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Netanyahu’s hats are burning

By Amir M on | From amirmizroch.com

Every ministry that Prime Minister Netanyahu also holds is in total upheaval, and that is telling.

Besides being Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu is also:

Acting Minister in charge of the Israel Broadcasting Authority

The bloated, badly-managed state broadcaster has virtually no ratings and is hundreds of millions of shekels of taxpayer money in debt. Trying to gain control of the content that its two TV stations and several radio stations [that nobody watches and hardly anyone listens to], Netanyahu has expended considerable time and energy flooding the IBA with his associates, who have fired respected reporters, told others not to broadcast their opinions, and who have appointed a new director general who is a close associate of Netanyahu’s. The appointment has been challenged in court, by the way, so is being held up. Netanyahu really should find a better use of his time and give this ministry over to one of his many ministers-without-portfolios.

Minister of Health

139 plus days of the medical residents strike seems to be drawing to a close, but what a hellish journey it’s been. For months, doctors have gone on strike across the nation, performing only emergency procedures. The hospitals are overcrowded, doctors are underpaid, vastly overworked and overstretched, and woe betide anyone who gets really ill in periphery towns where medical institutions and infrastructure lags far behind the center. To remind Netanyahu that he is formally the health minister [Deputy Health Minister Yaakov Litzman is an ultra-Orthodox man who cannot associate himself too closely with symbols of the state], medical residents set up a protest tent opposite the Prime Minister’s Office.

Super-Minister of Finance

While not an official title, Netanyahu says he is the super-minister for the Treasury, and oversees all that actual Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz says and does. Or when Steinitz does something that Netanyau doesn’t like, the PM just overrules him. Steinitz, for instance, opposed Netanyahu and Housing Minister Ariel Atias’s new housing laws, but was steamrolled. Now, Steinitz’s position is incredibly tenuous, with most of his ministry’s top functionaries resigning over the past two years, capped off by Treasury Director General Haim Shani’s resignation this week. Socioeconomic protests against the high cost of living are sweeping the country, awakening a political juggrenaut threatening to sweep the Likud out of power in the next elections, unless Bibi makes some deep changes people can feel in their pocketbooks.

All this before he can even get down to his day job of being Prime Minister. And in this job, he has a lot of fires to put out.

Tagged: Binyamin Netanyahu, deputy health minister, israel broadcasting authority, prime minister netanyahu