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Editor’s Notes：In today’s newsletter, Ruth Margalit on the surprising ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. And she introduces her deep dive, from this week’s issue, into the talk-show host protecting Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Shock of a Gaza Ceasefire Deal
In Israel, grief and frustration about a long, brutal war is mixed with joy that some hostages may soon return.
Ruth Margalit, Reporting from Israel, the New Yorker, 01/17/25
In 2019, a billboard bearing the faces of four Israeli journalists went up not far from where I live, in Tel Aviv. How strange, I thought. The caption said, “THEY WON’T DECIDE. YOU DECIDE.” The billboard, it turned out, was a campaign for Likud, the Party led by Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. I was familiar with Netanyahu’s obsession with the press—an obsession that would later result in a criminal indictment, for trying to manipulate coverage. But something about that campaign felt personal. Likud wasn’t calling out Netanyahu’s political opponents, or his well-connected business élites. The Party was targeting a biographer, an investigative reporter, a political commentator, and a legal correspondent.
Netanyahu appeared convinced that the Israeli media was a machine working against him. It was only a matter of time before word got out about a counter-operation, performing on Netanyahu’s behalf to promote his interests and tarnish anyone considered a threat. It became known in Israel as the “poison machine.” For many of the government’s critics, the existence of such an orchestrated operation—along with the dysfunction of the center left—helps explain Netanyahu’s astonishing political turnaround since the Hamas-led attacks of October 7th and the devastating war that Israel has waged in Gaza since. One liberal activist asked me, “Can you imagine another country where, after everything we’ve been through, the government not only hasn’t fallen but is stable, with no sign of an opposition?”
Who was at the forefront of the poison machine? One name that kept coming up was Yinon Magal. Magal hosts a popular roundtable show on a Netanyahu-friendly network called Channel 14. A self-proclaimed “Bibi-ist,” Magal has described himself as a “vessel” for conveying messages from Netanyahu to the public. And so, at a time of ongoing war, growing international isolation, hostage crisis, and social rupture, I decided to enter the parallel universe of Channel 14—a place where, as one observer put it, “We are winning, and everything is honey.” I started by asking Magal whether we could meet. “Are you with me or against me?” he wrote back, with a winking emoji, and invited me over.
Read or listen to “Netanyahu’s Media Poison Machine” (需訂閱)
Related Readings：
• David Remnick on Joe Biden’s warning
• The challenge of leadership during catastrophe
• Donald Trump’s plans to take on the deep state
本文於 2025/01/17 18:17 修改第 1 次
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