The one who benefits the most from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to cancel all the holiday interviews to the media outlets is Netanyahu himself. On Sept. 8, the prime minister made an unexpected announcement canceling all the interviews that had been pre-arranged with the newspapers and the three television stations (Channels 1, 2 and 10). The reasons given by his office were his busy schedule and his need to plan for his upcoming visit to London.
Inevitably, criticism over this move quickly followed. The prevailing allegation among most of the commentators and journalists is that the prime minister is simply leery of facing the media and exposing himself to questions for which he has no good answers. He has no impressive achievements to display, they feel, but only foreign policy failures. His critics rightly contend that a prime minister is obliged — at least occasionally — to account to the public not only directly via the social media networks, but through question-and-answer sessions with journalists who can directly challenge his arguments.