As comeback unfolds, Israelis turn attention to US

How could someone so close to a victory, with an historic win all but in the bag, their opponent defeated and dejected to the point where some supporters whisper that it’s too bad the contest wasn’t more interesting, see their chances of winning squandered to the point where the moment of glory now seems like its anybody’s for the taking?

This Cleveland Indians fan, who has watched his beloved baseball team go from a 3-1 World Series lead to being forced to beat the Chicago Cubs in a decisive Game 7 today, has no idea how such a thing can happen, and likely neither does presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who is now dropping precipitously in the polls and watching Republican rival Donald Trump – the Cubs of presidential candidates – all but overtake her.

While Israel has inexplicably made it clear it couldn’t care less about which Great Lakes team ends its historic championship drought, national interest in the US election is as high as ever with six days to go until millions of people in another hemisphere go to the polls to pick a new leader, as evidenced by the stories dominating the print agenda Wednesday morning.

All three major dailies lead with stories about polls showing Trump pulling neck and neck with, or maybe even ahead of, Clinton, though while Trump-backing Israel Hayom treats this is a positive development, Haaretz and Yedioth Ahronoth take a more concerned look at the news, though they also try to put a sunny spin on the developments.

While Clinton’s 3-point or even 10-point leads have been dismissed over the past several weeks by Israel Hayom, Trump’s apparent 1-point advantage according to an ABC poll (well within the margin of error) has the paper crowing that he “has returned to the lead,” (never mind the fact that his last lead was due to a meaningless bump afforded by the convention in, of all places, Cleveland)

“This isn’t how the Democratic candidate for president planned to spend her last week before the elections,” the paper’s Yoni Hirsch writes from the US. “According to reports, Hillary Clinton planned to use the time until polls open showing a positive outlook and getting her supporters pumped up. But the surprise decision of the FBI to renew its investigation into her emails has thrown the election into chaos, and the former secretary of state is now being forced to concentrate on defending herself and watching with astonishment as her Republican rival Donald Trump, whom many already counted out, captures the lead.”

Joining the party, the paper’s Boaz Bismuth writes about Trump’s many scandals and jams as if they are a good thing, noting that “as has happened time after time, Trump knows how to save himself from situations in which it seems everything is lost and return to being a legitimate candidate.”

While Israelis may care oodles about the election, the distance between little and big satans is quite apparent in the lede of Yedioth’s story on the election, which starts off with Orly Azulay writing that it’s “every candidate’s wet dream” to get momentum in the final stretch, a turn of phrase which isn’t considered nearly as crude in Hebrew. Further proving that distance, she forgoes any baseball metaphor and instead opts for a horse’s breakfast of metaphors.

“This great momentum comes as a horse racing and galloping toward the finish line with the candidate on its back,” she writes. “This horse is now in Trump’s court and is giving him the chance to make a comeback, against all the earlier forecasts.”

Azulay and Haaretz’s Chemi Shalev, though, are quick to try to rain on the Trumparade (or “Trumpoline,” according to Yedioth’s headline) with both papers pointing out that national polls don’t mean squat if the Republican doesn’t win some key battleground states (including Ohio, home to the Indians, who are battling Chicago-native Clinton’s Cubs, though neither paper points that out).

“Clinton is still in better shape than the oy-oy-oy fear gripping her voters. In some battleground states, including critical Pennsylvania, some polls show her situation improving. And of the battleground states listed as toss-ups on Real Clear Politics – including Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Arizona, and Colorado, or of Iowa and Nevada together – Clinton needs to win only one to become President,” Shalev writes, in a column that is featured on the front page while the actual news is shunted to pages 4 and 5. “Trump, despite his improving situation, has to sweep them all, no ifs or buts, while making sure he doesn’t lose any of the states he already holds.”

Having analysis trump news isn’t the only unorthodox thing about Haaretz’s front page, which also features large pictures of two topless women who had their breasts removed because of cancer. The brave photo essay and accompanying story (translated into Hebrew From the New York Times) is deeply connected to the issues of beauty, body images and feminism.

Those subjects are also touched upon with the lightness of a feather in an op-ed penned by Amira Hass criticizing an annual Holocaust survivor beauty contest, though most of her diatribe is aimed at pointing out how terrible Israel is in light of the fact that opposition to the contest has largely quieted (or failed to be included in her Google searches).

“In the reports Google turned up about the following years’ contests, which have become a tradition, internal Israeli social criticism has disappeared,” she writes. “The principal motif now is that (internal) beauty, remaining alive and establishing a family are victories, or revenge, and the competition is a way of telling ‘the world’ about the Holocaust. Please. If there’s one thing the world knows, it’s that all criticism of Israel the occupier will be construed as denigrating the Holocaust, as anti-Semitism and so forth. If this contest teaches us anything, it’s that the Israeli government loves the Holocaust as a diplomatic asset, but not the survivors, who are a burden on the state budget.”

The state budget burdens/shortfalls/misuses of funds are also the focus of press reports on a state comptroller report released a day earlier. The reports mostly skim over the chapter that showed Holocaust restitution money being misused, and instead focus on a gaggle of other subjects, chief among them Israel’s losing fight against road fatalities.

“There’s no doubt that the battle against road accidents demands investment in ways to improve infrastructure, education, enforcement, fines and punishments meant to lower the number of casualties in crashes. In order to manage this effort, in 2005 the state created the National Authority for Road Safety,” Israel Hayom reports. “However, a State Comptroller report published yesterday shows several failures in the activities of the Authority, the Transportation Ministry and other bodies working in the field, including the police and Education Ministry.”