To my liberal friends abroad who fear Israel is collapsing into fascism because, well, they read Haaretz.... - Haviv Rettig Gur, January 28, 2016 at 12:45 PM:

To my liberal friends abroad who fear Israel is collapsing into fascism because, well, they read Haaretz, here's the latest evidence that reading Haaretz can be hazardous to your capacity to actually understand (as opposed to just rail hysterically about) Israeli society and politics.

Haaretz, like others in that wing of the left, are fighting a vindictive, bitter culture war, that is emphatically and explicitly disdainful of Israeliness itself. Here is one of Haaretz's senior columnists arguing without the slightest sarcasm or irony that an Israeli NBA coach *should* be fired and explicitly for his Israeliness, because - are you sitting down?- Israelis emotional attachment to other Israelis in the NBA is ipso facto fascism.

Last month, Haaretz used the word "fascist" five different times in a two-week period to describe Israel.

For many Haaretz writers, Israeli cultural touchstones are fascist not because they are fascist, but because they are Israeli.

It is often argued among Israelis that Haaretz has adopted this strange political identity for sheer clickbait, prostitution their intellectual integrity and journalistic seriousness for greed. That, at any rate is the optimistic interpretation.

As long as Haaretz itself isn't ashamed of its willful decline, no real harm come to Haaretz from this sort of journalism.

But, inasmuch as it is identified with the broader Israeli left, it is hard to think of any single voice or political actor that has done more damage to that left's prospect in the only arena that counts: the mind of Israeli voters.

In Haaretz, the right is given, miraculously, reification of its own caricature of an incompetent, intellectually dishonest, utterly unelectable, jealously vindictive Israeli left.

I have no evidence that Rogel Alpher and his like-minded friends work for Benjamin Netanyahu. But they do. They are the enemy he yearns for, the enemy that makes his campaign slogan of "It's me or them" an election winner.

I hope he at least goes to the trouble of sending them flowers every time he wins another round at the ballot box.