The Media's to Blame

When Kadima says "trust us" and doesn't reveal any policies, it means they are the chosen favorites of the 5 Families who will do their bidding. Israel is heading for long-term disaster by placing these foxes, along with Peretz's Labor, in the henhouse rules' committee.

A few days prior to the election, two top Israeli journalists - known for their rare combination of intelligence, courage and integrity - threw a veritable bombshell into the otherwise soporific electoral debate.

To preserve the large lead that Ariel Sharon gained for his newly formed Kadima, under the leadership of the less popular Ehud Olmert, party strategists decided to keep the election campaign on a low key. Though Israel faces some life-and-death choices that voters should understand and sort out, Kadima strategists refused to have Olmert debate his two chief rivals, the Likud's Binyamin Netanyahu and Labor's Amir Peretz. They also managed to have a very supportive media keep any serious issue out of the public's eye.

This is why the extraordinarily critical articles, one by senior Haaretz columnist Ari Shavit, and the other by Guy Rolnik, Haaretz and the Marker economic editor, people from the Left, mind you, would have created a media firestorm in any normal country.

Shavit and Rolnik asserted that Netanyahu, whom the media marked as enemy of the poor and a peon of the rich, was actually the man who saved the Israeli economy from collapse and protected the poor; that he was the one who broke the major power of the rich, the bank monopoly; and that conversely, Kadima and its leader, the darlings of the media, may actually endanger Israel's security, and corrupt its democratic system and its economy.