Achange of location can change one’s mazel. Perhaps that was one motive behind Prime Minister Netanyahu’s switch of venues for his annual “toast” to the foreign press last week.
Instead of holding forth in a five-star city-center hotel, as is customary, the Government Press Office reserved facilities for Bibi at the Shalva National Center, home of an Israeli nonprofit that cares for people with disabilities.
Gone was the gourmet food of yesteryear, like succulent chunks of salmon carved from a whole fish and prime cuts of beef served au jus. Instead, simpler appetizers and light dishes were catered by Shalva’s kosher l’mehadrin kitchen.
Also gone were the gimmicks, like last year’s shtick when Bibi outwitted mentalist Lior Suchard onstage. The year before, Bibi toasted the media with two conspicuously empty glasses on the podium. At the time, Netanyahu was fighting allegations that he had accepted expensive gifts, including cigars and vintage champagne, from a wealthy and influential friend. The empty glasses were meant to send the message that the prime minister can live without the grape.
This year, Netanyahu is under a different cloud of smoke — from three additional investigations, including two that center around whether he promoted legislation and a major media merger in return for kinder and gentler articles about him in the press.
So Bibi was all business as he faced reporters. Standing with his profile to the audience, and leaning one elbow on the lectern, he did what he does best — sell Israel’s accomplishments, and his own, to an often hostile and sometimes ignorant press. The same reporters who focus on Palestinian travails at West Bank checkpoints, instead of reporting about Israeli companies like Check Point, a cutting-edge cybertech giant with a market valuation of $17 billion on Nasdaq.
Bibi narrated a slide show that focused on areas he feels are underreported. Like the accomplishments of Israel’s intelligence organizations, which have provided information to foreign governments that have nipped dozens of terror attacks in the bud. Or like cybersecurity, in which Israel is second only to the United States in exports and is growing exponentially.
One of the more telling slides compared the world’s top ten companies in terms of market capitalization from 2007 to 2017. Ten years ago, four oil producers made the top ten. In 2017, there were none. Technology firms like Google and Apple and giant retailers such as Amazon and Alibaba are the newbies in the top ten. Bibi was emphasizing two points. One, that all the companies in the 2017 top ten have research and development centers in Israel. And two, that the disappearance of global energy giants from the list illustrates the diminishing clout of Arab oil producers and exporters. (Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 740)