APN's daily news review from Israel

Wednesday February 19 2020

 

Quote of the day #1:

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Front Page:

Haaretz

Maariv This Week (Hebrew links only)

Israel Hayom

Top News Summary:
A date set for Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s trial, Netanyahu dares opponent, Benny Gantz, to debate him on TV, Israelis leave ‘corona cruise’ today to return to Israel and Israel eases sanctions on Gazans toward a long-term arrangement - making top stories in today’s Hebrew newspapers.

**Despite its aggressive threats against Gaza, the Israeli political echelon has adopted the army's [and Hamas’ - OH] stance to move toward the long-term agreement with Hamas. For the first time in years, Israel will grant 2,000 more entry permits today to merchants from Gaza (a 40% increase) and it will expand the Gazan fisherman’s fishing zone back to 15 nautical miles from the coast. (Also Ynet Hebrew) Yedioth Hebrew’s military affairs correspondent, Yossi Yehoshua explained it as such: “Militant declarations are one thing and reality is another.” The decision was made last week, but was not carried out and then there were a number of explosive balloons launched toward Israel. Nevertheless, the permits were given today  even after an RPG warhead attached to a plastic bag was found in a kibbutz along the Gaza border. There were no reports of casualties or damage. Former IDF deputy chief of staff, MK Yair Golan, called for Israel to hold direct talks with Hamas. "We talk to Hamas all the time," Golan said. "It's a stupid lie that we ignore them because they are terrorists. They are terrorists, but it's better to talk to them rather than fight them."


Elections 2020 / Netanyahu Indictment News:
The announcement of the opening of Netanyahu’s trial on March 17th made large bold headlines on the front pages of the main Hebrew newspapers, with the exception of ‘Israel Hayom,’ which gave a tiny headline and used an abbreviation, ‘PM,’ to refer to the Prime Minister, making it even smaller. The charges of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust will be read aloud in court. The trial will begin two weeks after Israeli elections and will last months or years and Maariv reported that senior Likud officials were worried that “photos from the court will severely damage Likud after elections.” The sources in the ruling party claimed that because of the announcement of the hearing, “the little chance that still existed for a unity government with Kahol-Lavan - completely dropped from the agenda.” Shortly after the trial announcement, Netanyahu challenged his chief rival, Kahol-Lavan leader Benny Gantz, to a television debate. Gantz dismissed the invitation as an attempt to distract the public from the corruption trial announcement.

Elections 2020 / Netanyahu Indictment Quickees:
Threat to Ethiopian soccer league players: "You will be punished if you do not come to the event with Netanyahu"  -In anticipation of an event marking the 20th anniversary of the Ethiopian-Israeli minor league with the participation of the Prime Minister, the players were warned: "Anyone who does not register and does not attend the ceremony will end playing this season." Likud: "We have nothing to do with messages given by the association.” (Yedioth Hebrew and Haaretz+)
(Ethiopian-Israeli) Teacher to face disciplinary hearing after lobbing apple at PM, comparing him to Hitler - Education minister demands the woman, who regularly attends protests against police brutality and racial profiling, be called in for clarifications. (Haaretz+ and Ynet)
Voting begins in Israeli embassies as March 2 election nears - Some 5,200 state employees abroad are eligible to take part in voting that wraps up Thursday in California. (i24News)
Want Your Money? Tell Us Who You’ll Be Voting for in Israel's Next Election - Some ATMs asking users to take opinion poll when they withdraw money. Operator: It’s legal, more polls to come. (Haaretz+)
 Likud’s version of Big Brother: Its controversial app for Israeli voters - One party activist said he deleted the app – and two minutes later, received a text message imploring him to re-install it. Another user was a 13-year-old boy, who is too young to vote. (Haaretz+)
Yisrael Beiteinu party claims: Cyber attack against us - Avigdor Lieberman's party has filed a complaint with the police, claiming that a campaign of distributing defaming content  has been launched against the party on a website for the Russian-speaking public from a server in Russia. The party suspects there is an outside source is behind the campaign, and has filed a personal complaint against the site operator, which claims "this was a spontaneous act.” (Yedioth Hebrew)
 

Quick Hits:

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Features:

With China 'closed,' Palestinian traders fear losing a good deal
"The economies of the whole Arab world are not productive and depend on imported goods, Chinese goods," Hebron trades says. If the coronavirus continues to harm trade the effects will be felt across the region, he says. (AP, Israel Hayom)


Elections 2020/Netanyahu Indictment Commentary/Analysis:
Only Israel’s Arabs Can Unite Israel’s Jews (Zvi Bar'el, Haaretz+) Without Israel’s Arabs the Jewish state has no shared national identity. Take Benny Gantz’s Kahol Lavan party, which changes its position every week on the Joint List of Arab parties. Kahol Lavan is supposedly the party that draws the line between rational Zionism and fanatical messianism, between clean politics and muck and corruption, between a chance for peace and a continuation of the occupation. But this party doesn’t know its own mind when it comes to “the peace process” with Israel’s Arabs: To ask for the Joint List’s support and appear stained by treason, or keep its distance from Arab Israelis as if they were infected with the coronavirus. In a poll published Monday by Channel 13, a question was asked that under normal circumstances would make you gag: Would a government supported by the Arabs be considered legitimate? Forty-four percent said it would, 33 percent said it wouldn’t…We can imagine the hue and cry if such a question were asked in the United States about African Americans, in France about people from North Africa or in Britain about the Jews. But in Israel the question is considered legitimate because it’s perceived as a political question, not one of values. It was born out of the unbridled, detestable campaign of anti-Arab incitement led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his gang against Kahol Lavan, which is now known as “Gantz.” But the very idea of removing the Arabs from Israel’s political fabric stems from a worldview and is a direct extension of the racist legislation that not only shapes Israel’s image as a Jewish state but also reflects the views that have become entrenched in society here in recent decades.
Moral decision (Ben Dror Yemini, Yedioth Hebrew) In the entire right-wing bloc, there is not a single person who questions the legitimacy of Netanyahu's continued term. It was clear that the investigations would lead to a police recommendation (for indictment). And the recommendation came. It was clear that the leaks from the prosecutor's office would lead to an indictment. And it came. It was clear that at some point the trial would begin. And it came, too. There is a date. On March 17, for the first time in Israel, there will be a man in Israel who must both manage and defend a state, and also defend himself against a country that accuses him…But there must also be a moral and public decision alongside the legal decision. The problem, we should admit, is not Netanyahu. The problem is the flock of sheep gathered around him. It's not that they're silent, it's not that they're ashamed. On the contrary, they are competing between them who will be more loyal, who will denigrate the Attorney General more. True, Netanyahu can continue (to serve), but what about a moral stance? Many Knesset members of the right-wing bloc know that it is "kosher but smells.” And not just to the right, there are also justified allegations against law enforcement agencies - this is not a conspiracy, nor is it a Deep State. And how the hell is there, within the 55-seat bloc, not one name, just one, capable of making a moral statement? Binyamin Netanyahu would have done us all a kindness had he stepped aside and allowed a replacement from his party take the helm, but that did not happen. It is only left to the same right-hand man to stand up and say: That’s enough. This will not happen before the election. Hopefully it will happen after the elections.
Why Netanyahu’s post-election court date might mean a quicker ouster (Anshel Pfeffer, Haaretz+) President Rivlin could find himself deciding whether to task someone with forming a coalition days before being due in court – and that's just one problem.
Winds of change worth remembering at the polls (Ruthie Blum, Israel Hayom) Evidence of thawing anti-Israel enmity among Middle East states wishing to ally themselves with Washington against the ayatollah-led regime in Tehran should be cause for great celebration in the so-called "peace camp."
The support of the Joint List in the next government will create an interesting new momentum (Ephraim Ganor, Maariv) According to the current reality, only if the Arab sector provides the Joint Arab List with 16 seats could a turnaround occur here at the end of the third round of elections.
Netanyahu's economic plan looks like it came from outer space (David Rosenberg, Haaretz+) The Likud's finance minister-designate Nir Barkat may be an Earthling but he served up a package of reforms that have no bearing on economic reality.
Call a spade a spade (Dan Schueftan, Israel Hayom) Any attempt to delve into the culture of politics is either reduced to a pathetic circus of insults recruited for political demagoguery or attacked by self-righteous champions of political correctness. It's time to hold a real conversation.
'Bernie or Bust': Yes, Electing Sanders Is More Important Than Just Defeating Trump (Jacob Bacharach, Haaretz+) Sanders should capitalize on the fervor of his base, including many young Jewish voters, to win the Democratic nomination, and block an authoritarian racist like Bloomberg. That’s not blackmail, it’s principled, hardball politics.

Top Commentary/Analysis:
We Were Right to Hang Billboards Showing Abbas and Haniyeh as Defeated Terrorists (Nave Dromi, Haaretz+) By “we,” I mean the Israel Victory Project, a project of the Middle East Forum-Israel, which I head. This organization holds that over the past few decades, Israeli society and its main decision makers have been inculcated with a worldview that believes more in containment and restraint and less in victory. This is the result of an incessant drumbeat of slogans like “land for peace,” which are based on Israeli concessions as a condition for peace with the Palestinians. We seek to offer the public a different kind of thinking – a paradigm change from Israeli concessions to Israeli demands: namely, acceptance of the Zionist idea and the Jewish state…The point of the billboards was to spark public discussion about the crying need to change the thinking that characterizes the “peace camp,” which has come to dominate Israeli thinking.
*The important good news from the Palestinian Authority: "Security coordination will continue after the deal of the century" (Anna Barsky, Maariv) It's important to look at reality: we went on a trip to the Palestinian Authority on Tuesday. It was not exactly a "fun day trip for (Israeli) political reporters," as some of our colleagues in the media chose to define it. It’s easy to criticize and wonder - "Why did you go all the way to Ramallah, and not come back with headlines?" colleagues stung. "Why did you go to Ramallah to serve the interests of the Palestinian Authority and serve as a mouthpiece for it?" they criticized in the right-wing. “You ended up ‘parve’ (neither here nor there) - both you and the Palestinians," wrote one Twitter member of the Peace Camp who was not satisfied with the outcome of the visit. I have to admit: you're all right. No bombastic headlines came out of the visit. During the tour, everything was "for quoting” and we brought the words of the other side - if not for the diplomatic process, then at least for dialogue with the diplomatic reporters. Anyone who doesn't see importance in this meeting, just three weeks after the release of the Trump plan, is wrong. If we intend to ignore and not be interested in what is going on just a few miles away from home - you can certainly not drive to Ramallah and not hear anyone who is there. In my opinion, it is always preferable and even recommended to walk around in our region with open eyes. Just for that, we arrived there in a tense atmosphere full of pessimism and concerns. The Palestinian Authority is the same authority and the positions of its people have not changed. They still claim that they are ready to enter into negotiations based on the 1967 borders and with the Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem. They decided to compliment former prime minister Ehud Olmert and ignore the incumbent Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. They try not to address the issue of Israeli elections so that Netanyahu will not take advantage of this in his campaign. However, an important statement was made there when Abu Mazen's spokesman Nabil Abu Rdeineh said at the meeting: "Security coordination will continue even after the Trump plan is released, because we are serious people and not a foaming-at-the-mouth gang looking for action." There were also statements that were said casually, for which just to hear them it was definitely worth coming. In summary: It was important to get a sense of the ground and look reality into the eyes, even if it is a partial image.
The moral bankruptcy of a PLO state (Rachel Avraham, Israel Hayom) The fact that the Palestinians revere terrorists as role models for young children makes the idea of promoting a PLO state morally reprehensible.
We at Hebrew University Are ‘Collaborators’? (Barak Medina, Haaretz+) The Hebrew University of Jerusalem is a bastion of liberalism that is not afraid of organizations such as Im Tirtzu, and therefore has decided not to exercise force against it.
Turkey and Russia Clash Over Syria, and Idlib's Residents Are Paying the Price (Zvi Bar'el, Haaretz+) Turkey doesn’t have many ways out of the corner it has backed itself into, as it tries to please Russia while preventing the Assad regime from capturing Syria's northern province.
 
MK Yair Golan: “Vote: annexation or disengagement"
Former deputy chief of staff, now a member of the Labor-Meretz-Gesher party, spoke with 103FM radio about the army and politics and said that they are separate. But he addressed the order that then-commander of the Givati Brigade, Ofer Winter, gave during Operation Protective Edge, when Winter told soldiers that they are ‘Going out to battle the wars of G-d.” “(I opposed it) because it immediately put the Druze, Bedouin and secular Jewish soldiers in an unpleasant, uncomfortable position, subjecting them to a language they do not speak or understand,” said Golan. “I also told him at the time that I think this was a grave error.” When asked if army people were surprised when he came out with his left-wing views, he said: “(Then-chief of staff, Gadi) Eisenkott thought I was a right-winger.” On elections he said: “Vote: annexation or disengagement.”  (103FM/Maariv)


 

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