A day of mistakes

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s remark to Zionist leaders earlier this week about the mufti inspiring Hitler on the Final Solution continues to make headlines in the Hebrew press on Thursday, but the unrelenting terror attacks still manage to steal some of his thunder.

The apparent shooting of a Jewish man in Jerusalem by IDF soldiers raises eyebrows and a heap of questions in the papers as the vague details of the incident, which took place around 11 p.m. Wednesday night, left people scratching their heads. Yedioth Ahronoth reports that the soldiers said the man approached them in a suspicious manner and when they went to check him, he hit out and tried to grab one of their rifles. They shot him dead on the spot. Israel Hayom reports that Zaka workers who searched his person found that the victim had “documents and items” indicating he was Jewish. Bystanders shouted “shame on you, he’s a Jew,” Yedioth Ahronoth reports.

With five Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians and soldiers over the course of the day, Haaretz opts to mash them all together, running its coverage of the Jewish man’s death in Jerusalem together with the stabbing of an IDF soldier north of the city. Six soldiers, it reports, were injured in attacks over the course of Wednesday. Yedioth Ahronoth, in its fashion, runs a gushing article about the female soldier who was stabbed and her (also female) comrade who shot one of the attackers dead. It’s doubtful the paper would have spilled quite nearly as much ink had the soldiers been male. Israel Hayom opts to lead with the attack on Route 60, in which five IDF soldiers were struck by a Palestinian driver. Two were seriously hurt.

But it’s the prime minister’s claim that Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem and leader of the Palestinians during the Holocaust, inspired Adolf Hitler to exterminate the Jews that steals headlines in the papers. Haaretz and Yedioth Ahronoth run it on their front pages, while the pro-Netanyahu Israel Hayom, like the prime minister himself, engages in damage control in a bid to roll back his remarks.

Israel Hayom leads with Netanyahu’s response to criticism, rather than the remarks themselves which provoked so much outcry and condemnation in Israel and abroad. Netanyahu’s half-hearted apology and defense of his remarks — “my aim wasn’t to absolve Hitler of responsibility” — takes precedence over criticism by President Reuven Rivlin, opposition leader Isaac Herzog and the head historian of Yad Vashem of his baseless statement.

While none of the paper’s pundits or op-eds dare criticize the prime minister — unlike the rest of the Israeli media — Israel Hayom does go after a Ynet editor who posted a photo of Netanyahu in an SS uniform.

Haaretz’s op-ed skewers the prime minister for his “completely erroneous” remarks about Husseini, saying “one would expect more judicious words from the son of an important historian.”

“The use Israeli politicians make of the Holocaust for topical purposes reduces Nazism and Hitler’s responsibility specifically and cheapens the Holocaust’s memory,” it writes. “It seems that if the real historical background doesn’t serve the political incitement, they invent ‘facts’ and associations.”

It says that what Netanyahu and other politicians are doing “constitutes a sort of Holocaust denial: a denial of the Holocaust as it really happened.”

Yedioth Ahronoth triples down with two op-eds taking Netanyahu to task and a column by Professor Dina Porat of Yad Vashem clarifying why Netanyahu was completely incorrect. It publishes a op-ed titled “A crude and ridiculous mistake” written by Auschwitz survivor and veteran Israeli journalist Noah Klieger. He calls Netanyahu’s remarks “satanic,” saying had he misspoken about something which took place 2,000 years ago it would be forgivable, but this was a mere 70 years past.

“To err in something like this is stupidity and villainy,” he writes. With an esteemed professor as a father, “he cannot allow himself to say the nonsense he uttered.”

“There’s no doubt that while the mufti of Jerusalem lauded and praised Hitler for his actions, it’s clear that he wasn’t the one who conceived the method,” Klieger says. “I don’t understand what demon entered Netanyahu that uttered absurdities such as these on the eve of his trip to Germany. What exactly did he want to achieve?”

In the good news category, Haaretz reports that the police arrested four suspects believed to have taken part in beating an Eritrean man who was mistakenly shot earlier this week on suspicion that he was involved in a terror attack at a Beersheba bus station.