Thousands of words have been written about the all-out war Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been waging against the media. Countless articles have analyzed his scheme to control public broadcasting, a war that recently resulted in a new structure for the Israel Public Broadcasting Corporation (IPBC), scheduled to be launched by the end of April. Accordingly, a news division will no longer be part of the corporation, but will instead operate independently.

Amateur psychologists have explained that the prime minister’s extreme interest in the corporation stems from his obsession with the media. Political analysts insist that the appointment of Geula Even-Saar, the wife of senior Likud member and former Minister Gideon Saar, as IPBC's senior host, was the straw that broke the camel’s back. They believe the appointment of the spouse of Netanyahu's political rival drove the prime minister to persist in his fight to close the IPBC before its launch. On April 3, Netanyahu seasoned his Passover greeting with a complaint that the media “does not reflect the feelings of the public” and proclaimed, “There’s a gloom industry here.”

In the rest of his festive speech, Netanyahu cited the products of the alleged “gloom industry,” which sees darkness in places illuminated by the brightest light. Instead of full employment, the media sees unemployment. Instead of a flourishing economy, it sees a wrecked economy. Instead of interchanges, trains and bridges, it sees traffic jams. Instead of resoluteness and power, it produces hesitation and insecurity. Instead of a world power, it conjures a collapsing and crumbling state. “Leaders who come here every day,” Netanyahu closed his indictment of the killjoys, “see us as a global tech powerhouse, a world power in security, intelligence, technology.”

Still, this speech seemed to be missing a line that had appeared in one version or another of his many addresses over the past few years. It goes something along the lines of, “Instead of the leftist media who see an occupation that makes Israel into a leprous state, I, Netanyahu, see a flourishing Eden on the liberated land of our fathers.” One shouldn't, however, worry about the missing part. Netanyahu supplied that resoundingly on April 9 in the form of a government decision to allocate 10 million shekels ($2.7 million) for 50th anniversary celebrations of the “liberation of Judea, Samaria and the Golan Heights” in the 1967 Six-Day War. By the way, why are the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula not included in the celebration? Were they not “liberated” in June 1967? With this decision and statement, Netanyahu, again, demonstrated his stance that the occupation does not hurt the state of Israel. On the contrary, Israel is flourishing.