APN's daily news review from Israel

Wednesday June 08, 2016
 

Quote of the day:

---

Front Page:

Haaretz

• Despite Netanyahu’s claim, the fund that Mimran deposited to paid for political activity
• Between Mimran and Sadan // Yossi Verter
• Putin to Netanyahu: I support reconciliation between Israel and Turkey
• Shas threatens a coalition crisis if new chairman of Channel 10 News isn’t fired
• 11 killed in attack in central Istanbul
• AP: Before primaries ended, Clinton assured her candidacy for president
• 16,000 artifacts of Jews murdered in Auschwitz were discovered
• Study: In Mediterranean nutrition, even olive oil isn’t fattening

Danger to the media // Haaretz Editorial
Yedioth Ahronoth

• Changing versions – French billionaire Arnaud Mimran falls in line with Netanyahu’s version, saying “It’s possible that I made a mistake in the amounts”
•  40 years to Antebbe Operation – in the voices of the soldiers
• The Sadan storm: After he denied – he apologized
• The First Woman – Hillary Clinton
• Calling on grandparents – The summer camps are expensive – so the children are sent to the grandparents

Maariv This Week (Hebrew links only)

• Netanyahu rises to attack: “Persecution against me is political, they are turning my wife into human dust”
• Trust on condition // Ben Caspit
• Because he’s Bibi - they persecute him over every rumor // Meir Uziel
• When there is no alternative // Ron Kaufman
• "[New Channel 10] Chairman, Sadan, did not say what he was quoted as saying” – Senior people in Channel 10 new chairman said: “I hate Shas”
• Making history [Photo of Hillary Clinton]
• As revealed in Maariv: (tycoon) Nochi Dankner reached an debt settlement arrangement with the banks and will evacuate his home

Israel Hayom

• Netanyahu: The mountain gave birth to a mouse, barely a little mouse
• Mimran changed his account: “Netanyahu is right, I probably made a mistake in the amount; 10 years have since passed” “Anyway, there was nothing illicit by Netanyahu”
• For the media’s attention: Lies don’t have legs and Jews have a head // Dr. Haim Shine
• The remarks by the new Chairman of Channel 10 – and the storm
• Lieberman’s first attack? “Israel attacked in Syria”
• After Hillary made history, everything is ready for the real thing: Trump vs. Clinton // Boaz Bismuth
• Debt settlement: Nochi Dankner will return 180 million shekels to the banks

---

News Summary:
French tycoon Arnaud Mimran, on trial for tax evasion, changed his account of how much he gave to Netanyahu to match what Netanyahu said and Netanyahu responded saying that showed he did nothing illegal and that the media was persecuting him. (Also Maariv) But Haaretz+ wrote that Mimran indirectly financed political polls for Netanyahu as he plotted his return to politics, and money wasn't used for hasbara only, as per Netanyahu’s claims. 
 
Netanyahu’s statements were made from Moscow where he met with Putin to celebrate 25 years of diplomatic relations and discussed future coordination. On the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Putin said: "The situation in the Middle East and Syria is not easy. We support a comprehensive, just resolution of the Palestinian conflict. This takes joint efforts, including by the Quartet, and Russia is willing to lend itself to this effort." Speaking the night before in Washington, D.C. at the American Jewish Committee’s Global Forum, Israeli Opposition leader Isaac Herzog said that Netanyahu’s choice of partners for government were extremists who threatened peace.” Herzog spoke of the creation of a new regional order by the creation of a ‘Sunni version of the NATO alliance’ made up of moderate Sunni Arab countries, which identify the same threats as Israel. He added: "This is a new regional order that wants to eliminate hatred and violence” and he named Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Bahrain. (Maariv) Meanwhile, the European Union said that the two-state solution was getting 'beyond reach.'
 
In Moscow, Netanyahu also noted that Israel would act "to ensure Syria does not become a launch pad for attacks on Israel, whether by Syrian, Iranian, Hezbollah or Islamist forces.'  The same day, the Syrian media reported that Israel attacked Hezbollah missile silos at a military base in southern Homs, Syria a day earlier. Also yesterday, Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman warned Israel’s northern neighbors ‘Don’t test us’ as he visited Israel's northern border in his first tour since entering office last week. Israeli reporters wondered whether the attack on the Hezbollah silos was Lieberman’s ‘first attack’ in office.
 
And, another coalition crisis broke out when the former Netanyahu aide, Rami Sadan, who was just hired as head of Channel 10, made a racist statement against Mizrachi Jews and Shas, the ultra-Orthodox Mizrachi political party and its leader. Shas threatened to leave the coalition if Sadan were not fired. Sadan denied making the remarks, but the CEO of Channel 10 maintained he said them.
 

Quick Hits:

---

Features: 
Lone soldiers have hard time adjusting to life in Israel [and return home]
Seth Collin, 25, served 3 years in the IDF but left Israel immediately after his release due to difficulties in adjusting to society; 'They are good enough to die for the country, but are cast away once released,' says MK Itzik Shmuli. (Talam Yahav, Yedioth/Ynet) 
Israel’s legal war against terror
Israeli jurists have become in recent years lecturers in demand for everything related to the ways of dealing with terror. Now, after work that continued for 10 years, the wording of a comprehensive bill in the battle against terror was completed last week, led by the Deputy Attorney General, Ran Nizri. One of the central innovations in the new bill is the recognition of the need to deal not only with the terror itself, but also with what is called the ‘envelope of terror’ and it includes those who donate to terror, incite to terror and more. For example, the new bill states, unlike in the past, that calling to make an attack will be considered a crime even if there was no ‘actual likelihood’ that a terror attack would have been made because of it. Moreover, the bill harshens the punishment for crimes connected to terror, expands the circle of accused so that it would also include those who train, help, provide materials to the terrorists or even publicly identify with them. It also limits the sentencing to those who are convicted of terror.
(Tova Tsimuki, Yedioth’s ’24 Hours’ supplement, p. 6)
Travel guide to the Land of Israel in the 19th century
Don’t forget your horse, your Bible and some candles. (Ofer Aderet, Haaretz+) 
“I thought that France would save us, but in the end it was the Israelis”
40 years exactly passed: but even now, when he’s 92, Michel Bacus, the French captain of the Air France plane that was hijacked to Antebbe – remembers well every moment in the horror film that he was caught in. In a special interview to Yedioth, he goes back to the moments of heroism and fear and tells about the special connection between him and the passengers, which was kept till today. (Eldad Beck, Yedioth’s ’24 Hours’ supplement, cover)
 
Commentary/Analysis:
Netanyahu Is a Danger to Israel's Media (Haaretz Editorial) In light of technological developments and change in consumption patterns, the financial situation of broadcasting companies has significantly worsened and in order to survive they woo politicians. 
Undivided: Jerusalem by the numbers (Yehuda Shohat, Yedioth/Ynet) Forget the cliches. A quick look at the numbers clearly shows that East and West Jerusalem cannot be split from each other. The West side’s economy is too heavily dependent on East-Jerusalem labor.
After Decades of Neglect, Israel Promotes Planning and Construction in Arab Sector (Nimrod Bousso, Haaretz+) One wonders why this change is finally taking place under the leadership of Netanyahu, the man who never seems to miss a chance to demonstrate hostility toward the group that makes up a fifth of Israel’s population.
Netanyahu, usually outspoken, dares not criticize Putin (Barak Ravid, Haaretz+) The prime minister has no problem causing high-profile confrontations with the Elysee Palace or the White House over any critical word regarding the settlements, but won’t demonstrate an iota of the same courage toward the Kremlin vis-à-vis Russian steps that harm Israeli interests.
About the diplomatic freeze: Does the right-wing have a real political agenda? (Yitzhak Ben-Ner, Maariv) The progressive right-wing should explain to the public: What is our national goal beyond stonewalling? And how does it intend to implement the principle of "two states for two peoples", which is not in the government's basic principles?
Why This Year, for Jerusalem Day, I Took Down the Israeli Flag on Our Roof (Bradley Burston, Haaretz+) This flag will fly again. But never in sympathy with those who are destroying this land, shattering the Jewish People, and mutilating Judaism itself. 
The Paris peace gambit: Everyone gains except the Palestinians (Ramzy Baroud, Maan) In their defense, the Israelis seem to have figured out the whole thing and opted out. But the hapless Palestinian leadership, along with their Arab League partners, joined by the French, EU and UN representatives, and even US Secretary of State, John Kerry, decided to play along. However, the French peace initiative-turned-conference in Paris on June 3 is nothing but a charade, and they all know it, Palestinians included. So, why the colossal waste of time? 
So Netanyahu Was Possibly Politically Funded by a French Tycoon. But Was It Illegal? (Ido Baum, Haaretz+) If Netanyahu received the donation as a private citizen, as he says, then he is not guilty of any crime.
This is not the way (Dror Eydar, Israel Hayom) There are some Israeli rightists who seek to get all or nothing. This ultimately brings down the house on us all.
Israel's Right to Sweep Away Palestinians (Amira Hass, Haaretz+) Expelling Palestinians is a paradigm that’s alive and well in the Jews’ state - a plan that was carried out and that is always waiting to be replicated…
Until the next conference – the world will deal without us (Eitan Haber, Yedioth) In Jerusalem they know it will end badly. Another conference, and another, and so in another one, two or five years, someone in the world will yell, ‘Enough, no more games.’ Everyone fears that moment, even the Prime Minister. The world, almost all of it, is sick of dealing with the Middle East…It gave up, apparently, on direct negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians. Now – signs of it were already seen at the failed Paris Conference – the world decided to try to solve the permanent headache without the major players. A kind of new version of ‘the whole world is against us.’ Or in other well-known words: Forced solution, which unfortunately for us, never will be acceptable to Israel. Israel can almost only lose, while the world will applaud whoever succeeds in ending its punishment of the Israelis and the Palestinians.
Hillel Can't Be a Soapbox for Jewish Millenials’ anti-Israel Crusade (Jared Samilow, Haaretz+) The U.S. Jewish community has no obligation to capitulate to groups wanting to mainstream a Jewish identity that's agnostic about the right of the Jewish people to their own state.
The media's pastime: Targeting Netanyahu (Dr. Haim Shine, Israel Hayom) Time and again, "scandals" Israeli media outlets hype up end with a whimper, leading to crestfallen and angry faces.
Trump and Adelson Were Meant for Each Other (Peter Beinart, Haaretz+) Jewish conservatives who condemn the GOP candidate should condemn his Jewish sidekick too. 
A true strategic asset (Ariel Bolstein, Israel Hayom) The celebration of the 25th anniversary of renewed Israeli-Russian relations is absolutely justified.
 

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