Frontal confrontation: Naftali Bennett's harsh attack against News 12's senior political commentator, Amit Segal.
Bennett wrote in a post he published right at the start of Shabbat: "I admit that it is difficult for me and many others to understand what will become of you and why you choose to defend the government of default and to organize those on whose watch Israeli citizens were dispossessed, settlements were occupied, and thousands of Jews were murdered, raped, and kidnapped.".
He added: "For a reason no one understands, you have become a pathetic servant of the one who bears ultimate responsibility for the most terrible disaster since the Holocaust. Israel is on the verge of a constitutional crisis that you are working to prepare, while tens of thousands of millionaires are being recruited under Order 8, Israeli citizens are under alarms that you are normalizing, and there is danger to 59 Ron Aradim because of the government's failed conduct.".
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""But you're looking for my past tweets, instead of asking the prime minister what about the complete victory he promised, what about our hostages languishing in the tunnels, and doesn't Gadi Mozes and Jordan Bivas deserve to look them in the eye and ask for forgiveness. You were a respected journalist, Amit. You've become a scorned trumpeter. It's a shame.".
The popular commentator responded about an hour after the Sabbath to Bennett's attack and slammed him:
""A few weeks after the war began, I signed up for an exclusive interview on "Meet the Press" with Naftali Bennett, the former prime minister. As you know, with Bennett, a word is a word and a core promise is a core promise, and yet I was surprised when on Friday he called: "Really sorry, Amit, I'm terribly jet-lagged from the flight, I'll interview you next week, my word." A year and a quarter have passed, and the poor guy has yet to get over the jet lag.
Truth be told, I can understand Bennett. If you look at the polls, let's say Manu Geva's latest, about half of his potential voters supported the Netanyahu bloc in the last elections and half the opposing bloc. Only a madman or a particularly moral person would come to be interviewed when it is absolutely clear that every statement he makes will alienate half of his voters. It is obscene on a principled level, but politically it is smart.
Therefore, when the former prime minister and current pollster published an especially long post on the X-rated website against me 17 minutes after Shabbat began in Jerusalem, the first instinct of nerds like me is to fight back with fury. But it's lucky there's Shabbat, because during it, my curiosity as a political commentator was awakened: What happened, actually, that the man doesn't say a word about the hostage deal, evades any position on the fighting in the north, doesn't say anything about annexation or transfer, but the only issue he addressed without evading or confusing himself is the political commentator on News 12? Even I don't value myself that much. The man who said almost a word about refusal during the year of protest and who says nothing these days, who doesn't comment on the bodies of Golan and Netanyahu - is he talking about a journalist?
The immediate reason for the tantrum is a few reminders of his past unbridled attacks against the High Court of Justice, while today Ayelet Shaked (whom he calls "the obsessive" in his close associates' WhatsApp groups) is calling for respect for the High Court's ruling. At the same time, I also brought up a reminder of the days when Netanyahu glorified the High Court of Justice. I have already covered six prime ministers and worked the archives overtime for all of them. Sharon used to ignore until you were not sure he had even broadcast, Olmert didn't comment, Netanyahu didn't respond, Lapid would smile dismissively, Barak would exchange insults with you. The only one who broke through his thin skin was Bennett.
So why?
Here is my explanation. Bennett is now like someone in the media interrogation room who, on the advice of his advisors, must maintain the right to remain silent so as not to harm himself. But Bennett has a primal fear of the period when he served as prime minister with six right-wing mandates in a center-left government: Back then, everyone who voted for him did not like him, and everyone who did like him did not vote for him. The result was that Bennett became the first prime minister in Israeli history who did not dare to run for fear of not passing the electoral threshold. He fears that this time too he will remain bald on both sides, the country's champion in the polls and with a crash at the ballot box, as in all the previous times.
So he doesn't speak in the interrogation, but hums a tune to himself. And the tune Bennett hums is Kaplanist. Maybe it has to do with the fact that all his advisors today are protest members, that Eyal Waldman, one of the biggest donors, is his close friend to the new political path. Maybe it's because of the emotions he has towards the camp whose votes he took. That's why, two hours before the beeper attack was launched, Bennett is interviewed by a German newspaper and suggests there that they consider the possibility of a ceasefire "and fight another day." He was familiar, of course, with the beeper plan, but there's a new bass that ran at the end of the war.
In my opinion, Bennett is like someone filling out a travel form in front of Kaplan protesters in which he complains about the equipment he once had: in his rhetoric towards Netanyahu ("the government of destruction"), in his absolute refusal to support annexation, an idea he introduced into Israeli politics, and now in his attack on me. I'm not so worried about this as a journalist. After all, the one who introduced the wild attack on journalists into the toolkit of politicians in Israel was not Bibi 2017 but Bennett 2015. Some of his greatest attackers are today his greatest methodologists.
The reason Bennett flies into a rage when reminded of his own positions, and not so long ago, is not so that his new voters will remember that he was once right-wing. They do. The problem is, as my friend Amnon Abramovich once said, that people love betrayal, but they don't love the traitor.
"All this outpouring of anger stems from the fear that they will catch the big secret in his strategic plan in these elections: Just as in the 2021 elections he took the votes of right-wing voters to head a center-left government, now the strategic plan, if he fails to win the premiership, is to take the votes of center-wing voters and go to a right-wing government. Therefore, he must burn all bridges in front of them, even if it is 17 minutes after the Sabbath begins in Jerusalem.".
