An Israeli television station reported last spring on numerous trips Benjamin Netanyahu had taken as an elected official to Paris, London and New York before becoming prime minister in 2009. Accompanied by his wife, he flew first class and stayed in baronial hotel suites. Mrs. Netanyahu had her hair styled and her wardrobe dry-cleaned. The bills, displayed on screen, were paid for by wealthy friends.

Traveling in luxury at the expense of others may violate public service rules and the law. It also doesn’t look good. But instead of accolades for its journalism, Channel 10 is now fighting for its life, and Mr. Netanyahu’s hostility toward it is being cast as part of a broader cultural and political war in Israel between the left and the right involving efforts to control the judiciary, the reporting of news and public discourse.

It is a battle that most immediately pits the rightist governing coalition against the liberal elite as the government refuses to postpone the station’s debt, which could force it to close.

“The fight over Channel 10 is partly a matter of revenge – Netanyahu wants to make them pay for what they did to him,” argued Nachman Shai, a member of Parliament from the opposition party Kadima and a former news executive who helped set up Channel 10 a decade ago. “But it is also part of a three-front struggle – over the courts, civil society and the media. The right wants to control every institution. Freedom of expression is at risk.”

Those around Mr. Netanyahu, who filed a million-dollar libel suit against the station, say Channel 10 is a failed business whose payments have been forgiven numerous times and is hiding behind political complaints and inflated concerns about free speech to make the public absorb its debts.

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