APN's daily news review from Israel

Wednesday June 26, 2019

 

Quote of the day:
"I think it is possible to be satisfied that they did not execute Mahmoud Katusa. It could have been inconvenient to explain to the widow why her husband was executed by stoning in the city square without being very accurate regarding evidence."
--Legal affairs commentator Guy Peleg expressed relief about the dropping of charges and release from jail of a Palestinian man, Mahmoud Katusa, following the lack of evidence to connect him to the rape of a 7-year-old Jewish Israeli girl.*

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Front Page:

Haaretz

Yedioth Ahronoth

Maariv This Week (Hebrew links only)

Israel Hayom

Elections 2019 News:
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is considering canceling the September election after the Knesset Speaker, Yuli Edelstein said he found a legal way to do so. But it’s not clear how he could form a government without the Kahol-Lavan party and they rejected this new idea as ‘spin.’ Yedioth (Hebrew) reported that the reason Netanyahu wants to do this is not to save the taxpayers’ money but because internal polls predicted Likud would get less than 30 seats and a leak of votes would go to Netanyahu's bitter enemy: Avigdor Lieberman. Haaretz reported that, anyway, the Likud initiative will likely be struck down by the High Court. Lieberman said, ”The fear of losing power guides Netanyahu." (Ynet Hebrew)

Other Top News Summary:

The other top two stories were the opening of the US economic conference in Bahrain and the dropping of charges and release of the Palestinian man, Mahmoud Qatusa, in the case of the rape of the 7-year-old Israeli girl in the West Bank.

The opening statements by US Middle East advisor to President Donald Trump, Jared Kushner, at the Bahrain economic conference were portrayed both positively and negatively towards the Palestinians in the Hebrew newspapers. Maariv and Haaretz+ quoted him saying, “Trump did not give up on you. We want a better future for you.” While ‘Israel Hayom’ led with him saying that the Palestinians need to “stop blaming others.” Speaking on the same day at a fundraising conference for UNRWA in New York, the UN agency that helps Palestinian refugees, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Middle East peace efforts must realize the two-state vision. Meanwhile, Palestinians protested the conference in the West Bank, chanting 'Palestine is not for sale' and held a general strike in the Gaza Strip.

The dropping of charges against Mahmoud Qatusa in the case of the rape of the 7-year-old girl in her West Bank settlement was portrayed differently in the Hebrew press. ‘Israel Hayom’ and to some extent Yedioth Ahronoth stressed that the investigation was not over and that the police still believe that Qatusa was involved in the incident (despite his confirmed alibi that he was elsewhere). But Maariv and Haaretz slammed all those involved in justice and law enforcement for keeping a man in prison detention for 56 days when there was no evidence against him. The difference in the portrayal of innocence and guilt could also be seen in the choice of photos on the front page: Maariv showed a photo of the released Katusa hugging his 7-year-old daughter, while Yedioth showed him on the shoulders of a man after his release and Israel Hayom showed him at the moment he climbed out of the police van where he was released.

Yedioth/Ynet’s Eli Senyor wrote about the botching by police of the case and said, “But the central failing seems to be the fact that since the arrest of Katusa as the suspected rapist and until the story broke in media reports in late June, the entire case was handled by the Police in the West Bank district in what can only be described as a scandalous manner.

Reporters also interviewed Katusa himself on his way out of prison and he repeated: "I did not rape...I have a lot to say about what happened, and I kept saying I was innocent." (Maariv)

Maariv’s Knesset reporter Arik Bendar interviewed MKs both Arab and right-wing, but the article did not go into the print version. The title: "The only thing that was nationalist in this affair was the police negligence."
Hadash MK Ofer Kassif wrote in his Twitter account: "This is what an apartheid-style system looks like - first of all the Palestinian is guilty - until he is proven innocent. It was only through public and media pressure was it revealed that there was no evidence to put him on trial. In the meantime, the rapist is walking free and the inciting liar (Public Security Minister) Erdan - is still singing."
MK Yusef Jabarin of the Hadash-Ta'al party said, “The Katusa affair exposes what we have been saying all the time about what is called the 'judicial system' in the occupied territories. There is no fair trial and no criminal justice under foreign occupation. Katusa is another victim of the Israeli occupation, which is making life miserable for Palestinians and sees them as criminals until proven innocent. The gravity of the matter requires the establishment of a commission of inquiry on the matter, and whoever is responsible for the false arrest of a person for about two months must end his job."
MK Aida Tuma Suleiman of Hadash-Ta'al also said: "The Katusa case gave a public glimpse of the systems of injustice of the occupation. The police and the Military Advocate General's Office did not hesitate to detain the defendant for two months when there was no evidence against him. This is the same legal system that holds thousands of Palestinians in detention at any given time. The rapist must be found. You can not seek justice in the occupation system."
MK Moti Yogev of (right-wing) Habayit Hayehudi party also responded: "The point of failure is the investigation is essentially the Israel Police, the Shai District (West Bank), which did not employ the units that are responsible for handling these cases…The investigation by the local police station was unprofessional and in such difficult cases, it is obligatory to report and involve professional investigative bodies from the district and they still must bring the rapist, who is walking around free, to trial."

"The Katusa case tells a much wider story." MaarivOnline also reported on the interview on 103FM with TV legal affairs commentator, Guy Peleg, about the collapse of the case and the release of Palestinian suspect, Mahmoud Katusa. "I think it is possible to be satisfied that they did not execute Mahmoud Katusa," Peleg said. "It could have been inconvenient to explain to the widow why her husband was executed by stoning in the city square without being very accurate regarding evidence. Forget the cynicism for a moment, you can look at this affair in several ways. Some will say that our justice system has been revealed here in all its glory. A failure was discovered, and despite the enormous media-public profile, the Military Advocate General made a courageous and obvious decision. He looked only at the evidence and retracted the charge. And perhaps it is better to look at this case specifically as a warning light on what is going on in the military courts. Look, Katusa’s detention was extended 11 times, and investigators from the Shai District police investigated and prosecutors from the Military Prosecution supervised and submitted an indictment. Perhaps Katusa's case tells a much wider story about negligent investigators, negligent lawyers, and negligent military judges. They are the ones who provide day-to-day law enforcement services to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, not just they. Maybe the hand here was fast on the trigger in the first place. Perhaps legal justice can be really sought only in other places."

Quick Hits:

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Commentary/Analysis:
Israel’s Rape Indictment of Palestinian Reveals the Moral Rot (Haaretz Editorial) The military advocate general’s announcement Tuesday that he was withdrawing the indictment of Mahmoud Qatusa on a charge of raping a 7-year-old girl and his release from custody aren’t enough to end this harsh affair. The case allows a terrifying look into the rot that has spread into the “justice system” that Israel has created for its Palestinian subjects living under military occupation. In the backyard of Israeli democracy exists a parallel legal world where the Palestinians are assumed to be terrorists unless proved otherwise. This general failure includes every member of the system: the police, who held Qatusa in custody for two months without sufficient evidence; the military prosecutors, who filed an indictment even though the file lacked sufficient evidence; the media, which instead of serving as the watchdog of democracy humiliated itself with a sick dialogue implying that reservations about the rape of little girls depends on political tastes and whims; and the politicians, who saw this shocking incident as nothing but an opportunity to sow fear and win votes. Military Advocate General Sharon Afek announced that he and the police would hold a proper process of drawing conclusions from the affair. But it’s hard to understand why he’s still treating Qatusa as a suspect. Would Afek dare to confer such a mark of Cain on a Jewish citizen who fell victim to such a series of failures?
Netanyahu’s Blood Libel That Bashes the Media (Iris Leal, Haaretz+) Benjamin Netanyahu’s campaign people – who disseminated fake news relating to pedophilia in the last election cycle as well – now proclaim that with the dropping of the charges against Mahmoud Qatusa, the question isn’t whether he’s guilty, or if a rape was committed at all. They say the question is why the media underplayed this story when it’s clear that if a Jew had been suspected in the rape of a 7-year-old girl, this would have made the top headlines.
West Bank Rape Case: Destined for Scandal, but No One Sounded the Alarm (Amos Harel and Yaniv Kubovich, Haaretz+) The alleged sexual assault of a 7-year-old Israeli girl in the West Bank shows how the military court system falls short on civilian cases.
Amos Oz's Last Prophecy: Zionism, Violence and the Future of Jews (Isaac Herzog, Haaretz+) In a lecture before his death that’s now been published as a book, Amos Oz sums up his world view, and explains why he is still optimistic.
Bahrain is a tired formula that will only fail again (Ben-Dror Yemini, Yedioth/Ynet) In the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the 1920s to today, Arab nationalism always trumps prosperity and development, so it is difficult to believe the economic workshop can produce a different result.
Bahrain or bust - reporter's notebook (Herb Keinon, JPost/Maariv) 'The Jerusalem Post' was one of six media outlets invited to cover the "Peace to Prosperity" Workshop to open Tuesday evening in Bahrain.
What the Trump plan cannot accomplish (Jonathan S. Tobin, Israel Hayom) The economic vision for the Palestinians isn't new and won't work. The intended beneficiaries have already rejected numerous opportunities to get the state they claim they want.
It won’t bring peace, but the Bahrain conference is still important (Anshel Pfeffer, Haaretz+) Just by taking place, Jared Kushner’s conference has moved the needle against the Palestinians and in the direction of Netanyahu’s vision for the Middle East.
It could be the economy, don't be stupid (Sever Plocker, Yedioth/Ynet) This week's government cuts are not enough to stop the growing budget deficit - what is needed is an immediate tax hike to repair the damage; failing to heed the governor of the Bank of Israel on this could cost Netanyahu the next elections.
We cracked the code to relations with the US (MK Nachman Shai, Israel Hayom) Israel is enjoying unprecedented close ties with the US, which is never something to take for granted. At the same time, we must never ignore the potential threats to those ties.
U.S. Diplomacy Festival Won't Put Out Israel's Fires (Zvi Bar'el, Haaretz+) Trump thinks he invented the wheel, and it’s called the 'Bahrain workshop,' so don’t tell him innumerable agreements have already been signed with the Palestinians.
Take an honest look at the conflict (Yehuda Shalem, Israel Hayom) We do not have the luxury of ignoring the more painful aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, such as the history of Muslims using rape as a weapon of war.
Israeli Theater Is on the Verge of Moral Bankruptcy (Yair Ashkenazi, Haaretz+) The crowds didn’t come to attend the so-called emergency conference about censorship and self-censorship in Israeli theaters, last Friday. Those chairs tell the story of the entire event in a nutshell and lead to a clear conclusion about how low the standing of theater in Israeli culture has sunk. After four years of Miri Regev as culture minister, and with streaming services growing more popular, even theater people have lost interest in discussing the field’s future, just as their audience has gradually abandoned the theaters in favor of binge-watching. Director Sinai Peter accurately identified young theater artists’ tendency to avoid political material in an interview with Haaretz’s Gallery section in 2016, ahead of a performance of Lerner’s play “The Admission” at the Jaffa Theater. Several major theaters had rejected that play. “Every year, I see a new cohort of young artists, identify the ones who are political and involved, and realize that there’s a deeper problem here than fear of censorship,” he wrote. “There’s an inability to cope with the [Israeli-Palestinian] conflict. These people have served in the reserves; many of them suffer from exceptional post-traumatic stress, but not from war – rather, from the occupation. They are weak-kneed when they approach the conflict and don’t know what to do with it. So even the political ones turn to economic or social issues, or to personal distress.” Just as these young artists, like a significant portion of Israeli society, don’t know what to do with the conflict and prefer not to rack their brains over the occupation and its implications, Israeli theater similarly doesn’t know what to do – not just with the conflict, but above all with the changes that have befallen it and the changes in the political, cultural and economic climate in which it operates. For the most part, it has withdrawn into itself through routine, paralyzing forms of writing and directing. It carries on and tries to eke out success and revenue, mainly on the basis of proven works.
All (Arab) springs must end (Prof. Eyal Zisser, Israel Hayom) Interestingly, Islamists have only been successful in the two non-Arab Muslim countries in the region, Turkey and Iran, whose regimes at present don't appear in jeopardy of cracking.
 
Elections 2019 Commentary/Analysis:
What Lies Behind the Absurd Claim That Netanyahu Is Good for Israeli Arabs (B. Michael, Haaretz+) The gist of it was that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seeks to market himself to Israel’s Palestinian citizens through his loyal lackey, Nathan Eshel (“The right must stop splintering,” Haaretz, June 18).  “Netanyahu is good for the Arabs,” Eshel explained to them sweetly, but he was essentially saying that now the Arabs are good for Netanyahu. Because his electoral prospects are looking shaky. Because Yisrael Beiteinu chairman Avigdor Lieberman has abandoned him. Because the right-wing bloc is unraveling. So, Netanyahu is now hoping that “the Arabs” will return to the polls in droves, but this time in buses financed by right-wing organizations.
The Only Reason Netanyahu Would Try to Nix the New Election (Yossi Verter, Haaretz+) Netanyahu has just floated a new, unprecedented idea: Canceling the new election he himself pushed for.
Are the September 17 elections about to be cancelled? (Moran Azoulay, Yedioth/Ynet) After voting in favor of an unprecedented second elections in the same year, rumors begin swirling around another unprecedented decision that might be around the corner as Netanyahu - whose party is sliding down in the polls - issues a surprise statement
Netanyahu Could Crash and Burn in the Next Elections – While His Rivals Are Sleeping (Chemi Shalev, Haaretz+) Netanyahu’s decision to impose new elections that no one else wants or needs may have been a bridge too far for a sufficient number of Likud voters.

 

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