I no longer have the strength to remain quiet

1.

Columnist Dan Margalit hasn't stopped maligning Israel Hayom since the day he left the paper. The insults he has hurled at his former employer are extremely serious, in my view. Since its establishment, the newspaper has been subjected to constant, hideous delegitimization efforts. Margalit never came out in the paper's defense. He always defended himself in a kind of self-righteous autonomy and never lifted a finger to deflect the vicious attacks on the paper. His remarks in recent weeks suggest that all along, he believed the attacks were justified. Not only did he smear Israel Hayom Editor-in-Chief Boaz Bismuth, he also went after all the paper's writers. I have kept quiet until now, out of respect for his age and his status, but the insults accumulated and overflowed, and I have reached a point where, as Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook once wrote: "I write not because I have the strength to write, but because I no longer have the strength to remain silent." Our sages taught us that wherever the name of God is profaned, no respect needs to be shown to a rabbi, even if that rabbi is a veteran journalist and respected media figure.

I don't want to go into the complicated financial aspects in too much depth, but over the years, critics have claimed that Israel Hayom lacks a business model. And now, when the time came to tighten our belt, those same critics are crying foul. What do they care? They don't read us anyway, right? But Margalit deflected the focus away from the financial aspect and focused attention on the content of his writing. I have read his columns patiently for a decade, and I responded to his arguments. Over the least two weeks, however, he joined the gang of media mudslingers and is actively defaming the newspaper and all its writers.

2.

After Margalit was let go, Uzi Benziman, the founder of the media watchdog magazine The Seventh Eye, wrote that "Israel Hayom is not a newspaper," and that "it has no other purpose than to promote [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu."

"From the get-go, there was never any room to hold Israel Hayom to the kind of ethical standards that are accepted in legitimate media outlets," he wrote. He called us a "propaganda leaflet," a "pamphlet," a "public relations mouthpiece" and a "freebie" (incidentally, the Seventh Eye doesn't charge its readers). This is not criticism -- it is a Stalinist character assassination. And he is nowhere near the only one to make these allegations -- the media is full of such horrible denigration. If freedom of expression is in fact under threat, it is from the various Benzimans.

In Pirkei Avot, our sages point out the difference between Abraham's students and those of Bilam the wicked. Abraham's students possess a "good eye" while Bilam's students possess an "evil eye," through which they see reality. Perhaps the Seventh Eye would be more aptly named the Evil Eye. What did Benziman, and his fellow Israel Hayom-haters, do? They defined the paper's entire raison d'etre as hinging on one thing: Benjamin Netanyahu. They suggested that the only motivation behind the recent staff changes was how much Netanyahu likes, or dislikes, certain individuals. Now they are confused because the speculations have shifted to Habayit Hayehudi Chairman Naftali Bennett. What a joke.

3.

To refuse to examine things closely enough to separate the wheat from the chaff is intellectually lazy. This approach seeks to impose a totalitarian perception on the media sphere based on the prejudices of its representatives.

These people never once criticized the uniformity of the Israeli media, which, for decades, represented only one view. They never criticized the unison sounded by the media during the most dramatic period in our history since the War of Independence -- the signing of the Oslo Accords. Before Israel Hayom came to be, we had grown accustomed to reading only left-wing views and only left-wing analyses. We accepted it, like fate. We had grown accustomed to the habitual demonization of the settlement enterprise in Judea and Samaria. For decades, the Israeli media painted settlers -- the pioneers of our time -- as the source of all our troubles. We became used to attacks on tradition and religion and to the denigration of religious and ultra-Orthodox Israelis. The media portrayed Torah students as nothing more than parasites. We were almost never exposed to anything else. Even when it came to Netanyahu, we got used to the media ignoring his successes and delegitimizing his voter base (such Neanderthals). It is important to have an alternative, because it wasn't just Netanyahu but an entire camp that was habitually maligned.

4.

Not too long ago, ahead of the 2005 disengagement from Gaza, opponents of the plan were silenced and ridiculed, just like the critics of the Oslo Accords. It is a shame that no one listened to them, because they were right. The Benzimans of the time saw the very one-sided view of things as "natural," just as they see the Left's domination over Israeli academia as natural.

We, the conservative Right, are just silent extras in their movie. It is only on election day that their plans get foiled. Much to their horror, the Israeli voters don't comply with their dictates. The voters don't consult the Left before casting their ballots, just like they didn't consult the Left before establishing an alternative media platform and broke away from the familiar herd. I am not suggesting that Israel Hayom is free of problems, but I've always looked at these problems as childhood ailments that just require patience. But the media establishment, just like the veteran Left, was never willing to accept any alternative.

Despite all its flaws, Israel Hayom is a mirror image of the Israeli media as a whole. That is why so many are out to get us -- like Snow White's evil stepmother, they want to destroy their mirror. The Israeli debate is not about media platforms, it's about our lives and our identities. The war against a newspaper's legitimacy is a war on its ideas. We don't live according to Benziman's dictates. He and his ilk will eventually fade out of history.

5.

The day that Margalit left Israel Hayom, minutes after he bid farewell to the newspaper that graciously welcomed his prominent columns for a decade and allowed him, without censorship, to rail against the paper's political stance, he turned around and hurled the same vitriol that the paper's opponents have flung at us since the paper's inception. It was as though he said: The entire time I worked at this unholy newspaper, I was just pretending. Then he goes and claims that he lost his job because he "defended freedom of expression."

You see, apparently Dan Margalit, the Joan of Arc of the Israeli media, was single-handedly defending freedom of expression at the newspaper you are now reading. And now that the fig leaf has been shed, the shame has also disappeared, and we are unabashedly naked.

Moments after Margalit made his announcement, his daughter, Shira Margalit, added fuel to the fire, suggesting that it wasn't Benjamin Netanyahu who ordered her father's dismissal from the paper, but rather his wife, Sara Netanyahu! The lazy herd continues to nod in unison. Whatever you say.

6.

The Left sharply criticized Margalit for cooperating with Israel Hayom over the years. After 10 years of collaborating with the enemy, the veteran journalist went to the town square and begged for rehabilitation and purification. When Israeli author Amos Oz, who is strongly affiliated with the Israeli Left, published his latest book, "Dear Zealot," he realized that it was pointless to preach to the choir in Haaretz or Yedioth Ahronoth and turned to Israel Hayom's readership in an effort to convince the other side. Dan Margalit claimed, in efforts to defend his actions, that, like Oz, he used Israel Hayom as a platform to disseminate his views. Oh, he used us and dumped us.

But there is a difference. Amos Oz didn't just get a platform to sound his views. He engaged in a conversation where he heard the other side's stance and responded to it. Margalit, on the other hand, doesn't tend to respond to the other side's arguments. He doesn't argue and doesn't debate. He preaches. That is also his method on social media: he does not engage in dialogue with those who respond to his tweets or posts.

Here's a story: Two and a half years ago, Netanyahu fired two judges from the Israel Prize committee for Hebrew literature, one of whom was Professor Ariel Hirschfeld. Margalit was outraged by the dismissal, claiming it was an attack on democracy and accusing Netanyahu of whatever. I called him and presented certain facts about Hirschfeld: In October 2006, as the art director of the International Poetry Festival in Jerusalem, Hirschfeld confessed that he declined to invite Hava Pinhas-Cohen, one of the important poets of our time, because he had trouble with her "political views." He said: "I have a kind of inability to accept the whole of her work and her views." He argued further that "there is no way to absolutely separate" the quality of an artist's work from his or her political stance. He confessed that "I have a problem with her. She is a prolific woman. She publishes articles and opinions at every opportunity. These opinions are a part of who she is. ... Her views on settlements and other issues are irresponsible and immoral in my opinion. On the other hand, she engages in an ideological vagueness that is suspicious to me. ... I believe that it allows her to make use of symbols in her poems that is not entirely moral." Has anyone ever heard of immoral use of symbols? From a man of literature, no less-

Hirschfeld took a similar path when he disqualified the late author Aharon Megged from the Emet Prize. Removing Hirschfeld from the prize committee was therefore an act of historical justice.

I wrote these things in my columns. I asked Margalit at least to acknowledge these facts. Nothing. Nada.

7.

Speaking of "freedom of expression," Margalit did not step in on behalf of this newspaper's right to exist. When lawmakers tried to legislate Israel Hayom into oblivion, he never came out in its defense. Was there ever a better opportunity to champion the freedom of expression he claims to hold so dear? Margalit didn't tweet a word about "freedom of expression" while the legislative branch tried to pass an abominable law that would have outlawed Israel Hayom. Such a law would have been far worse than dismissing a professor who habitually marginalized poets and authors.

The anti-Israel Hayom bill was a last ditch effort by the Left to silence its opponents -- the same way it tried to silence Arutz 7 and writers who expressed right-wing views. The bill attacked the very platform that, for years, allowed Margalit to express views that ran contrary to the paper's established agenda. The bill was especially immoral because it directly targeted freedom of expression, but Margalit was struck silent, allowing the masses to fight this horror on their own.

8.

After leaving Israel Hayom, Margalit gave interview after interview, assuming the crucified position and playing the martyr. When Mordechai Gilat was fired too, he decided to forgo the tiresome plea to the newspaper's editor and directed his insults directly at Netanyahu, accusing him of firing Gilat because he wasn't satisfied with just firing him. This teaches us that in Margalit's world, while he himself is an autonomous human being, Israel Hayom Editor-in-Chief Boaz Bismuth is incapable of making his own decisions -- he needs Netanyahu to tell him who to fire from the paper. In lofty terms, this is called "dehumanization."

In a television interview, Margalit asserted that "I was fired because I criticized Sara and Benjamin Netanyahu. Period. There is no other reason for my dismissal." And I wondered: This man nearing 80 years of age, who has seen a thing or two in his life, is presenting a horribly narrow worldview -- black or white -- and excluding all other possibilities with a period. But then I realized that this dualistic perception has been his way all along -- dividing the world into a clear dichotomy: the sons of light, for whom he was a self-appointed leader, and the sons of darkness, which include almost everyone on the Right who doesn't agree with him.

9.

Seconds after he placed that period at the end of that declaration, he added that "I would have continued to write for Israel Hayom because I think that it is of the utmost importance to highlight to the readers of Israel Hayom the need for a two-state solution, [the need for] a supreme court and freedom of the press and all that."

But unlike the rest of the media in Israel, this newspaper doesn't buy into the stale paradigm of establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel. I have argued against it in countless columns. Such a state would pose a clear threat to Israel, not just in terms of security but also in terms of our historical rights in the eyes of the world and the moral perception of Zionism. Why in the world does Israel Hayom need to reserve its prominent pages for opinions that may as well appear in the competing newspapers-

As for the Supreme Court: Margalit believes that Tourism Minister Yariv Levin is a "fascist," and Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked is "dangerous," for wanting to reform the justice system in Israel. The way I see it, Israel Hayom promotes a different argument -- well explained and legitimate -- in support of these reforms, which automatically places it among Margalit's "sons of darkness."

He came out against the "Jewish nation-state" bill -- which seeks to define Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people -- just like the rest of the herd. But the conservative Right, which represents the majority, supports this bill and wants to advance it. For me, it is a life and death issue. Professor Avraham Diskin, one of the world's leading political science experts, helped formulate the bill as part of a future constitution. Would Margalit deem it moral to reserve the most visible pages of the only newspaper that supports the bill for a columnist who rails against it-

Here. Three reasons, none of which include Netanyahu, but all of which include legitimate agendas and worldviews, for Margalit's dismissal. While Margalit claims to accept the legitimacy of views other than his own, it is hard to believe in the pluralism espoused by a man who calls a cabinet minister "fascist" just for legitimately criticizing the court. That kind of fundamentalist pluralism would do well in Haaretz.

10.

For many years, the Right, and the entire conservative camp, hobbled along on crutches with a handicap in many areas -- in the academia, in government, in global diplomacy and in the media. We were always told that without Tzipi Livni or Ehud Barak at the helm, no one in the world would want to talk to us. But crutches are not a good foundation for dialogue, for debate, for mutual intellectual development. They serve those who cannot propel themselves forward without assistance.

Dan Margalit was not a fig leaf because we have nothing to hide. All we are trying to do is to provide a media platform for the views that represent the majority in Israel. From a historical perspective, these crutches have only held back the Right's intellectual independence. It is better to fall over dozens of times and get back up than to depend on someone who doesn't identify with this platform and goes to great lengths to distance himself from it.

And on a personal note: I have published more than a thousand articles on a wide range of topics -- serious, in-depth, with great respect for my subjects. However, with the exception of a handful of friendly islands, most of the time I am asked to talk about only one thing: Israel Hayom. Think about an artist who painted a thousand paintings, but all anyone wants to hear from him is about the frames around his paintings. We are tired of begging for legitimacy. This is the dawn of a revolution. We have learned to walk without crutches.

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