Reality Check
- Amir Shperling
- 7 days ago
- 5 min read
These days, when lies are truth – George Orwell so aptly described – it’s more important than ever to stay alert and critical in general, and especially when consuming media. The regime, which is mainly busy creating a reality it wants us to see (not necessarily the one that’s actually happening), spares no effort, and is using the media – which shapes public opinion – as a propaganda tool has become routine and accepted.
Amir Shperling outlines one such narrative that we were all exposed to this week.
Be smart. Think, ask questions, cross-check, find reliable sources, and only then consume information from the media studios that supposedly present reality but actually present opinions disguised as facts – which you end up adopting as “truth” without noticing when you don’t apply critical thinking.
Ayala Shalev, Editor, That’s About Us
Reality Check / Amir Shperling
Let’s admit it without shame: Israel has become a country afraid to speak the truth out loud. It’s a country that’s lost the ability to tell the difference between reality and a headline. We live in an echo chamber of spins, suited commentators, and politicians yelling that what we see is actually something else. The country has turned into a laboratory where an entire public can be convinced that its sense of justice is a neurological disorder needing medication.
This has become our reality. It’s everywhere, and it’s dangerous. Wars of choice have become “our security”; expelling people from their homes is now called “encouraging voluntary migration”; invading everyone’s phones and ousting elected officials from the Knesset is “defensive democracy” – and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. It’s everywhere and it’s dangerous, because when you react to an imagined reality, it doesn’t actually affect the real one – just like a bully punching the air, imagining he’s punching someone when there’s no one actually there – and he ends up flat on the ground from the force of his own blow.
Here’s an example: Donald Trump, President of the United States, stands there with orange hair and cold eyes, telling all of us that Netanyahu’s criminal trial is “a brutal political persecution.” Just like that, without blinking, without basic humility. Trump has only one agenda: Trump. Anyone surprised by this has probably never read a single line of his biography. The man built himself a grandiose persona with no room for morality or regret. Everything outside the outline of that persona – are just decorations. Fallen soldiers are decorations. Fragile democracies are decorations. Friendships between countries are decorations. And Israel is a decoration too. He uses it like a sixth-grade bully uses the weakest kid – to show the world he can.
Netanyahu knows exactly what’s going on. He’s read the book. He knows the chapters. He’s an outstanding student of American politics and the inflated self-image. And he has no intention of stopping it. On the contrary. He welcomes every tweet. Every post. Every hint. When the most powerful president in the world says outright that his trial is a fraud, it doesn’t just give him oxygen – it’s a political godsend. It’s a signpost paving the way for the theory that an entire system is conspiring against him. And when parts of the public already believe this is a war between the sons of light and the sons of darkness – he, of course, is the prophet of light.
But stop for a moment and look at this from the side. Not through the eyes of a supporter or an opponent. Through the eyes of a citizen who still holds on to a shred of integrity. Here is a sitting prime minister, in the midst of a war that has become endless, living in an emergency room of public consciousness. Every morning he reads out texts about mission, sacrifice, and the future of the children, and every night he sends lawyers to find more ways to delay testimony in court. And all this is happening with the blessing of an American president who hands out legal advice to Israel as if it’s his private casino ranch.
Imagine the opposite situation: The Prime Minister of Israel interferes in a criminal trial against the President of the United States. He publishes statements about “political persecution,” threatens to cut off security aid if the prosecution doesn’t back down. That would be seen as blatant interference, grounds for a diplomatic crisis, the behavior of a rogue regime. But here? Here it somehow passes in a daily press conference. Here it becomes a news item with a dramatic opening and a colorful headline – as if it’s a legitimate move in the diplomatic chess game.
But it’s not legitimate. It’s a disgrace. It’s a humiliation of our justice system and our public intelligence. Anyone who’s willing to accept this as just another routine political move doesn’t understand that this kind of politics tramples what’s left of our trust in institutions. After all, we all know Netanyahu’s trial wasn’t born out of a whim. It was born because there was evidence. Because there were witnesses. Because someone thought that a prime minister in a democratic country shouldn’t be receiving gifts worth hundreds of thousands of shekels and shouldn’t coordinate headlines with publishers to engineer public opinion.
And now, into this mess, Trump enters like a cow in a living room. He tramples norms. Sets the agenda. Connects worlds that have nothing to do with each other: criminal trial, ceasefire, return of hostages, normalization with Saudi Arabia. And all for one thing: closing the cases of his ally. I guess in a world where everything is upside down, this is a reasonable deal. In a world where moral lines still exist – this is extortion.
If there’s anything left in me that’s Israeli, it’s the refusal to accept this as a given. I refuse to stay silent when children kidnapped in Gaza are used as bargaining chips. I refuse to stay silent when bereaved parents are exploited for staged photo ops. I refuse to stay silent when an entire system aligns itself with the dictates of a foreign president who wants to save his ally to improve his own chances of being re-elected.
And in all this, the media channels are full of commentators in suits explaining that it’s all complicated. That we need to understand the context. That this is diplomacy. But this isn’t diplomacy. This is corruption. This is an alliance of interests in the crudest form. This is the public exposure of a system that’s lost its shame.
And whoever can’t call it by its name should ask themselves what moral compass they have left. Ask themselves if this is the country they’re willing to pass on to their children. Because when you turn the justice system into a backdrop, and real survival wars into a political lever, you lose something essential. You lose your self-respect.
One day Trump won’t be president anymore. One day Netanyahu will finish his term. But this stain – that an Israeli prime minister thanked an American president for gross interference in his criminal trial, that stain will remain. And so will the memory of everyone who stayed silent. In this case, and in all the other episodes of the fake reality this regime keeps selling us. It’s highly recommended to pay attention and notice.
Amir Shperling is a screenwriter, satirist, and writer.
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