FOR six years, Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, has enjoyed an advantage other politicians might give an arm for: a daily newspaper that offers unstinting support and is distributed free. He has that in Israel HaYom (or Israel Today), the country’s best-read paper, which not only glorifies him and his wife but also damns their foes.

Recently, however, its cheerleading seems to be causing Mr Netanyahu as much harm as it does good. Opponents facing him in an election on March 17th accuse Mr Netanyahu of being in hock to its publisher, an octogenarian American casino mogul, Sheldon Adelson.

Smarting from allegations that the paper infringes regulations on campaign funding, Mr Netanyahu has used his Twitter feed to attack its critics. Foremost among them is Noni Moses, the reclusive publisher of Yediot Ahronot, which had previously been Israel’s largest circulating paid newspaper. Mr Moses, the prime minister snapped on Twitter, was “using every possible means to topple the government, shut down Israel HaYom and restore its aggressive hegemony over the print media”. Yediot’s attacks on his family, he bridled, were no longer taking place daily in print, but hourly on the internet.

Even sceptical commentators now wonder who speaks for whom. Mr Netanyahu’s defence of the paper on Twitter has only increased suspicions that his precipitous call for early elections 13 months into his term was motivated less by his desire to rid himself of a quarrelsome cabinet than by concern for the survival of Israel HaYom after a bill to stop the free distribution of newspapers passed its first reading. Many who voted in favour came from his coalition. His foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, who grew up in the Soviet Union, called it Pravda. Many Israelis just call it Bibi-ton, merging Mr Netanyahu’s nickname, Bibi, with iton, the Hebrew for newspaper.

While Mr Moses has broadly supported a two-state settlement with the Palestinians, Mr Adelson ridicules the thought of a negotiated compromise. For years he and his Israeli wife have brought tens of thousands of Americans, including congressmen, on partisan tours of Israel. The Republican congressmen he funds are now inviting Mr Netanyahu to talk to Congress shortly before the Israeli elections, to the Democrats’ fury. His speech will, no doubt, get a favourable write-up in Mr Adelson’s newspaper.