Back in the hot seat

After several days of respite for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his various woes, the Teflon-don-in-chief is back at the top of the news cycle, hounded by new troubles financial and coalition-related.

Lucky for him, one of Israel’s three major dailies – Israel Hayom – is at his service to make sure the prime minister’s side of the story is presented, and in the best light possible.

Unfortunately for Netanyahu, there are two other papers who have no love lost for him, and are more than willing to afflict the comfortable (to say nothing of comforting the afflicted). Haaretz leads its paper with news that the prime minister reportedly received 1 million euros from an accused French fraudster. Yedioth Ahronoth, which sticks to its populist guns and leads off with a story about parents protesting high summer camp prices, is sure to also leave room on the front page for a story showing that Netanyahu’s own Likud colleagues aren’t big fans of his machinations and his bid to bring Zionist Union into the government.

The paper bases that fact on a survey in which it polled Likud’s 10 ministers and not a single one said they were in favor of booting the right-wing Jewish Home in favor of dovish Zionist Union, even after opposition leader Isaac Herzog laid that out as a prerequisite for him to bring his faction into the government. In fact, the paper found that 27 of Likud’s 29 MKs (not including Netanyahu) are against the move, while the other two – Yuli Edelstein and Benny Begin – preferred not to answer the question.

While the paper reports that lawmakers aren’t necessarily against adding Zionist Union, just not at the expense of Jewish Home, quotes from the Knesset members belie that.

“I prefer a right-wing nationalist government that won’t be pushed into the shopworn ideas of the Zionist Union which will bring about the destruction of the settlements,” MK Miki Zohar is quoted as saying.

But as much as the MKs might want to keep Jewish Home leader Naftali Bennett in the coalition, relations between him and Netanyahu may have reached the breaking point, as evidenced by the front page of Israel Hayom, which leads off with a front-page headline reading “Likud: Bennett is the biggest threat to a right-wing government.”

The quote, while apparently far from representing mainline Likud feelings, comes from a senior source in the party quoted by the paper after Bennett launched a Jerusalem Day volley at Netanyahu, accusing him of being duplicitous in his stance on Palestinian statehood.

“Bennett’s cynical campaign knows no bounds. Someone who sat in a government with Tzipi Livni that had direct talks with the Palestinians suddenly sees the light, magically, at the same exact time as Avigdor Liberman is made defense minister,” the source thunders. “This is an absurd situation in which the greatest threat to a broad right-wing government headed by Likud is the head of Jewish Home. If Bennett insists on removing Jewish Home from the government for personal reasons, the responsibility for the outcome will be wholly upon him; he should just not try to sell it to the public as though he did it for ideological reasons, because nobody will buy that.”

Buying things is something Netanyahu knows a thing or two about especially since he so flush with cash, including, according to accused French fraudster Arnaud Mimran, some 1 million euros that magically wound up in his pockets. Haaretz leads with a report that the attorney general is going to probe the gift, and reports that aside from its possible illegality, it also may not have been reported correctly.

“The State Comptroller’s Office conducted an examination into Mimran’s allegation following a request from Haaretz, which revealed that it received no report about contributions from Mimran to Netanyahu over the past decade. The examination included reports of contributions from 2006 to the present. By law and per the state comptroller’s instructions, a candidate for the Knesset may not receive more than NIS 11,480 ($2,984) from a single donor and a candidate for party chairmanship may not receive more than 45,880 shekels. Filing a false report with the state comptroller is a criminal offense punishable by imprisonment,” the paper reports. “However, candidates have only been required to report contributions to the state since 2006; prior to that year they were only required to report contributions to their party’s internal comptroller. Likud’s comptroller, attorney Shai Galili, has no materials pertaining to the period before 2013 when he took up his post because the materials were not passed on to him by his predecessor.”

Israel Hayom doesn’t shy away from the story but leads off with Netanyahu’s denial that the contribution was election related, running as a headline his office’s assertion that he didn’t receive anything illegally. The story, though, doesn’t go anywhere beyond the statement Netanyahu’s office sent to all media organizations, denying wrongdoing and accusing Mimraud of trying to distract from his own legal troubles.

The fraught relationship between the Israeli power structure and Jews abroad is also the subject of a Yedioth story, though in a completely different sense. Taking note of a Knesset report that found that one in three immigrants who moved to Israel and served in the army left in 2010, the paper reports that MK Itzik Shmuli (Zionist Union) plans on taking charge of the issue, which apparently stems from the lack of a support structure for immigrants transitioning into civilian life.

The paper quotes from one of those cases, Seth Koln, who moved to Israel from the US, served three years and left the day after his service was up, though he maintains he tried to give it a go.

“I left everything, my family, my friends and my college and I loved to Israel. After a few months I joined the army. The only words I knew in Hebrew were ‘yes,’ ‘no’ and ‘thanks,’” he’s quoted saying. “After I got out I was lost. I didn’t know Hebrew, couldn’t connect and also didn’t have a family to support me. In the end I broke and went back home. It’s too bad, I really wanted this to work.”