The last legal advisor, an inoffensive former judge appointed to this office by Netanyahu, has just been replaced by Netanyahu with -- surprise, surprise -- the government secretary, Avichai Mandelblit, a kippa-wearing lawyer who is as close to Netanyahu as can be.
To make quite sure, the State Comptroller, another very powerful official in Israel, was chosen by the Knesset majority according to the wishes of Netanyahu. Yosef Shapiro is also a former judge.
Why these two positions are crucial to Netanyahu is being illustrated now. The entire country is fascinated by several court cases in which employees at the Prime Minister's official residence testified that Sarah Netanyahu is an unbearable, shouting, hysterical shrew, who also pays her private expenses from the official purse.
To complete this circle, there is the new commander of the police. For years the police high command has been sinking into a morass of sexual scandals, in addition to bribery. One officer has committed suicide, several others have been kicked out.
What better solution than to bring in an outsider, a high Shin Bet (secret service) officer? Brilliant idea, but now it transpires that the police has sunken even further into the morass. In several cases policemen have brutally and publicly beaten civilians, both Arabs and Jews, for no obvious reason, and received the full backing of Roni Alsheikh, their new supreme commander.
THE ISRAELI media are decried by the right-wing as "leftist," a bulwark of the "old elite," which the rightists have sworn to replace.
Alas, this description is quite wrong. Of the two major newspapers, one, Israel Hayom ("Israel Today") belongs to Netanyahu. Or, to put it precisely, to Sheldon Adelson, an American casino mogul, who is the abject voluntary slave and generous patron of "Bibi." The paper, whose sole object is to serve Netanyahu personally, is distributed in huge quantities gratis.
The other mass-circulation paper, Yediot Aharonot ("Latest News"), is trying to compete by being even more right-wing.
The only other important daily paper, Haaretz ("The Country"), which is critical of Netanyahu, is far smaller, and in constant economic danger.
Israel's three TV channels are an intellectual desert. Except for the news and a tiny number of quality programs, they are empty of content, devoted mainly to "reality" programs, which have nothing to do with reality.
Who is in charge? Why, of course the Minister of the Media. And who is that? Again surprise, surprise. No other than a person by the name of Binyamin Netanyahu.
Under Israeli law, as Prime Minister he can keep to himself as many portfolios as his heart desires. This currently means several of them, including the Foreign Office and the Media.
For months now, all media people have been finding it difficult to sleep at night. All three TV channels need government support. Some courageous TV personalities still dare to criticize the government openly, and even sharply, but their number is steadily dwindling.
When I was on TV this week and told my interviewer that in a year's time he and his colleagues will probably be out of their jobs, he laughed nervously and asked: "What, a whole year?"
Many TV journalists have already become rhinos (the Israeli nickname for people who have succumbed to the government, because they need thick skins). The process of rhinossification is steadily going on.
AND NOW comes the coup de grace, in the form of Avigdor Ivett Lieberman.
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