Must read Gershom Gorenberg:

When Adelson established Israel Hayom in 2007, he made an end-run around those [campaign finance] rules. It’s a full-sized paper, aimed at matching other national dailies. But it’s free. In Israel, the small advertising market can’t produce enough revenue to allow a profit-seeking publisher to forfeit income from readers. But Adelson has shown he’s very willing dip into his own pockets to promote his agenda.

Since the newspaper is privately owned, it need not make its balance sheet public. In a 2011 deposition in a suit against Adelson in Israeli court, a former business partner stated, “It is no secret that the free paper Israel Hayom loses $3 million a month, and cannot be profitable.” That number may have been contestable then, and may have changed since. But the principle that Israel Hayom isn’t built to make money appears true to this day.

In circulation terms, though, Israel Hayom has done very well. It is now the most-read newspaper on weekdays, leaving the once-dominant Yediot Aharonot to slide to second place. On Fridays, Yediot’s weekend edition is still ahead, but Israel Hayom is closing the gap. Newspapers around the world are struggling, and often failing, to stay afloat, with so many news sources available for free on the Internet. Adelson has doubled the jinx for Israeli newspapers: News is also handed out free on the street.

Owners of niche political publications have been known to accept reasonable losses as the price for personal prestige and promoting their perspectives. (Think The New Republic—until the current crisis.) But Israel Hayom isn’t a niche magazine. And it is not simply a conservative paper. It’s a Netanyahu paper, resented by the prime minister’s rivals on the right as much as it is by opponents on the left.