APN's daily news review from Israel

Monday December 2, 2019

 

Quote of the day:

Haaretz

Yedioth Ahronoth

Maariv This Week (Hebrew links only)

Israel Hayom

Elections 2019/Netanyahu Indictment News:
With negotiations for a unity government still going nowhere, some papers chose to focus on other issues. Haaretz focused on negotiations that were succeeding in moving forward - between Hamas and Israel towards a long-term agreement. Also, the two government decisions for the benefit of settlers, a new Jewish neighborhood in Hebron and millions more shekels - were also top news, as they were in Maariv. Maariv reported that ’Peace Now’ slammed Netanyahu for giving the settlers - "a small and radical minority" - more budget money when residents of the north and south were not protected and said it was because “Netanyahu was cultivating his political partners.” Maariv also reported that the security establishment thinks that Defense Minister Naftali Bennett’s decision to start a new Jewish settlement neighborhood in Hebron was also out of political interests. Yedioth focused on the killing of a mother and her baby in a car accident and the high rate of car crashes in the country. And Israel Hayom’s top story was that the reason for Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s insistence on serving first in a rotation unity government was to get credit for applying Israeli sovereignty over the Beqaa Valley in the West Bank. Also, the latest warning of a murder of a senior official. And a reading recommendation.

With only 10 days to go until the Knesset must dissolve, neither Likud nor Kahol-Lavan have succeeded in collecting the signatures of 61 MKs in order to get an extension to form a government. The leaders of three right-wing parties cited a variety of reasons for not signing the Likud petition to back Netanyahu by the Sunday deadline the Likud party gave. Nevertheless, President Reuven Rivlin is preparing for the possibility that Netanyahu will receive the minimum 61 signatures and is asking the attorney general if Netanyahu can form a government even after being indicted. Political sources said "Netanyahu is ready to serve for a six-month term only,” Maariv reported. And Israel Hayom reported that the reason Netanyahu wanted to serve as prime minister for just six months before Kahol-Lavan leader Benny Gantz was, according to a Likud official, because “The Prime Minister understands that he can soon lead to a historic move like sovereignty in the Bekaa valley.” (Hebrew)

Meanwhile, Maariv’s new political correspondent, Anna Barsky, wrote that senior people in the Likud movement continue to declare support for Netanyahu’s rival, Gideon Saar. MK Yoav Kish (Likud) called for primaries in the Likud: “The group is more important than the star,” he said. Barsky wrote that in Netanyahu's Likud, you're either with him, or you're out. In the Netanyahu camp, they see Sa'ar as "the traitor, the subversive and the divider.” They claim that he does no less harm to itself than he does to Likud.

Following Maariv's report yesterday on the warning by the former Mossad chief of a political murder, it was the turn of Attorney Avi Himi, President of the Israel Bar Association. He warned that the violent discourse in Israel could lead to personal harm of senior law enforcement officials, Maariv reported. "We are a country that is embattled and surrounded by enemies. Unfortunately, recently, parts of the public are also joining the list of the country's enemies, including the judiciary in Israel. This is a very bitter and grave error. It is unthinkable. We are here to say clearly: The law enforcement system is not an enemy. We will not allow the status quo of the law enforcement system and the courts to be trampled upon. We will not allow incitement against the gatekeepers. We must not watch from the side while they hint that the senior officials of the police and prosecutor's office should be killed. And I tell you honestly: I have a deep fear that the violent discourse will lead to personal injury of the senior officials - and this is a real danger to the entire democracy,” he said at the "Rule of Law - Test Time" event taking place at the Zionists of America House in Tel-Aviv, adding: “This is a time when every statement is associated with the question, ‘Which side do you support? Are you for or against the prime minister? Are you for or against the law enforcement system? There was criticism that I had not made a statement justifying the prosecution of the Prime Minister - some friends criticized me with harsh words for daring to say that the Prime Minister is innocent till proven guilty. There was criticism also within the Bar Association. Unfortunately, there are those who prefer to deepen the rifts in society in the name of their failed attempt to pave a way to one party or another. It is very easy to make a speech at rallies. The Bar Association will not file a position on the legal process that is underway and only the court will decide. The Bar is not one side or the other, the Bar is on one side only, the side of the rule of law."

Three different and illuminating Op-Eds translated from Yedioth and Maariv today are worth reading. Dr. Haim Misgav gives the right-wing conspiracy perspective of the indictments against Netanyahu. He writes about 'Other Israel,' which Chen Artzi-Srur writes in Yedioth is the code name for Mizrachi Jews. She explains what the Ashkenazi 'elite' should not do, so as not to deepen the rift. And former Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin writes on Yedioth's front page how the claims of the 'Other Israel,' such as described by Misgav, are baseless. (See Election/Indictment Commentary/Analysis below.)

 

Quick Hits:

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Features:
The tune of peace
It's a rare sight in our concert halls: 16-year-old Mohammed Alsheikh, a gifted and renowned pianist, passes through the IDF barriers to performances and musical lessons in Israel every day. In an interview ahead of his concert series with the Raanana Symphony, he explains why he has no problem playing with Israelis: "We are all God's children." Alsheich was born into an Arab-Russian family in Russia. His mother is of Russian descent, and his father, a native of Ramallah, studied medicine in Russia. Later, the family returned to Ramallah, where he began studying piano at the age of 9. He won several awards in young pianist competitions around the world, and Daniel Barenboim himself said he had a great future ahead. (Iris Lifshitz Kliger, Yedioth Hebrew ’24 Hours supplement)
Israeli cinema, an American dream
Guy Amir and Hanan Savion plan to conquer America with English version of their film, “Maktoub.” Alon Abutball explains why US movie industry is like "Russian Roulette.” And Guy Nativ, our Academy Award-winning director, tells how his beginning in America is connected to the drummer of the Israeli band, Kaveret. Our correspondent visited the Israeli film festival in Los Angeles and met the blue-and-white stars who dream of going the Gal Gadot route. (Ayala Or-El in Los Angeles, Yedioth Hebrew)
Something new is starting (among Arab women in Nazareth)
Slowly but surely, women are conquering Nazareth's desolate market alleys - those that were once the heart of the city - filling them with their own products and taste. Get to know Maha's bookshop, Lubna's lace shop, Rim's bags and many others…Less than a month before Christmas, the narrow alleyways in the ancient part of Nazareth are almost empty of people. There is a different charm in this look, in the small cafes where you can easily find a table, in shops where people don’t crowd in front of their shop windows, thinking of a life spent in some kind of contagious comfort. The other possibility - swarms of people gobble over the doorways and dominate the hustle - seems less magical…The quietness of Nazareth's market alley, which is the perfect backdrop for casual early-winter tourists, is not a sign of real tranquility and, at the same time, dealing with the social and political problems that lie beneath the surface, and sometimes even above it, women in the city are trying to wake the market from its slumber and revitalize it. (Shir-Lee Golan, Yedioth Hebrew)


Elections 2019/Netanyahu Indictment Commentary/Analysis:
Three Scenarios for Netanyahu’s Chaotic Climax: The Good, the Bad and the Horrendous (Chemi Shalev, Haaretz+) Salvation, stagnation or capitulation – These are the ways Israel’s paralyzing political stalemate might be resolved.
The attempt to remove Netanyahu's head through the courts should fail (Dr. Haim Misgav, Maariv) The statement of the demonstrators' at the Prime Minister's support rally is clear, legitimate and important: Burn the bad to prevent a government coup…An amazing rally. Not foaming at the mouth. The thousands of people who attended it came from all over the country. Not from Tel Aviv, of course, nor from Herzliya Pituach. In those places, they are, apparently, less sensitive to the fundamental rights that have been trampled on in our places, for many years, under the public radar. Those areas are also less willing to listen to the voices of immigrants from the places where the “Other Israel" lives. Well, it turns out that the Other Israel is alive, breathing and kicking and it wants a Jewish state; Not universal values with an anarchist aroma, that lack Jewish meaninfulness, which pseudo-liberals try to dictate through tainted systems. The rule of law is one of the fundamental concepts of any reformed society - but it must not be accepted as a fact that there is the possibility of pulling under the feet of millions of voters on the democratic carpet. The judicial system should keep the law, not violate it. Not misuse it…The indictment against Binyamin Netanyahu is intended, in my opinion, first and foremost to harm the right-wing camp; And that's just the beginning. Next, the hypocrisy camp - the one that believes that there is a genetic defect in the Jewish state that needs to be corrected, even though it was declared a country by David Ben Gurion - will try to eliminate central parts of Israel being the national home of the Jewish people, and its only….Which brings me back to the purpose of the gathering (Netanyahu support rally) at the Tel Aviv Museum Square. None of those in attendance asked to cancel the important institutions that make up the law enforcement system. The demand was completely different: to eradicate evil in these places in order to prevent a government coup. It’s a legitimate demand, of unparalleled importance.
In the periphery, the rage only doubles itself (Chen Artzi-Srur, Yedioth Hebrew) The demonstration in support of Netanyahu and against the judicial system last week was pure gold for the magazine writers. They easily found there all the characters who would be soul actors, delivering just the necessary utterances - furious, extreme, sometimes inarticulate. What a winning frame there is in two Ashkenazi elderly women with dyed hair, who come to the museum for a concert and are surrounded by Israelis they have never met. Or rather, Israelis who are the cartoon of the model of what we gravely call “Other Israel." “Other Israel," the code name for Mizrahim, from the periphery and traditional, sees the media, the legal system and cultural institutions as one hegemonic cult that made sure to close its ears and close its eyes. A place where there will never be a foothold for someone "like them.” As in the self-fulfilling Pygmalion prophecy, the tribe said its word: it adopted its own codes and culture and its own subculture that were the same characteristics for which they were over the years insulted. Did you call us inarticulate? We'll show you what rudeness is. You called us a mezuzah-kissers, that’s exactly from where our engine will work…But this is precisely the sad joke and huge mine of identity politics: only a few will be able to get an entry ticket from the periphery to the center, and then perhaps the same Orientalist identity will be an advantage. But the vast majority will be born in marginal consciousness and die in marginal consciousness. And there, in this tribal place, the rage will only replicate itself, intensify and grow. As long as we remain in the consciousness as needing “correcting” for everything that we put under the "diversity" category, we will only exacerbate the rift and not make a correction. Sociology is not a good answer to any ideology, and it is not justification for violence or incitement. But surely this outburst of rage is a well-inflated abscess because it is well nurtured. No one wants to be a pet, to be a rare jewel to be proud of. Humans, in large part, want to be recognized and their culture to be recognized broadly and fully as equals. Not as an ornament, not as an accessory, not to mark a X in the box. We are paying today for past crimes, and unfortunately there are those who have a vested interest in continuing to cultivate and maintain that wound. Every hateful speaker, every journalist who cries with condescension that the protesters who came to rally for Netanyahu were at the Museum for the first time, is fueling a fire that it appears will never fade. Someone who tries to increase the flames is the one who has never experienced the wound on his flesh. Someone who has never paid a price for his identity and place of origin. The elitist of the elitists, Prime Minister Netanyahu. Strangely, he became the Dreyfuss of the Other Israel, and he of all people became a symbol of the persecuted, the despised. And he knows how to run this play better than anyone else. President Rivlin's tribes speech is an important speech, but it’s missing something. It does not offer real closing of the rift. Israeli culture should be one culture that has many paths to it. A place where identity is a place of power and therefore capable of making space, compromising, producing one language and not a tower of Babylon whose future is collapsing. The road is a long way, but for starters, the enlightened places that see true importance in representation will give up the worldview that is seeking a token fig leaf, and they will provide a real space for what they have called "the Second Israel."
We are the victim (Yuval Diskin, Yedioth Hebrew) Remember one thing, we are the true victim of the delusional situation in which our country is in. We are, not defendant Netanyahu. Do not let the defendant, however talented a marketing and rhetorician, confuse you for even a moment. The future of our country, which stands against all odds, and the future of our nation's unity are at stake here. They are the victim. The victim is not the defendant who heads a transitional government, the one who failed twice in the past year to form a government, the one who the Attorney General recently decided to put on trial. The victim is not the accused, the victim is us. We. Our future. The future of our children. All these are at stake here. That defendant Netanyahu is willing to do anything, including everything, to prove to us that there is a government coup against him. He incites against the rule of law, against the media, and calls on his supporters to go to demonstrations in squares against ... the rule of law in the State of Israel. Unprecedented. Incomprehensible. Shocking. And all this so as not to go to court. There he will have to prove to the judges, as a regular man does, that he is innocent. But let's flow with the accused and examine: Is there a government coup here? We’ll let the facts speak. First fact: The defendant is the one who appointed former Deputy Commissioner Ronnie Alsheikh, who headed the Israeli police, who recommended that he be prosecuted for prosecution. That former Deputy Commissioner knows me well from the time he was my commander in the Shin Bet, and how do we put this.. He is not exactly a Meretz man, or G-d forbid, an extreme leftist person. Second fact: The defendant is the one who appointed and pushed Avichai Mendelblit to the position of Attorney General, the man who indicted him. Not only that, but that Mendelblit, the son of an Irgun family, got to be the only candidate for the position after serving as the defendant's cabinet secretary and his appointment was approved by the government headed by Netanyahu. Here is the place to mention that “user-friendly" Mendelblitt concluded the Prime Minister’s Residence affair of Sara Netanyahu with a strange legal clause of "exploiting the ruse of another's mistake without fraud.” There is no doubt that this is possibly a strange clause, but certainly creative and interesting. All of this proves to us again that without a doubt, it is not the Attorney General who is persecuting the accused and his family….Friends, don't let anyone confuse you. Stay clear. Remember again and again and again: We are the victim of the ongoing campaign against the unity of the people, the media and the rule of law. Netanyahu's campaign is solely for personal survival motives. This is a strategic danger to our unity, the future of our people and the future of our country. Therefore, the time has come for the defendant's public to act in accordance with his famous and accurate statement from 2008 aimed at then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert: "This is about a prime minister who is bogged down in investigations, and has no public and moral mandate to determine things that are so fateful in the State of Israel. There is a concern, I must say real, not unsubstantiated, that he will make decisions based on the personal interest of his political survival and not based on the national interest, because he is in this special distress - which is so deep.”
Edelstein’s Wrong Turn (Haaretz Editorial) “Israel is at the height of a governmental emergency that’s liable to bring about its economic and social collapse, Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein said with poignancy. He proposed his own formula for a unity government, under which Benjamin Netanyahu would remain prime minister for a few months and then step down in favor of Kahol Lavan Chairman Benny Gantz. Kahol Lavan was right to reject this proposal. Though Edelstein correctly diagnosed Israel’s illness, the cure he offered ignored the fact that the main cause of this “governmental emergency” is Netanyahu himself. How could Israel be saved by shackling it to the man who brought it into the governmental emergency?
Missing representation: The political deadlock is also caused by the lack of women on the negotiating teams (Dr. Marilyn Smadja, Maariv) Dear female Knesset Members: Assembling the government depends on you too. Take an active role in coalition negotiations to prevent further elections…Why is it so important to involve women in negotiations for the future government? When women are involved in a conflict resolution process, the chances of resolving it are significantly higher (see UN Security Council Resolution 1325, which Israel has signed in 2005). Therefore, it is enough that  Israel 2019 has no women on political negotiation teams, and we are not talking about one token woman.
This Is How Netanyahu Will Go Down in History (Uzi Baram, Haaretz+) The esteemed author Meir Shalev wrote in a recent article that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “won’t be remembered in any way. … People have to do something really major, for good or for evil, in order to merit a place in history.” Shalev noted that Netanyahu did not bring about a solution to the conflict with the Palestinians while he did contribute to social and economic inequality in Israel, and was not a trailblazer. But history is not a linear progression connecting trailblazing events. The historical perspective examines what happened between the stage when a leader assumed his position and the point when he departed.

Other Commentary/Analysis:
Even After Weekend Violence, Israel and Hamas Moving Toward Long-term Calm (Amos Harel, Haaretz+) New Defense Minister Bennett is working like someone who has come for a limited time and is planning to use every minute of it.
With Fascism on the Rise in Israel, Who’s the Terrorist? (Odeh Bisharat, Haaretz+) In October 2000 the security forces killed 12 Palestinian Israeli citizens and another Palestinian from the territories. The Or Commission established that they had been shot even though they posed no risk to the lives of those who shot them. Despite this, the police commissioner was not assigned a bodyguard. Several years later, the Justice Ministry’s department for investigating police officers closed the cases on the killing of the demonstrators; there is no evidence that the department’s head had to take on a bodyguard, either. If we go back further in Israeli history, we can recall the six people who were killed on Land Day in 1976, and the 49 who were killed in the Kafr Qasem massacre in 1956, and many other severe injustices committed against Israel’s Arab population, but for some reason neither the “terrorist” Arabs or their leaders were tempted into thinking in terms of a political murder, or that more chilling term, “assassination.” Here we have it: Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit merely dared to announce that he would be filing indictments against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, not for betraying his country, God forbid, but for the lesser allegations of bribery and breach of trust, and the whole top tier of the prosecution is under heavy guard. So, Netanyahu, who’s the terrorist here?
Teachers, Shut Up (Or Kashti, Haaretz+) The indictment of Benjamin Netanyahu offers an extraordinary opportunity for civics teachers to illustrate how the theoretical aspects of what they teach are applied in practice. A few possible discussion topics: The rule of law and equality before the law; the authority of the attorney general; the legal and moral expectations of elected officials; the role of the media; the presumption of innocence and the right to a fair trial. Educators who respect themselves and their students should have rejoiced over the chance to discuss these issues and the various dilemmas they pose. Not in Israel’s Education Ministry.
A tale of two countries (Dr. Joseph Frager, Israel Hayom) Our real enemies are rejoicing at our chaotic behavior – it is high time both Israel and the United States woke up and stopped the madness.
The Most Dangerous Thing Trump Could Do Yet, and Its Nightmare Fallout for Israel (Daniel B. Shapiro, Haaretz+) Trump pulling the U.S. out of NATO increases Israel's vulnerability just when threats to its security are intensifying. Netanyahu must use all his influence to dissuade Trump from following through.
Turkey, Not Trump, Is the Biggest Threat to NATO Right Now (Simon A. Waldman, Haaretz+)  Trump cuts funding, Macron calls it 'brain-dead.' But neither are NATO's most pressing challenge from inside the alliance. NATO needs to show Turkey tough love - now.
Erdogan, angry at NATO, is putting Turkey in good bargaining position ahead of London summit (Zvi Bar'el, Haaretz+)  The Turkish president wants the rest of the organization’s countries to accept his invasion of Syria, but he knows it won’t happen.
Israel’s presence in the Golan Heights benefits the US (Yoram Ettinger, Israel Hayom) An Israeli retreat from the strategic Golan Heights would erode its posture of deterrence, turning Israel from a US national security asset to a national security liability.
There's No Comparison Between Johnson's Crudeness and Corbyn's Conspiratorial anti-Semitism (Garvan Walshe, Haaretz+) If Johnson’s words as a columnist were offensive, there's no sign of this in practice. His Cabinet is more diverse than any previous government, and he was not party to his predecessor's xenophobic campaigns.

 

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