Nachman Shai asks A-G to intervene in IBA crisis

By GIL STERN STERN HOFFMAN
Kadima MK Nachman Shai wrote Attorney-General Yehuda Weinstein Tuesday asking him to prevent Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu from appointing Prime Minister’s Office director-general Eyal Gabai to take charge of administering the Israel Broadcasting Authority.
Control of the IBA shifted to the Prime Minister’s Office when Minister for Public Diplomacy and the Diaspora Yuli Edelstein relinquished responsibility for public broadcasting last week.
Netanyahu’s office will maintain control over the IBA until another minister is appointed in Edelstein’s stead.
“Netanyahu’s move raises heavy suspicions of conflict of interests, misusing governmental power and cynically taking advantage of the crisis at the IBA for his narrow political interests,” Shai wrote Weinstein.
Kadima filed a no-confidence motion over the crisis at the IBA, which will come to a vote in the Knesset Tuesday.
“Netanyahu is using what is left of public broadcasting as political propaganda for himself,” a Kadima spokesman said. “He wants to make the editors, writers and producers dependent on him and make the IBA his government’s mouthpiece instead of representing the broad spectrum of Israeli society.”