Sunday, September 11, 2016

The Tough Questions That Israeli Mainstream Media Didn't, Couldn't and Wouldn't ask Hillary Rodham Clinton

By Noam A. Rotem

On September 8th, Israel Channel 2 News published an interview conducted by their primetime evening news anchor Yonit Levi with Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The interview had all the trappings of so called "liberal" mainstream media in general, with Hillary Clinton being treated to kid-glove questions. In this case it had an additional twist of Israeli left-leaning mainstream media, where by Yonit Levi, fairly unabashedly was seen fawning over every statement of Hillary Clinton through out the 20 minute interview.

As typical for such a contrived media stage, where interviewer and interviewee, share a mutual political agenda, neither difficult questions, nor questions of true substance, were asked.

At least a half dozen difficult and substantial questions could have been asked. Here are three out of the many I would have liked to hear.

Right at the opening, Yonit, who can be totally adversarial when she interviews someone on the right, goes into a long-winded compliment about how much political experience Hillary has and says that even her detractors would agree with that.

The more real, relevant and tough question that should have been asked is:
During your tenure as secretary of  state, under president Obama, Iraq spiraled into mayhem with the complete retreat of American forces, spawning ISIS; Iran is on the march, in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Lebanon; the Iranian reformist protest of 2009 was brutally crushed, while the US stood by silently; the Muslim brotherhood rose to power in Egypt; Libya descended into complete chaos, leaving in its wake 4 dead Americans, including the Ambassador; Christians are being persecuted and ethnically cleansed through out the mideast. Russian influence is growing in the Mideast and eastern Europe; North Korea is a menace to American allies in the Far-East. 
Given that record, why should Americans trust you when it comes Foreign Policy?
Early on in the interview Hillary dissed all Trump supporters as being either racists or disenfranchised, begging the following question to be asked:
So given that most polls show between 40%-45% of Americans support Trump, are you saying that at least 40%-45% of Americans are either racists or disenfranchised? 
Regarding the Israeli-Arab conflict, here's a question that many Jews and Israelis like me would love to hear, yet it will never be asked by Israeli mainstream media, as while in their misguided fantasy they see themselves as the so call "watchdogs" of democracy, in fact many times they're no more than a mouthpiece for the political agendas of the center-left. And the question is:
Both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, systematically teach and preach virulent hatred of Jews, and the liquidation of the Jewish State. Suicide bombers are not just venerated as national heroes, their families are rewarded with lifetime pensions. Both regimes systematically deny the factual 3,000 year old history of Jews in and to the land of Israel. And when Israel in a gesture of goodwill, handed over the Gaza strip, complete with state-of-the-art greenhouse agriculture, the response of the Palestinians, was to destroy those greenhouses, and vote in a tyrannical terrorist regime, bent on allocating all monetary and human resources, to the destruction of the state of Israel. 
Given that, why should Israelis support a Two-State solution, which the Republican party has removed from their platform.
Watching Yonit Levi's display of exaggerated flattery, one gets the sense, that in her fantasy, she actually believed she was asking difficult questions, making her performance all the more embarrassing, almost sophomoric, and underscores the mind-set of elitist mainstream Israeli media, that have virtually no self-awareness, of how disconnected and biased they are, nor how the public actually perceives them for what they actually are -- a mouthpiece for a center-left political agenda.

Israel is very much in need of a media reform, one in the form of a free market, that would enable a "marketplace of ideas" where the truth and excellence in reporting, can emerge via free and open competition.

This article was also published on the Op-Ed page of Arutz Sheva:
Op-Ed: Questions Israeli Mainstream Media didn't and won't ask Hillary

As well as in Hebrew on News1 מחלקה ראשונה:
שאלות שתקשורת המיינסטרים לא שאלה את הילרי

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