APN's daily news review from Israel

Friday March 18, 2016
 

Quote of the day:

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Front Page:

Haaretz

Yedioth Ahronoth

Maariv Weekend (Hebrew links only)

Israel Hayom

News Summary:
Former Mossad chief Meir Dagan, who opposed attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities and hoped Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu would be voted out of power, died, a High Court justice announced early retirement, meaning the Court might become more conservative and a Channel 2 report accused ‘Breaking the Silence’ of collecting confidential
IDF information making top stories in today’s Friday Hebrew newspapers.
 
Numerous former senior military and political people extolled Dagan, who headed the spy agency for an unprecedented eight years. Even Israel Hayom wrote positively about him, but did not dwell on his attacks on Netanyahu’s leadership.
 
The papers noted that Dagan led the security establishment to release Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Gilad Shalit and was considered the one who silenced both former defense minister Ehud Barak's and Netanyahu’s war drums. Israel Hayom listed numerous assassination operations that “according to foreign reports” the Mossad made during Dagan’s period:
2008: Imad Mughnieh, Senior Hezbollah official, in Damascus
2010: Mahmoud Al-Mabhuh, senior Hamas official, in Dubai
2010-2012: At least six Iranian nuclear scientists by explosives on their cars or shooters on passing motorcycles

In recent years he became Netanyahu’s bitter opponent, attacking him publicly. He was recently most famous for expressing his opposition to Israel attacking in Iran. He told journalists such an attack would not stop the Iranian program, only give it legitimacy. He said Israel must not act “when the sword is laying on the neck,” as former Defense Minister Ehud Barak had said, but “when the sword begins to cut the meat.” Maariv quoted extensively from his speech,10 days before the 2015 elections, which were exactly a year ago today. Dagan spoke at a rally called ‘Israel Wants Change’ against re-electing Netanyahu “I fear the lack of vision, the loss of the way. The loss of determination. The loss of personal example. I fear the hesitancy and the stagnation. And I fear above all a crisis of leadership. This is the worst leadership crisis that we have ever had here…(I came here) “without personal aspirations, without looking for a job, without resentment or bitterness. The only party I return to and sign up for daily is the State of Israel.” Dagan cried on the stage when he spoke of his grandfather who was killed in the Holocaust for being a Jew. “We have a leader who is fighting only one battle: the battle for his own political survival. In the name of this battle, he is bringing us to a bi-national state and the end of the Zionist dream." Dagan expressed his opposition to a binational state, and added, "I do not want us to become an apartheid state. I do not want to control another three million Arabs. There is certainly a better alternative. In the political establishment, there are people who have their heart in the right place, who believe in the need to restore sanity, to stop being afraid and causing fear and to take responsibility for our fate."
 
He recently told Army Radio that he dreams of “leaving his three children and seven grandchildren with a better life than I had, that would be dedicated to happiness and fulfilling dreams, and not to wars over their home.” Dagan was diagnosed with cancer in 2012 and was ineligible to get an organ donation, for which he had to travel abroad. He signed an organ donation card and after his death his family agreed to donate his corneas.

ALSO IN ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN VIOLENCE-RELATED NEWS:
2 Palestinian Assailants Killed After Wounding Woman Soldier in West Bank
Shortly after the attack, Palestinians said IDF forces were encircling Beit Fajjar, the village near the settlement of Ariel where the attackers, aged 19 and 20, were from. (Haaretz)
Right-wing Extremist Receives Two-year Sentence for Jewish Terror Manual
Moshe Orbach, 24, of the ultra-Orthodox city of Bnei Brak, was convicted of sedition last month; the document he wrote contains detailed instructions for organizing terror cells and setting fire to mosques, churches and Palestinian homes.
Orbach was arrested in July, during the investigation into the torching of the Church of the Multiplication, after a disc-on-key was found in his car containing the handbook on how to establish a Jewish terrorist cell, “Kingdom of Evil,” which calls for violent acts and explains how to kill. (Haaretz+ and Times of Israel)
Five Israeli Jews Indicted for Assaulting Arab Janitor
The defendants, Netanel Goldenberg and four minors, allegedly attacked the victim after deciding to look for an Arab to beat up during a night out in Jerusalem. At the park, they found two municipality workers, a gardener and a janitor. Realizing that the latter was Arab, they cursed him and said, “You Arab son of a bitch, your Mohammed is a pig.” Then they attacked. (Haaretz+ and JPost) 
Israeli Suffers Light Wounds in Possible Attack Near Jerusalem Mall
Police say they are investigating all possible motives in the stabbing in the Talpiot industrial zone in which a 25-year-old man is lightly wounded. (Haaretz)

 

Prepared for APN by Orly Halpern, independent freelance journalist based in Jerusalem.