Buses, blizzards and bombastic speeches

The fatal bus crash between Jerusalem and Ramallah yesterday is the big consensus news story across the media landscape this morning, though the print editions, and indeed officials, don’t agree on how many children were killed in the fiery wreck. Maariv reports nine Palestinian schoolchildren and one teacher were killed, while Yedioth Ahronoth reports on six (5 kids, one adult). Haaretz, which was the only paper to lead with the story (though all four had it on their fronts) also reports on six total and Israel Hayom says 10 were killed.

Dan Margalit, writing in Israel Hayom, pens a strange (and frankly superfluous) column about how people should not play the blame game (they haven’t for the most part). He draws from the fringes, finding those who would blame Israel for the wreck, and draws an equivalency with those in Israel who say “every child killed just removes a future terrorist from the equation.” He goes on to say that just as Israel didn’t blame the Israeli-Arabs (his words) who started the Carmel fire, which claimed 44 lives, Palestinians shouldn’t blame Israelis.

Maariv writes that “more than 100” children left from the school for a field trip on two buses , down from the 160 they reported during the day Thursday, and quotes the head of the Anata city council, who was one of the first to arrive, that he and other tried to pull kids out of the bus but soldiers would not let them get too close. “It was horrible to hear their screams,” he told Maariv.

Major drill canceled?

Yedioth Ahronoth leads off with a story that says defense officials are planning on canceling a major home front preparedness drill because of budget cuts. The nationwide Turning Point drill, which tests the country’s readiness for a massive missile attack, was created in the wake of the Second Lebanon War and has become an annual tradition. But in the wake of budget cuts created after last summer’s social protests, the Defense Ministry has been threatening to cancel everything from Iron Dome purchases to tank drills, and now this. “That’s the situation, and it’s bad,” said one defense official.

Going with uber-internal politics, Maariv opens its page with two opinion pieces on Yair Lapid’s speech Thursday night, in which he kicked off his political campaign by kicking Eli Yishai and the Shas party in the teeth (figuratively, of course). Ben Caspit notes that most middle class Israelis, including himself, agree with Lapid’s words that Shas runs the country on its pinky. “I think Lapid has the knowledge, and he’s been expressing it for years now: That his case is solid and it’s the case of everybody – everybody for whom the Zionist state is important for and for whom the Zionist dream lives on.”

Shai Golden comes to the Haredi party’s defense, saying they represent people who serve in the army and pay taxes and are being attacked from all sides, and that Lapid’s words show he won’t be the centrist politician he has deigned himself to be that will bring the nation together. “Great white hope? Maybe in a cigar lounge in North Tel Aviv, but not in Israel the hopeless.”

Israel Hayom’s top story has Bank Hapoalim saying they successfully repelled an attack on their system from a seemingly Iranian hacker. The story says the bank discovered somebody from Iran, or making it look like they were from Iran, trying to bust into senior bank officials’ computers. In the wake of attack the bank called an emergency meeting, reportedly with officials from other banks, to figure out how to defend themselves from the hackers.

The snow expected to hit Jerusalem also has Israeli papers excited for the white stuff. Yedioth has a festive package filled with maps, pictures of snowmen, salt trucks in Jerusalem getting ready, on the top of one page, and the plight of the tent encampment in the capital’s Sacher Park at the bottom. “I’m deathly afraid that we’ll literally freeze,” one resident is quoted as saying. “The truth is I don’t care that much, I just want one thing, that my kids will be warm.”

The minister speaks

Maariv’s weekend magazine features a score-settling interview with Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman, who has come under attack, not least from the lefty paper Haaretz, for his role in the appointment of the newest Supreme Court justices, specifically Noam Sohlberg, who is seen as leaning toward the right. “[Haaretz] attacked him just because of the [skullcap] on his head. He’s a professional. He was appointed because of his expertise and his stance as a judge and a jurist. Not because he has or doesn’t have a skullcap.”

And on his media silence: “When I got here, they said I am not realistic. Look what happened to justice ministers before. They were all in conflicts. I’ve never spoken from the rostrum against anybody. Instead of reading ‘the media’ I read before bed the Hafetz Haim on guarding your tongue.”

Yedioth has a story about a mother that has decided to let her eight-year-old child die since there is little to nothing that can be done to help the sick girl. In need of a heart transplant, and with a slim chance of even that working, the mother requested, and the doctors agreed that efforts to keep the girl alive be suspended. “God will decide whether she should stay or to take her,” the mother said, according to one person quoted.

In Yedioth’s magazine, Ronen Bergman has a massive story about the development of the Jericho missile and Israel’s supposed dealings with apartheid South Africa over working with the country to test the missile.

Moving to Haaretz, writing in riddles and biblical cryptography, as is his modus operandi, Yossi Sarid notes in an op-ed that Israel is starting to change for the better, especially in the battle of school trips to Hebron: “’Our conscience’ is awakening from its hibernation and is refusing to be mobilized: We will not be at the service of Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar’s election campaign, and we will not agree to consider a city of ethnic cleansing – where a murderer’s name is sanctified – a desirable destination and source of inspiration.”