Banned from elections? Snow problem

Winter is coming. And you know what that means.

Yedioth Ahronoth and Israel Hayom could have taken the day off yesterday, because their coverage of the super-duper can’t-miss snow storm bearing down on us from the north, as Jeremiah prophesied (more or less), has all the same features they run during every anticipated storm: The mandatory photographs of the Golan Heights blanketed in snow, school cancellations, or some hapless moustachioed municipal worker trying to convince a bulldozer it’s really a snowplow.

An article from a Rami Levy supermarket branch in Jerusalem describes panicked Israelis grabbing all the essential snow survival goods they can, including Milky, cottage cheese, Bamba and those frozen schnitzels shaped like dinosaurs.

Yedioth even has a helpful chart giving life-saving tips for surviving the three hours of wet snow– feed your pets extra so they will produce more body heat; use layers of light clothing to warm your babies instead of heavy blankets. (You could just slightly turn up the heat, too.)

Israel Hayom, for its part, has some helpful hints for driving in the snow and the rain.

But there are even more dangers, warns Yedioth. Land mines. Yes, land mines. Like the one that badly injured an IDF major two weeks ago, residents of the Golan, Jordan Valley and Arava should be cognizant of the danger of mines being swept out of cordoned off areas.

The lucky few who survive the storm will have to think about the upcoming elections, when they’re not too busy wandering aimlessly through the frozen wasteland that will be much of Israel by Sunday, fighting with feral dogs for the frozen remains of the mammoths who will likely populate the Golan and central mountains over the weekend.

That’s where the somber, doughty Haaretz steps in. The Supreme Court overturned the decision banning fiery Balad MK Hanin Zoabi and ultra-nationalist activist Baruch Marzel from running. Haaretz’s political cartoon shows a chummy Zoabi and Marzel walking in the rain under a Supreme Court umbrella.

Writing in the same paper, Aeyal Gross calls the whole process a charade that repeats itself every election. Political parties on the right and center support banning Arab MKs and parties that come close to supporting a Palestinian armed struggle against Israel. The Central Elections Committee bans them, then, as everyone expects, the Supreme Court allows them to run. Gross echoes a call made by the Joint (Arab) List after the Supreme Court decision: to take away the authority of the CEC to ban candidates.

In Israel Hayom, Dan Margalit calls the episode a test for Israeli democracy. “Does it have the strength to contain them? Does it have the power to prevent them from an unacceptable move in Umm al-Fahm or on the next Marmara? The trend to disqualify them with indictments and without a trial shows the weakness and helplessness of the Jewish-Democratic majority. When they incite or stray from the straight path, the path is open for the attorney general to prosecute them, and if this is done effectively, even better.”

Yedioth gives front-page coverage, and a two-page spread inside to what it calls the “dilemma” facing A-G Yehuda Weinstein. He could order an investigation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife in the wake of the State Comptroller’s report alleging overspending at their official residence, but that would seriously damage his working relationship with Netanyahu. Yet ignoring the findings will be hard to justify, given the accusations against the first couple.

Writing in Yedioth, Ben-Dror Yemini says Netanyahu’s reaction demands that Weinstein get involved. “No, he didn’t need to resign. But he could have said: I made a mistake. The spending was too much. It was abandonment of responsibility…but this didn’t happen. He didn’t say anything. He just pointed an accusatory finger toward (his former house manager) Meni Naftali.”

“This is exactly where the attorney-general needs to make a decision…Netanyahu is shirking responsibility. There is no need for something similar from the A-G. He doesn’t need to find Netanyahu guilty. That’s not his job. He doesn’t have to fire him. But he has to fight against the norm of abandoning responsibility.”

Panic over the snow and the impending elections can’t keep tragedy at bay. Two heartbreaking funerals are also in the papers today.

Four-year-old Adele Bitton, severely wounded by a rock thrown by a Palestinian, was laid to rest. Yedioth has the wrenching eulogies of both father Rafi and mother Adva, under a picture of the grieving couple carrying their daughter’s body toward her final resting place.

The Copenhagen funeral of Jewish guard Dan Uzan, 37, is also covered in the dailies. Israel Hayom reports that Hana Bentov, the girl whose Bat Mitzvah Uzan was guarding when he was fatally shot, said “Dan is our hero. My 8-year-old brother Elias says that Dan was very brave, and now, just like before, he is guarding us, just from above. They ask me if I am sad that my Bat Mitzvah party was ruined, and I answer that my party wasn’t important at all. What is important is that we remember Dan.”

It’s nice to know that at least one brave young Jewish lady in Denmark knows how to keep things in perspective.