"If you can nurture two gardens in which a hundred different flowers grow, then why destroy one of them?" asked Amatzia Reiz, head of the Daf Hayarok Authority, who is leading the opposition to a move to merge the Kibbutz Movement's two competing weeklies. "There is no financial reason for this destruction. Both weeklies are profitable and don't cost the Kibbutz Movement a single agora."

It is indeed difficult to find a practical reason for the Kibbutz Movement secretariat's decision last week to merge the papers Hakibbutz and Hadaf Hayarok, which have a combined circulation of about 40,000. The competition between the weeklies, which is like a rivalry between two local papers in the same town, regularly lends itself to sensationalist stories like those dealing with sexual harassment that may or may not have taken place. The kibbutz weeklies often specify the names of the suspects, even if no charges have been filed, and the name of the kibbutz in question.