attacks on bimbos.
Update: PM Netanahu further clarified his position at the more respectable Sunday morning cabinet meeting:
I would like to clarify a point that, apparently, is not clear to slightly confused people in the Israeli public. Israel is a Jewish, democratic state. This means is that it is the national state of the Jewish people alone. Of course it respects the individual rights of all its citizens – Jews and non-Jews alike, but it is the national state, not of all its citizens, but only of the Jewish people.
Other peoples, other nationalities and other minorities – have national representation in other states. The national representation of the Jewish people is in the State of Israel. Israel is the national state of the Jewish people and of it alone.