‘Break the promises’: When Israel’s watchdogs become the advocates
No sooner had the exit polls been published than Ben Caspit delivered some of the bluntest words one could hear from a journalist:
“This entire camp, the Change Bloc, the Alliance of Those Who Serve, the Zionist camp, must, from this moment on, disregard all those hollow campaign promises. A promise about who will sit with whom in the future coalition has absolutely no value.”
Almost in the same breath, he added that the issue of Haredi conscription could be “fudged a little” in negotiations with Shas.
Others went further. Ben-Dror Yemini’s Ynet column carried the headline “The Alliance of Those Who Serve has won, so now is the time to break promises,” and argued that “if achieving change requires breaking promises, so be it… This is precisely the time to break promises that were unnecessary in the first place.” Amnon Abramovich called on the Change Bloc to “free itself from its commitments” in order to form an alternative government. Raviv Drucker floated a scenario in which Arab parties would back Gadi Eisenkot from outside the coalition, without ministerial posts. Yigal Guetta presented a compromise on Haredi conscription as the most desirable option.
Not all of these are the same kind of statement. Analyzing a political scenario is one thing. Urging the winners to abandon their word is another. But taken together, they send a message to the public: electoral commitments bind only those who still believe in them.
The irony is hard to miss. The camp that adopted the name “Alliance of Those Who Serve,” and made ending the Haredi exemption from military service its central banner, is now being urged to drop it. Not by its opponents, but by commentators who helped sell that banner to the public in the first place.
The objection, and why it fails
The reply is obvious: the goal is to remove Netanyahu from power, and no single promise should stand in the way. But that is precisely the temptation a promise exists to resist. A commitment that holds only when it costs nothing is not a commitment.
Of course, politics is the art of the possible. Circumstances change, coalitions require compromise, and a leader may honestly tell voters, “the reality has changed, and I must adjust.” But there is a fundamental difference between that and declaring, the day after the vote, that what was promised to the electorate was a sham. If a compromise on conscription is truly necessary, those who believe so should say it openly and ask voters for a mandate. They should not announce it once the ballots are counted.
Kant’s test is simple: could you will that the principle guiding your conduct become universal law? Imagine a system where every party could promise one thing before an election and do the opposite afterward whenever it felt it served a higher purpose. Democracy would not survive. What would remain is a contest for power wrapped in political marketing.
The real problem is not the politicians
No one expects politicians to be paragons of virtue. The pursuit of power exposes them to temptations that most of us never face. What one should expect from journalists is something different: to demand answers, to confront them with their contradictions, and to hold them to account.
A journalist does not have to be neutral. But he or she must apply the same standards to everyone, including the camp they feel closest to. When a journalist argues publicly that it is legitimate to abandon central commitments in order to stop a political rival, they stop exposing contradictions and start supplying excuses. They stop watching power and begin serving a side.
Hannah Arendt warned that when facts and principles are made subordinate to political interests, the shared public sphere begins to erode. What replaces it is not a common commitment to truth but loyalty to one’s camp.
Who watches the watchdogs?
Here is the uncomfortable question: if journalists are the watchdogs of democracy, who watches them?
Politicians can be voted out. Journalists cannot. Their accountability is different, but it is real. It begins with the audience, which can withdraw its trust from those who blur the line between reporting, opinion and political activism. It continues with the news organizations themselves, whose editors cannot hide behind the “personal views” of their commentators, and who must apply the same professional rules to every political camp.
None of this is a call to restrict free speech. Freedom of the press is a foundational right, and its importance is exactly why it demands responsibility.
Every journalist should ask themselves a simple question: would I defend exactly the same principle if it served the camp I oppose? If the answer is no, then it was never a principle. It was a weapon.
The danger lies not only in the promises that political leaders break. It lies in the moment when those whose job is to expose broken promises begin to justify them. When the watchdog joins the pack it is supposed to keep in check, who is left to guard the house ?
