Israel, like any other country, is full of hair-raising personal stories about its rulers and rainmakers, and what's more, about their families. Almost everything has happened. They have abused their families, their colleagues, their employees, and strangers. They have conducted forbidden liaisons and had bastard children. Abnormal relations with the wife, with another man, between the wife and another woman. Kleptomania and rages. Alcoholism and drug use. Any journalist and anyone who has been around politics has plenty of stories like these. Most of them are not known to the general public. Despite the titillation, the media generally avoids discussing them out of respect for those involved and out of basic ethics of decent personal relations. There are two cases in which discretion must be put aside. The first is when there is suspicion that the persons in question are involved in criminal activity, and the second is in a case where there is doubt about the ability of the person responsible for our fate to function. Aside from instances like these, it seems that the rule is that if we would refrain from publishing the dalliances of an ordinary person, it would be appropriate to refrain from doing so in massive headlines when the subject is the wife of the leader, or even the leader himself. Since the state was founded, we have witnessed deviations from these basic ethical guidelines, none more blatant than the matter of the wife of the current prime minister. Newspaper headlines scream about Sara Netanyahu's alleged misdeeds over and over again. Sometimes, they are nonsense -- Mrs. Netanyahu blogged about the hotel suite where her husband was going to stay while on government business. More often, the complaints are civil ones that are eventually dismissed in court. Thus far we haven't encountered a story that was wholly true and certainly not any criminal act or any activity that would affect the prime minister's ability to do his job. What, then, is the point of repeating all these stories ad nauseam? As someone who knows about more than a few interesting tales about partners of our past and present leaders, it seems to me that even if the stories about Mrs. Netanyahu contain a grain of truth, there haven't been any real irregularities. Could these be repeated attempts to attack the functioning, honor, or popularity of the prime minister himself? Do reports like these just appear at a time when fateful decisions are about to be made? Whatever the reason, we are sick of it. This ugly witch hunt inspires contempt. We can still remember a series of articles about the prime minister having been a U.S. spy for years. There was no real apology in that case or in any of the others. Even if some future story proves true, anyone who remembers the past won't have any choice but to doubt it.
