APN's daily news review from Israel

Tuesday July 2, 2019

 

Quote of the day:
“If the policeman had seen a group of white-skinned youth squabbling, his hand would never have gone to his gun.”
—Labor party MK Shelly Yachimovich said following the killing of an Ethiopian-Israeli youth by an off-duty police officer.*

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Front Page:

Haaretz

Yedioth Ahronoth

Maariv This Week (Hebrew links only)

Israel Hayom

Top News Summary:
Protest across the country following the killing of an Ethiopian-Israeli teen by an off-duty policeman [reports which contrast sharply with the killing of a Palestinian youth], suspense ahead of Labor party chief elections today, a missile attack attributed to Israel that allegedly destroyed a Syrian weapons developing institute and killed six civilians, and Iran’s announcement that it breached the nuclear agreement limit for enriching uranium, to which the Israeli premier called on European countries to impose sanctions on Iran, were top stories in today’s Hebrew newspapers. Also in the news, Mossad chief Yossi Cohen said the Mossad’s theft of Iran’s nuclear archives was what kept nuclear weapons from Iran (Maariv’s Yossi Melman says that’s pushing it - see translation of his analysis below) and IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi promoted a controversial general who had been passed by twice by Kochavi’s predecessor, Gadi Eisenkot.

*The fact that three policemen were wounded by Ethiopian-Israeli demonstrators in Haifa, the fact that the protesters threw stones and firecrackers, that they lit tires on fire, and blocked roads into the city was not held against the protesters by the Israeli Hebrew newspapers, nor was it the lead of the stories, whose headlines suggested the police officer, who claimed self-defense, acted wrongly for shooting 19-year-old Solomon Teka. “Ethiopian blood is not worthless,” “Solomon was a boy with joy of life” “If he were white, he would be alive today,” “Why did you murder our son?” “We are crying with you,” “Insult and fury,” “How is it that again an Ethiopian youth is killed?” were some of the headlines from Yedioth, Israel Hayom and Maariv. (Haaretz was less emotional and more newsy.) Yedioth used much smaller print for the subtitle that revealed that a source in the police said that the bullet hit the ground ricocheted at Teka, supporting the policeman’s claim that he shot at Teka's feet and did not aim to kill. (Also Maariv.) Moreover, the police did not harm any of the demonstrators.

Yet, last week a Palestinian youth of a similar age, Mohammed Obeid, 20, was shot dead by an Israeli policeman in Issawiya neighborhood in E. Jerusalem for allegedly throwing a firecracker towards a group of police during local protests against the police’s heavy-handedness in the neighborhood. (Nir Hasson wrote in Haaretz that the firecrackers "have become common weapons among Jerusalem’s Palestinian teenagers; they make a loud noise and can fly a short distance, but rarely hurt anybody and certainly don’t cause serious injuries".) Yet most of the papers did not even report on it. Then people in Issawiya protested against his death and some of the papers noted that "90 were injured in clashes” with police. The papers, with the exception of Haaretz did not share the fury and pain of the locals of Issawiya, the sense was that the police were justified. Indeed, numerous Palestinians have been killed in incidents similar to that of Teka and Palestinians continue to protest in a similar manner as the Ethiopian-Israelis did across the country yesterday, but in the Hebrew papers, throwing stones and firecrackers and setting fire to tires is criminal when Palestinians do it. Indeed, the law says that throwing stones gets one jail sentence, but no Ethiopian-Israelis were detained. Moreover, most of the papers, never mentioned that Israel held Obeid's body to prevent more upheaval after the funeral. And so they did not mention that Israel released his body last night and he was buried. Ynet Hebrew reported on it online and noted that some youth with their faces covered threw stones and firecrackers at the police who were standing nearby.

That said, on page 20, Yedioth ran a one-page feature today marking five years since the murder of 16-year-old Mohamed Abu-Khdeir, who was killed after three young Jews kidnapped him and set him on fire in a forest. Yedioth called it: “The murder that changed Jerusalem” and explained the correlation between the murder of the Abu Khdeir, a Palestinian boy from E. Jerusalem, and the knife intifada that erupted afterward, as well as the connection with the killing of Obeid last week. (Ynet Hebrew) "I remember the day of the murder clearly, and when I was on the way to the scense, I understood even then that the murder was going to be a turning point," a senior police source recalls. "No one could have foreseen such a murder. But I knew, and also officers in the district police knew, that the incident would lead us to a tense period, and the outbreak of the wave of terrorism was almost inevitable.” According to the article, “The rift between the residents of the east and the west side of city, which was deepened after the murder, is felt also in these days when a few days ago, Mohammed Samir Obeid, 19, was killed by a policeman, after, according to the police claim, he shot fireworks towards a force” that was inside the E. Jerusalem neighborhood of Issawiya. “All the clashes in Issawiya leave now marks of hatred that were born from the occupation, but were deepened even more after the murder of Abu-Khdeir,” said Abed Abu-Nijma, a resident of the nearby Beit Hanina neighborhood in E. Jerusalem and the chairman of the parents committee in the neighborhood. “The reality in Jerusalem since the murder was that youth are afraid to run into Jews at the neighborhood mini-market. There are incidents that can be forgotten, but the murder of Abu-Khdeir cannot be forgotten. There is fear that is born from the murder five years ago and every such incident, like in Issawiya (where Obeid was killed), affects the relations between Arabs and Jews in Jerusalem and it is impossible to suffer this reality anymore.” The reporters, Yael Friedson and Yishai Levy, also interviewed Abu-Khdeir’s father, who said that his and his wife’s situation was very bad. “We burn every day anew…Our life has been ruined, my wife has not been able to sleep for five years and is constantly taking pills.” The print and the online versions of the article quote Hussein Abu-Khdeir differently. In the print version he said, “When Mohammed was set on fire, we said that maybe Mohammed will be the last one to burn, but the situation is getting worse. There is no peace between the Palestinian Arabs and Israel. Netanyahu can talk with Abu Mazen, but there is no peace. Israel is going more radical right-wing. Too much…Not all the Jews are extremist. There are good people. We must make peace…They must leave the Territories, because we can’t have occupation all the time, the biggest occupation in the world. Enough, this must end. Israel is strong and those who are strong can make peace.” In the online version, Hussein Abu Khdeir said: “I hope that my son will be the last victim in the battle between the nations ... I hope there will finally be peace in the Middle East and we will finish this story.”


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Ofer Winter, a controversial religious general whose promotion former chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot twice skipped, was named next head of Central Command’s 98th Division. During the 2014 Gaza War, after the abduction of the body of Lt. Hadar Goldin, Winter reportedly ordered tanks into civilian neighborhoods of Rafah and had bulldozers tear down homes while artillery batteries, tanks and aircraft opened fire on all vehicles leaving the area in order to stop the kidnapping. The day was called “Black Friday” because dozens of innocent Palestinian civilians were killed as a result. Winter also subjected his soldiers to religious coercion when he distributed leaflets to Givati Brigade commanders saying that the operation was a “religious war.” In the flyer, Winter refers to the Palestinians as a "blasphemous enemy", and invokes the Jewish credo: "Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one," as a battle cry. Secular Jewish-Israelis claiimed that it turned the IDF into a "religious militia.” Winter went to the pre-army academy at Eli settlement. [NOTE: The academy openly promotes Jewish supremacy. - OH] (Also Maariv)

Elections Quickees:

 

Quick Hits:

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Features:

Investigative report: The U.S. Duty Free Empire That Funds Israeli Settlements
Falic family, owners of Duty Free Americas shops, donated at least $5.6 million to settler organizations in West Bank over past decade, and have given more money than any other donor to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (Uri Blau, Haaretz+)
 
Elections 2019 Commentary/Analysis:
The Next Labor Head Will Bury the Party (Nehemia Shtrasler, Haaretz+) The Labor contest is ostensibly aimed at determining who will fill the lofty post of party chairman, but practically speaking it will choose the person who will be shutting down the party. There’s no room in the space between Meretz and Kahol Lavan for the Labor Party, especially now that Ehud Barak has formed a party, too.
The Israeli right-wing's moment of truth (Shlomo Pyuterkovsky, Yedioth/Ynet) Four politicians to the right of Likud believe they can mobilize voters better than anyone else to present the next coalition with a viable partner, but they may squander their too-small base entirely unless they can set their egos aside.
Fire and Ice: Inside the Battle to Lead Israel’s Troubled Labor Party (Allison Kaplan Sommer, Haaretz+) Shaffir or Shmuli? Haaretz catches up with the two young stars of Israel’s oldest party as they fight for their — and the center-left’s — political future.
Seven years since his death, and the gap between Shamir and his successors is becoming clearer (Yossi Ahimeir, Maariv) Israel's seventh prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir, would forgive Netanyahu's behavioral deviations. But not Olmert's attempts to establish a Palestinian state.
Center-left Better Beat a Path to Israel's Arabs Before the Right Wing Does (Carolina Landsmann, Haaretz+) Benjamin Netanyahu understands well that the biggest threat to the right wing’s rule is Arab voters. When he thought he was about to lose the election in 2015, he shared his fears with the public: “Right-wing rule is in danger. Arab voters are turning out in droves at the polls. Leftist groups are bringing them by bus.” And in fact his strategy in recent years has focused on delegitimizing Arab citizens and their representatives, and in the process preventing the formation of coalitions that include them. The center-left fell into Netanyahu’s trap and eschewed political contact with the Arabs. Its leaders carefully declared that they would never form a coalition with Arab parties, or even team up with them to block the creation of a right-wing government. At its peak, the Arab Joint List had 13 Knesset seats, meaning 13 seats that went to waste. After reducing Israeli Arabs’ political capital to nothing and causing the left to shrug it off, now Netanyahu will be trying to buy Arab political capital on the cheap and build an empire.
The test of the opposition parties - to get the despairing voters out to the polls (Dr. Revital Amiran, Maariv) No one cares anymore that for the last year and a half, the Israel Police has not had a commissioner, that the elected State Comptroller is none other than someone who believes that he must censor his power.
Flip-flopping generals (Meir Indor, Israel Hayom) Why were the same policies that the former generals of Blue and White decry as unacceptable considered perfectly acceptable when they were in charge of the IDF and dealing with Hamas?

Commentary/Analysis:
Broken Wall Under East Jerusalem Village Should Give Us All Pause (Nir Hasson, Haaretz+) The photo op with the sledgehammers confirms all the Palestinians’ concerns over Trump and his inability to be an impartial mediator.
A sledgehammer blow didn’t 'Judaize' Jerusalem (Jonathan S. Tobin, Israel Hayom) The real problem is the Palestinian denial of Jewish history, not the presence of America’s ambassador at the unveiling of a biblical archeological site.
Why Did They Shoot Him? (Haaretz Editorial) As expected, there are conflicting versions of what occurred: The policeman says he was attacked by stones and fired in self-defense, while a witness who testified to the department for the investigation of police officers said the policeman was not in any danger. Either way, it doesn’t change the fact that there was no reason to kill Teka. To the hundreds of people who demonstrated against the police, the answer to the question posed by Teka’s mother is clear: They didn’t shoot him in the legs or arrest him by other means because he was of Ethiopian descent. The number of officers shooting Israelis of Ethiopian origin compel the police to internalize that the problem lies with the police force, which, as former Police Commissioner Roni Alsheich said, “naturally” finds them suspicious.
We must not add fuel to the fire (Inno Farda Sanbato, Israel Hayom) It is a shame that a handful of racist cops are devastating families and destroying an entire community and harming the image of a state that we Ethiopian Israelis love and hold so dear.
The flaws in the investigation of the rape of the seven-year-old call for dramatic police reform (Efraim Ganor, Maariv) There is a need to reorganize the police, adapt it to reality, and especially to make it effective, deterrent, determined, and sophisticated.
Unsafe passage (Nadav Shragai, Israel Hayom) Experts agree that a "safe passage" corridor linking the Gaza Strip to the West Bank will present not only very real security risks for Israel, but a potential host of legal problems, as well.
Alleged Israeli Strike in Syria Hit Advanced Iranian Weapons Headed for Hezbollah (Amos Harel, Haaretz+) Russia's national security adviser stressed Moscow's alliance with Tehran in Israel visit, but Russia not working to thwart Israeli strikes in Syria ■ Iran's nuclear deal breach pushes U.S. to the table, but Trump has yet to take the bait.
Hezbollah is in the crosshairs: The (Israeli) attacks over the past year are signaling a change of direction (Tal Lev-Ram, Maariv) In recent years, Israel has been active primarily in targeting Iranian targets on Syrian soil, but recently there has been a change. The damage to advanced weapon systems justified the attack, even at the cost of tension (in the north).
Israel's free rein in Syrian skies to go after Iran (Alex Fishman, Yedioth/Ynet) As long as interests are aligned and understandings reached, actors in the Syrian arena stay out of each other's way, but that may not always be the case, so Jerusalem should choose its opportunities wisely.
The distance to a nuclear bomb is great: The breach of the nuclear agreement is an Iranian attempt to "improve its position" (Yossi Melman, Maariv) The move by the Islamic Republic is an act of defiance towards the United States and the international community, a kind of “What can you do to us?" And it joins the attacks on ships in the Persian Gulf.  Yesterday Mossad chief Yossi Cohen attributed the distancing of Iran from the ability to reach a nuclear bomb to the Mossad's daring operation in which it stole Iran's military nuclear arsenal. He exaggerated. What drove Tehran away from nuclear weapons were the past operations attributed to the Mossad in the days of its predecessors Meir Dagan and Tamir Pardo (of which Cohen was a partner): the assassinations of scientists, the sabotage of equipment, and especially the international sanctions that defeated Iran and led it to sign the nuclear agreement.
The Iran Crisis Is Exposing a Far Deeper Conflict Between Trump and Europe (Wyn Rees and Azriel Bermant, Haaretz+) Europe and the U.S. have clashed on Iran policy since the revolution. But as Trump exacerbates tensions, Europe's fears are more fundamental: that America is set on trashing the transatlantic alliance.
Hamas doesn't care about rehabilitating Gaza (Dudu Elharar, Israel Hayom) Israel's goal, therefore, should be as follows: Distinguish between the corrupt terrorist leaders and the downtrodden people of Gaza.
We Took the Money and Ran (Avi Mograbi, Haaretz+) The national lottery (Mifal Hapayis) has for years supported, sometimes with hefty sums, diverse cultural initiatives, films, TV programs, visual arts, literature, poetry, plays, various festivals and surely some others. Suddenly, the management of Mifal Hapayis has decided to stop supporting the Docaviv documentary film festival, after a film called “Lea Tsemel, Advocate” won the best film award, the festival’s biggest prize. The film was partly supported by the lottery. Creative artists’ unions cried out, justifiably so. They wrote: “With no equitable and professional support, with no participation of the lottery in supporting Israeli culture, what will this lottery become? A body that encourages gambling, mainly among weaker populations, doing what it wants to with the profits.” All of a sudden, the bare truth hits you in the face, devoid of any decorum. This is an organization that promotes gambling among weaker segments of society! Hold on, are we collaborating with it only because it makes it easier for us to produce our enlightened films? Mifal Hapayis supports films opposing the occupation? The organization is one of the main institutional investors in the maintenance of the occupation – building in settlements, constructing sports and culture centers on land stolen from Palestinians, using diverse tricks invented by Israel’s lawbooks. This led me to wonder about my part in accepting support – is this what I want?
Real peace requires real change (Nurit Greenger, Israel Hayom) Palestinian society lacks the liberty that can inspire people to act with civility. And those denying Palestinians this liberty are their own egocentric leaders.
If Democratic Candidates Cosy Up to Radical anti-Zionist Jews, They Can Kiss the 2020 Elections Goodbye (Jonathan S. Tobin, Haaretz+) If Democratic hopefuls encounter a radical pro-Palestinian group which rejects Jewish sovereignty and two states, they should ignore them, right? Let's see their response to IfNotNow, which intends to heckle, bait and entrap those candidates on the campaign trail
The beginning of the end of the Erdoğan era (Prof. Eyal Zisser, Israel Hayom) Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan tried to position himself as an omnipotent autocrat but his crushing failures in diplomacy and foreign policy and his attempts to destroy Turkish democracy are starting to boomerang.
The end of the act in first thought: This is the lesson that was not implemented at "Trump Heights” (Nir Kipnis, Maariv) Karl Marx once referred to the rise of Louis Napoleon to power in place of Napoleon Bonaparte, saying that "history repeats itself - for the first time as a tragedy and the second as a farce." And here, Israeliness took over the satire as well: because if Ephraim Kishon's "Salah Shabbti” dealt with the small tragedies alongside the great ingathering of (Jewish) exiles, Trump Heights (settlement) is already a farce…Some of the most beautiful years of my life I've spent at Trump Heights - and I'm not really joking, because this miserable piece of land that the government ministers and distinguished guests occupied with their shoes was once mine. Not entirely mine, of course, but subject to the principle of collective sharing. The era: the mid-1980s. The tiny kibbutz, some five kilometers from the Wasit Junction (in Hebrew, “HaEmir Junction"), is called "Kela Golan.” I left my world there, in that miserable patch of land on the Golan Heights - and a single sign will not change its fate and it will fail like her predecessors in the same place.
Rome and Jerusalem: A farewell column (Dror Eydar, Israel Hayom) At age 16, I marked in the book "A Nation that Lives Alone" the words "Something historic has happened, there is a change." Now, as I leave for Rome, I will take with me the prisoners of Judea and Jerusalem, the ancient Jewish communities of Italy, and also my late parents.

 

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