BICOM

Coalition partners Likud and Jewish Home exchanged sharp words yesterday, accusing each other of betrayal over the establishment of a new broadcasting corporation.

The episode began after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is also the communications minister, pushed to postpone the launch of a new public broadcasting corporation. Netanyahu suggested that it was unprepared to begin broadcasting in October as scheduled and should delay establishment for at least a year. The corporation itself denied that it was unprepared, leading to allegations especially from Jewish Home leaders that Netanyahu was attempting to exert control over the media.

During Sunday’s cabinet meeting, the issue led to an especially sharp exchange between Likud’s Culture and Sport Minister Miri Regev and other ministers including Jewish Home’s Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked after Regev asked: “What good is the public broadcasting corporation if we don’t control it?”

The rhetoric became even more heated yesterday. A Jewish Home statement used the image of an armoured personnel carrier to allege that Netanyahu is undermining the right-wing. It accused Netanyahu of “shooting inside the APC”. Likud responded with a statement saying that Jewish Home head Naftali Bennett “is panicking because he knows the truth,” that “he has long stopped being inside the [right-wing] APC”. It accused Bennett of fighting “every which way to preserve the left’s hegemony in the media” and criticising Netanyahu purely to win favour with Yediot Ahronot, considered the rival to the pro-Netanyahu daily Israel Hayom.

In a further statement, Jewish Home said that Netanyahu was guilty of betraying the right-wing, by courting Zionist Union to join the government. It added: “Just before elections he [Netanyahu] always sucks up to the religious right community, and one minute after the elections he throws them away and mocks them.”

Although there is no suggestion that the spat will endanger the make-up of the coalition, Finance Minister and Kulanu head Moshe Kahlon told Army Radio that the government needs a “vacation immediately before they have to be hospitalised”.