JERUSALEM — Directly addressing his nationalist base, a beleaguered leader accuses the news media of obsessively promoting a liberal agenda, conducting a “witch hunt against me and my family,” and trying to overturn unpalatable electoral outcomes through sinister legal machinations.
This may sound like President Donald Trump. But this time it is Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu.
Netanyahu has always had a thorny relationship with Israel’s prominent media outlets, where top writers, broadcasters and editors are generally more open to peace-seeking concessions to the Palestinians than the prime minister’s nationalist Likud Party is. But his comments at a Likud Party rally on Wednesday evening — days after police revealed he is a suspect in several corruption cases — were an escalation that could have been lifted directly from Trump’s playbook.
With hundreds of adoring supporters cheering wildly, Netanyahu launched into a tirade, accusing the media and political opposition of conspiring to topple him when he cannot be defeated at the ballot box. He carefully avoided any mention of the police and prosecutors who are conducting the actual investigation.
“The thought police in the media work full-time to set the agenda, and woe to anyone who veers away from it,” Netanyahu said. “We know that the left and the media — and we know that it’s the same thing — is on an obsessive witch hunt against me and my family with the goal of achieving a coup against the government.”
The crowd chanted “Down with the Media,” and one member held a large placard with a vulgar English expression against the media in front of the TV cameras. A reporter from the Times of Israel news site said Netanyahu supporters hurled insults and epithets at him, while a Channel 10 TV reporter was surrounded by a group of people who taunted him.
The tactic of attacking the media to deflect attention from political and legal trouble also seems part of an emerging zeitgeist in authoritarian-leaning countries these days.
In Vladimir Putin’s Russia, independent media have been taken over by Kremlin-friendly figures, and muckraking reporters have faced dismissals and even death. In Recep Teyep Erdogan’s Turkey, scores of journalists are in jail, and in Viktor Orban’s Hungary, the independent media is regularly vilified.
But the most striking parallel, of course, is with Trump, who has constantly attacked the media, especially after he won the Republican nomination about a year ago and many American media outlets began in earnest to fact-check his statements and frequently conclude he has a penchant for uttering provable falsehoods.
The New York Times now keeps a running tally of “Trump’s Lies,” and Politifact, a fact-checking project operated by the Tampa Bay Times, has classified 69 percent of Trump’s statements as either ‘Mostly false,” ”false,” or “pants on fire.”
Netanyahu has employed tactics similar to Trump’s. He rarely gives interviews or holds press conferences, preferring instead staged photo opportunities, handout videos or statements delivered on Facebook and WhatsApp. His government is pushing to close the Arab satellite channel Al-Jazeera, accusing it of incitement.
