Why has the media give Yair Lapid a pass when he was more aggressive against Palestinians than Bennett or Netanyahu?

For the past two months, the media has been churning out article after article on how the incoming Netanyahu government will be extremist, a disaster for Palestinians and Israelis alike. In an unprecedented move, US President Joe Biden gave a public warning to the incoming government that he will oppose policies that the US feels are against the two state solution.

For a six months, Israel has been led by a centrist politician, Yair Lapid. By nearly all measures, Lapid was more aggressive against Palestinians than his two predecessors, Naftali Bennett and Benjamin Netanyahu.

The six months of Bennett  and of Lapid this year makes it fairly easy to compare the two.

According to the UN's OCHA, when Lapid entered office, Israel had killed 60 Palestinians in operations in the West Bank in 2022 under Bennett. Since then, 86 more were killed. Compare with all of 2020, under Netanyahu, when the number killed was 24.

Under Bennett, about 340 Palestinian structures were destroyed this year. Under Lapid, about it was about 550. Combined, this is a modest increase over the total in 2020.

Under Bennett, there were about 1620 search and arrest operations in the West Bank this year. Under Lapid, the number was over 1800. (The total number is roughly the same as under Netanyahu in 2020.)

Lapid the centrist has been clearly more aggressive than the "settler" Bennett and the "fascist" Netanyahu.

While there may be good reasons for Israeli actions under Lapid, and it is entirely possible that under Bennett or Netanyahu the numbers for past six months would have been similar, with the data we have, Lapid has been given an enormous pass by the media, which has chosen to ignore his decision-making role in Israel's moves to root out terrorists. 

Which is the point. The media does not report on objective reality: they report on the things that fit their preconceived narratives, and downplay or ignore those that do not. Netanyahu has been considered personally responsible for IDF actions under his leadership, while Lapid was not. Netanyahu is regarded as an aggressive warmonger, Lapid is not. The reporting follows the bias, not the reality.

The media and NGOs will publish and trumpet the statistics that fit the story they want to tell - and bury those that contradict it.

And similarly, even though it is not a fair comparison, the number of Israelis killed this year in attacks under the Bennett/Lapid governments is 24. In 2020, under Netanyahu, the number was 3. There are many factors in statistics like that, but Netanyahu is rarely credited in the media with reducing terror attacks in Israel which steadily decreased from 2015 to 2020.

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