The ongoing fight over the proposed Public Broadcasting Corporation, which would replace the government-run Public Broadcasting Authority, has led to some of the fiercest rhetoric between coalition allies Jewish Home and the Likud.
Jewish Home leaders Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked blasted a proposal endorsed by a number of Likud ministers which would delay the creation of the new corporation, saying demands for government control over the selection of the corporation’s leadership would cripple the new body before it even begins operations.
“If you don’t want the PBC so say it: ‘We’ve lost control over this, we don’t want it’”, Channel 2 reported Bennett as saying in a recent cabinet meeting.
“But pushing it off for a year and a half is [a move that is] designed to discourage journalists from both the right and the left from joining. There is an effort here to put a big question mark [over the PBC’s future] to create difficulties and to ensure that the PBC will be totally dependent on the political leadership.”
Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked also attacked Likud ministers, including Miri Regev and Ofir Akunis, rejecting their arguments for delaying the PBC’s creation as “lies”.
“Stop it already with your lies! Learn to control [yourselves] and stop complaining, you bunch of cry-babies. You have your own newspaper, what are you whining about?”
In response, on Sunday night the Likud party ripped Bennett and Shaked, calling the two “darlings of the left”, and accusing them of weakening the Likud-led coalition.
“Bennett and Shaked are darlings of the left and [Arnon] ‘Nuni’ Moses,” a reference to the publisher of the left-leaning Yediot Ahronot newspaper, “who are supporting the unending efforts to harm Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Likud government”.
On Monday morning the Jewish Home issued a response, accusing Netanyahu of conspiring to bring in the Labor party and veer the coalition to the left.
“Netanyahu is once again shooting within the APC [an allusion to the coalition]” – a reference to accidental friendly-fire inside of an armored vehicle.
“Just as he fired within the APC when he voted in favor of the Gaza Disengagement and destruction of Gush Katif, or like when he fired within the APC when he freed the most terrorists ever in the history of Israel, or when he froze construction [in Judea and Samaria], when he gve in to Hamas, or when he declared his support for Palestinian statehood at Bar Ilan”.
“The most ridiculous thing is that he’s shooting within the APC in order to bring in Buji [Herzog], Shaffir, Michaeli, and Yossi Yonah.”
“Just before the elections he always kisses up to the right-wing and religious public, but then immediately after the elections he tosses them aside and humiliates them.”
