Old Habits Die Hard

Israeli mainstream media, the Israeli left, center-left and #FakeNews

By Noam A. Rotem (Op-Ed originally published on Times of Israel Blogs: http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/old-habits-die-hard/)

For years and up until very recently, news anchors on Israeli primetime TV and radio, along with politicians from Israel’s center-left and left parties, have been repeating an old and decayed axiom that the majority of the Israeli public knew was no longer true, yet no one appeared to be supplying the evidence for its demise.

But finally the proof is in. A new poll conducted by leading Israeli pollster Dr. Mina Tzemach for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, found that a majority of the Jewish public in Israel no longer supports, the Clinton parameters for a two State solution. See full poll results here.

The reasons (not covered by the poll), are obvious, as I wrote in an op-ed last September:

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.

(From my op-ed: Questions Israeli Mainstream Media didn’t and won’t ask Hillary, published on Tel Aviv Vistas and Arutz Sheva, on September 12, 2016).

Not surprisingly, the poll, published on March 30, got virtually no coverage by Israeli mainstream electronic media. But thankfully, Caroline Glick cited the poll, both in an op-ed of hers (‘Israel’s silenced majority’ 03/31/2017), as well as in an interview with Avi Abelow, on his Daily Israel Straight Talk Facebook page.

The poll results are actually really big news, particularly for the center-left and mainstream media, who have continued to stubbornly believe and sanctimoniously insist, that the Israeli consensus is still firmly behind their steamrolled two state solution. But the Israeli public was not oblivious to the fact, that nearly every concession Israel made towards a two state solution, was almost always met with rampant murderous Palestinian terrorism. No matter how hard they tried, the Israeli mainstream media and center left parties, could not whitewash this self-evident evil.

Yet, despite the lack of coverage, the poll seems to have had an impact. Until its publication, on almost a daily basis, across the spectrum of Israeli mainstream electronic media, news anchors, political pundits, and politicians from the left and center left, would whip out this false pretense of alleged overwhelming public opinion support, for a two state solution. They especially would bring it up, when trying to suppress any open debate, about alternative solutions. But since its publication, at least for now, there appears to be almost “radio silence” by the Israeli troika (comprised of the Israeli left, center-left and their mouthpiece — Israeli mainstream media).

According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, the idiom ‘Old habits die hard’ is used to say it is hard to stop doing things that one has been doing for a long time. This adage, resonates appropriately well in this case, of the Israeli left, center-left and mainstream media.