Top Israeli TV Journalist Admits His Children May Flee Jewish State as Extremism Spreads
Image by wikimedia commons
A prominent Israeli military correspondent said on live TV that he was no longer certain he wants his children to stay in Israel.
Speaking on Channel 2’s popular Friday night news program, veteran journalist Roni Daniel said, according to The Times of Israel: “After this week, I’m not sure I want my children to remain here.”
Daniel was referring to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s surprise decision this week to bring the right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu party into his governing coalition and appoint Avigdor Liberman defense minister.
Liberman, a former foreign minister who is known for his hawkish views, will replace Likud’s Moshe Yaalon.
Asked by another correspondent on the show why he said that about his children, Daniel, a veteran of the 1967 Six Day War, said because of “the culture of government” in Israel, specifically the presence of right-wing politicians Zeev Elkin, Yariv Levin, Miri Regev and Bezalel Smotrich in the coalition.
“I’ll stay here,” Daniel added. “My children, I’m not so sure.”
Another longtime Channel 2 correspondent, Amnon Abromowitz, told Daniel that Netanyahu “will eventually end his rule” and urged him to “look at this as an intermediary period,” according to The Times of Israel.
Later in the broadcast, when asked again about his remark, Daniel said, “I can’t command my children to stay here. It’s not a pleasant place to be. They’ll make up their own minds, but if I had thought in the past that it would be a disaster [if they left], not any more.”
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Dive In
-
Fast Forward For the first time since Henry VIII created the role, a Jew will helm Hebrew studies at Cambridge
-
Fast Forward Argentine Supreme Court discovers over 80 boxes of forgotten Nazi documents
-
Fast Forward What’s next for suspended student who posted ‘F— the Jews’ video? An alt-right media tour
-
Fast Forward ‘New Jersey tough’: Gov. Phil Murphy on released Hamas hostage Edan Alexander, a Tenafly native
Most Popular
- 1
Fast Forward Ye debuts ‘Heil Hitler’ music video that includes a sample of a Hitler speech
- 2
Opinion It looks like Israel totally underestimated Trump
- 3
Culture Is Pope Leo Jewish? Ask his distant cousins — like me
- 4
Fast Forward Student suspended for ‘F— the Jews’ video defends himself on antisemitic podcast
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward For the first time since Henry VIII created the role, a Jew will helm Hebrew studies at Cambridge
-
Fast Forward Argentine Supreme Court discovers over 80 boxes of forgotten Nazi documents
-
News In Edan Alexander’s hometown in New Jersey, months of fear and anguish give way to joy and relief
-
Fast Forward What’s next for suspended student who posted ‘F— the Jews’ video? An alt-right media tour
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.