Yinon Magal tried to take a jab — Adi Zarifi hit back big time: "It won't work"

Channel 14 host Yinon Magal published on Wednesday on the X network a clipped video from an interview by Channel 12 news anchor Adi Zarifi with the chairman of Yisrael Beiteinu, Knesset member Avigdor Lieberman. In the clip published by Magal, Zarifi is heard saying, allegedly: "And this is what will cost us the victory, it may be that this is what will keep Netanyahu in the chair." Alongside the video, Magal wrote: "Dangerous."

Zarifi responded to the publication in an unusual manner and attached a video of the full segment:

"Indeed, dangerous. Not the sentence I said, but what you did to it, what you often do to facts and the truth. I said: 'This might cost the bloc the government.' In the video you distributed, you wrote 'us,' over distorted audio."

Later, Zarifi addressed how subtitles might affect the perception of what is said:

"And now, the scientific minute: the brain does not decode speech using the ear alone. It combines the sound with the context and expectations around it — including the text we read. In the science of perception, this is called 'top-down processing.' A subtitle can create a phonological expectation and bias the way we interpret the sound, especially when it comes to a word spoken quickly within a sentence."

Afterwards, she added: "And let's return to the main point: why try to pin a political affiliation on me? Because a journalist who is not identified with any political camp is foreign to you, and is dangerous in your eyes. A real journalist cannot be controlled, and after all, 'what is the corporation worth if we don't control it?' Well, it won't work."

She concluded her remarks with a jab at Magal: "Still, I always like to see the positive in everyone, and you, Mr. Magal, are one of our most devoted viewers, and for that, thank you."