Writing in Haaretz, columnist Rogel Alpher thanks Gideon Sa'ar: "Personally, I didn't vote for Sa'ar, I voted for Yair Lapid, but together with the rest of the anti-Netanyahu camp, which of course includes all the Meretz and Labor voters, I thank him immensely."
Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter
Of course, this echoes what Sa'ar himself said at the end of Election Day last week: "If it hadn't been for us, the analysts would have left the studios and Netanyahu would have 65 mandates."
There's no doubt that Sa'ar's "success" in moving mandates from right-wing voters to the Left was an enormous achievement for them. But even though the media is celebrating Sa'ar's contribution to its own agenda, we can and should look at the gambit from the opposite point of view. Sa'ar should be the one thanking the media.
If it hadn't been for the media, would Sa'ar have won the six seats he did? Would Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Lieberman have won seven? Would Yamina's Naftali Bennett even imagine himself as head of a party with seven seats? And the mirror image of all these is the party in power, which did not increase its seats despite all its achievements. To put it simply, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is having a hard time increasing his base without support from the media, others are elected without any base – by the media.
The real story isn't "the success" of various and sundry parties against Netanyahu, to the pundits' satisfaction. The story is about the camp the media wants and the one it excludes. About the ones who obey the media and give into it, and those who stay critical of it and lead a way that goes against the media's messages.
Two days after the March 23 election, Bloomberg published research that ranked Israel fifth in the world in handling the COVID crisis. No one heard about that. The difficult situation of European countries was also barely reported. We didn't hear about their vaccine shortages, or about their lockdown, or about their rising mortality. Israel's good economic standing in comparison to other OECD nations was another tidbit that the citizens were "saved" from hearing. But everyone knows about our 6,000 COVID dead and can talk about "a million unemployed" (an inaccurate figure).
Netanyahu was right when as early as 1996, he was talking about the power of the media. He was wrong in thinking he would get around it via social media. Most of the people still consume media from the mainstream channels only. And when that artery is blocked or biased, the bypasses get the messages only to those who are already independent of the main route.
If only Netanyahu had listened to the analysts, if only he had devoted himself to them like his opponents did. Image what would have happened. How he would have been portrayed as a prime minister who had secured four peace agreements, who waged a determined war to keep Iran from nuclearizing and who defeated the pandemic through vaccines. Who knows?
The Right needs to realize that the real glass ceiling doesn't have to do with its voters, the people, but with the media. And in this election, when it came down to the power of the people vs. the power of the media – the media won.
Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!
