Blowing cigar smoke

Ahead of their meeting next week, the headlines in the Hebrew papers on Friday focus on the American and Israeli heads of state, US President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, albeit for different reasons.

Netanyahu’s ongoing legal battles at home remain the main focus of Haaretz and Yedioth Ahronoth‘s coverage, as the papers make headlines out of the prime minister’s remark that he paid for his expensive cigar habit with cash he received from family members. The big headlines are backed up by little substance, however. Haaretz fleshes out its coverage of Netanyahu’s cigar comments by comparing his investigation with other corruption cases in recent memory, and Yedioth Ahronoth too has scant details.

Regarding the source of the cash, “investigators were certainly surprised when they heard this version from [Netanyahu’s] mouth… One of his relatives would in recent years give him cash to help pay for his expensive smoking hobby,” Haaretz reports. “At the same time, Netanyahu doesn’t deny that that he would receive cigars from [Israeli Hollywood mogul Arnon] Milchan from time to time.”

Yedioth Ahronoth writes that people close to Netanyahu confirmed that he does have wealthy family members (shock) who are in close contact with the prime minister (also shocking) and that they gave him no small sum of money.

“A man is allowed to have relatives, and that is true for the prime minister as well,” the unnamed persons tell Yedioth Ahronoth. Police investigators have no idea what sums of cash the prime minister received from his wealthy relatives, however. The paper runs two massive op-ed/analysis/rambling rants about Netanyahu penned by Nahum Barnea and Sima Kadmon, which only serve to further demonize the newspaper’s bugaboo.

Conveniently for Israel Hayom, an “exclusive” interview with US President Donald Trump draws attention away from Netanyahu’s legal problems. The sneak preview dominates the free daily paper’s front page weekend.

“I will not condemn Israel; it has gone through enough,” the paper quotes Trump saying in its gigantic headline. “I understand Israel very well and respect it a lot, I want to achieve peace between Israel and the Palestinians and more,” the commander in chief tells the paper. At the same time, the president bursts the paper’s political agenda’s bubble by saying that “I don’t believe that advancing settlements is good for peace.”

More to the paper’s liking is Trump’s remark that the nuclear deal struck between world powers and Iran is “a disaster for Israel, it’s incomprehensible, both in the level of negotiation and the level of execution.”

Though they are virtually the only item on the front page, the snippets are just a preview for a full interview that’s set to run on Sunday. The Donald heaps praise on Netanyahu in the interview ahead of their meeting next week in Washington, which Israel Hayom clearly has in mind when it timed the publication of the full article. The paper highlights that Netanyahu will be the fifth head of state to meet with Trump since the latter took office last month, but it’s not clear whether that’s so impressive considering King Abdullah of Jordan preceded Netanyahu. Israel Hayom says the two plan to talk about the peace process with the Palestinians and Iran’s aggression in the Middle East.

Come what may from the meeting of the two heads of state, at least the newspapers will have more than the oft-used two photos of Netanyahu and Trump together.

With all the excitement about Trump and Netanyahu, Thursday’s terror attack in the central city of Petah Tikva ends up playing second fiddle. The attack, in which a Palestinian teen from a village near Nablus allegedly opened fire at a crowded market and began stabbing bystanders, gets sober treatment in Haaretz. Five people were lightly injured and police arrested the suspect, and in the aftermath security forces are investigating how the man made his way into Israel illegally armed with an improvised rifle, the paper reports.

To nobody’s surprise, the star of Yedioth Ahronoth’s coverage is the blood-soaked sewing machine used to incapacitate the alleged attacker. “He drew a screwdriver, and took a sewing machine to the head,” reads the quote from a bystander used as the paper’s headline.

Israel Hayom also exalts the “heroism of the citizens” who stopped the attacker. The paper quotes several individuals all claiming to have halted the Palestinian suspect using various means in what most other situations would be called a lynch mob. Avi Assaf, 40, says he chased the attacker down and tried pinning his assailant with a chair when he was stabbed with the screwdriver. “He stabbed me and I started to bleed, but I stopped the terrorist,” he tells the paper. Another man who claimed to have stopped the attacker says he “threw a sewing machine at him and hit him, after which I threw another sewing machine at him and he was subdued.”