For years, the newspaper Israel Hayom has been known as the “Bibiton”. A Hebrew portmanteau, it means “the paper of Bibi”, the nickname for Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It was founded by the late billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson as the mouthpiece for Netanyahu.
Last week, the head of news at the paper, Uri Dagon, signalled a breaking of the ranks, calling on the prime minister to “lead us to victory and then go”, taking aim at the “nonstop political bickering while the war is raging”. In Israel’s fractured and fractious politics, it signalled the cohering of a rare agreement across party lines: the political era of Netanyahu was staggering to its bitter end.
