Israeli Leader Stands Up to CNN’s Distorted Narrative

Israel’s prime minister used a CNN interview to debunk the biased portrayals of the Jewish state promoted by many media outlets.

By United with Israel Staff

On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared in a feature interview on CNN conducted by anchor Jake Tapper.

CNN has come under fire during the past year for hiring an antisemitic producer named Idris Muktar to cover Israel, despite the individual’s history of tweeting “Team Hitler” and championing the U.S.-designated Palestinian terror group Hamas. CNN‘s most recent problematic coverage of Israel also includes misleading headlines about Palestinian terror attacks and a puff piece on a pro-terror provocateur.

In the Tuesday interview with Tapper, Netanyahu took the opportunity to debunk popular anti-Israel narratives promoted by the media in the U.S.

Specifically, he corrected claims that the Israeli government’s judicial reform proposal is “undemocratic,” an accusation parroted by outlets like CNN and The New York Times. The claim is designed to portray Israeli lawmakers as authoritarian demagogues who oppose freedom.

Netanyahu explained to Tapper, “[An] independent judiciary doesn’t mean an unbridled judiciary.”

“In order to secure freedom and democracy, you need the balance between three branches of government,” Netanyahu continued. “In Israel, that balance has been thrown askew and you have one branch, a huge branch, a tree trunk – the judiciary – basically overcoming, arrogating to itself, the powers of the legislative and the government.”

Netanyahu explained that currently in Israel, Supreme Court justices retain veto power in the Judicial Selection Committee. The reform package proposes that the majority of the Selection Committee be comprised of elected officials, with justices appointed in a public hearing, not in private, as is currently the case.

The prime minister also addressed the “override clause,” which would permit a Knesset majority (61 members) to reverse Supreme Court decisions that overturn passed laws. As Netanyahu noted on CNN, the same ruled exists in Canada, while the high court in the UK is explicitly prohibited from overturning laws enacted by Parliament.

“Is Canada not a democracy? Is Britain not a democracy?” Netanyahu asked Tapper, rhetorically.

Netanyahu also debunked the Biden administration position that Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria are holding up peace in the Middle East.

“The Jewish people have been here for 3,500 years,” explained Netanyahu. “For 25 years, the Palestinians—who don’t want peace with Israel, who want to see a peace without Israel, who don’t want a state next to Israel, but a state instead of Israel—they had an effective veto on Israel’s expansion of the circle of peace around it.”

“I went around them. I went directly to the Arab states, and forged a new concept of peace for peace, peace through strength. I forged four historic peace agreements, the Abraham Accords, which is twice the number of peace agreements that all my predecessors in 70 years got combined.”