A squadron duty officer from Shayetet [naval commando unit] called me yesterday. He is a reservist, and he told me about a pre-military academy he is establishing in [Kibbutz] Nir Oz. A little farther south, in Tzohar in the Gaza border region, another academy has been founded in the name of Chen Buchris from [the IDF elite unit] Maglan and Ariel Ben Moshe from Sayeret Matkal, two officers killed on October 7.
People are building, commemorating, and rebuilding life after the war. Still, it is hard to put into words the scale of the disconnect between good Israelis who are trying to repair what was shattered, and a leadership that keeps doing damage.
Of everything that demands urgent attention, such as rebuilding the South, helping the North, tackling rampant crime, ensuring treatment for every wounded body and soul, what the government chooses to prioritize is engineering a structural “reform” of the media. That, apparently, is what is critical right now.
The explanation for this is simple. Whoever does not want a state commission of inquiry does not want us to know the truth about the war. Whoever does not want us to know the truth does not want a free press to search for it. And whoever does not want a free press drafts a so-called reform and gives it Orwellian names.
We should not buy the story about a “free and competitive market” or a “revolution of freedom of opinion” from a minister who is seeking to establish a political “Broadcasting Council,” crush the independence of news divisions, and to top it all, fine anyone who does not fall into line.
In the same way, we should not buy the story that political interference in criminal investigations is somehow good for democracy; that the Supreme Court is merely a friends’ club rather than the last gatekeeper; that its president, Yitzhak Amit, is a criminal; or that the attorney-general should be in prison.
We cannot let a downpour of lies wash away the truth. There is nothing democratic about these moves. There is nothing democratic about shutting down Army Radio [Galei Tzahal], there is nothing democratic about the constant threats to the Public Broadcasting Corporation, and now to the media as a whole.
How do I know? Because those who genuinely want to open a market do not close media outlets. Those who truly want to hear more opinions do not silence them. Those who believe in democracy do not smash its checks and balances, do not strike deals with the ultra-Orthodox to destroy a free press, do not create a new Knesset committee because an existing one dared to post criticism, do not use a fleeting majority to crush legitimate protest, do not handcuff women distributing flyers for the hostages, and do not strip naked a female protester who dared to hold up a sign.
Most importantly, this protest can arrive from the Left or from the Right, with a shtreimel or without one. They all need a protective wall. This D-9 bulldozer racing without brakes is dangerous even to those cheering it today. It is dangerous to all of us in the end, each in our turn.
And beneath all the delusional initiatives and dangerous “reforms,” there is one common thread: contempt for judges and for the attorney-general, shouting at her deputy, attempts to fire her, and schemes to split her key role; political purges of IDF officers; the cynical refusal to establish a state commission of inquiry; the communications law; and the push to close Army Radio. It is all one broad move designed to clear away anyone who is inconvenient to those in power, ensuring that nothing stands in their way as the government runs wild.
And the truth is that it is frightening.
For the first time in my life, I am afraid for this place, for its future, and its values. And yes, ostensibly, none of this is entirely new.
A year after I joined Army Radio, there was already talk about shutting the radio station down. It was not the first time, and it will not be the last. We have been in these movies before. But we have never been in a horror film like this one.
Look at what they’re doing to Guy Peleg [the senior legal affairs commentator on Channel 12 News] and ask yourselves: Who will air investigative material today about grave suspicions of abuse of an incarcerated detainee? Who will expose the wrongs of a government that has lost its grip? Who will dare do what journalism must always do, day after day, without exception: speak truth to power and expose its failures, without fear and without favoritism?
Our struggle has to begin there. First, by telling ourselves that fear should produce courage, not dictate the lineup. Then, by telling our viewers, listeners, and readers the truth, clean of agenda and free of politics. We need to do it better. Nobody knows more than we do that we journalists have made mistakes. But the correction has to come from within, not from Minister of Communications Shlomo Karhi.
One last word. We are an exhausted nation, traumatized, worn down by protests and war and for me too, despair sometimes peers over my shoulder.
But then I remember meeting Vered Libstein from Kibbutz Kfar Aza six days after she lost her husband and her son on October 7. I remember meeting Yaffa Adar a week after she was returned from Hamas captivity in Gaza. I remember Yonatan Shamriz and Eli Sharabi. And I remember Yaakov Ozeri, an armored corps soldier in reserves I met in Gaza in November 2023. He was killed the next day, leaving behind a pregnant wife; little Ela was born four months after he fell.
I think of them, and I understand that we have to repair what has been broken here. And to repair, we have to know. To know, we have to ask and demand answers.
That’s what a free press does. And for that, we must fight.■
This speech was delivered at the Emergency Conference of Israeli Journalists in Tel Aviv on December 9, 2025, by Ilana Dayan, an Israeli journalist and anchor of the investigative news program Uvda (Fact) on Keshet, Channel 12. The speech was translated and reprinted with permission.