Cobra down

A helicopter crash early Tuesday that left two experienced pilots dead is the main news on the front page of Wednesday’s Hebrew-language papers, pushing coalition talks down for the first time in weeks.

Both Yedioth Ahronoth and Israel Hayom feature heart-wrenching family photos of Noam Ron, 49, and Erez Flexer, 30, who died in the crash, on their front pages. Writing in Yedioth, Brig. Gen. (res.) Gabi Shachor, calls the pilots, whom he knew personally, “two of the better ones,” and says their experience is proof of the devastating nature of the technical failure that led to the crash: “Noam had thousands of hours of flying and Erez I assume had already over 1,000 hours. This was an experienced crew that was able to overcome even a serious glitch. That’s one of the reasons it seems this was a drastic malfunction, which even the pilots could not avoid.… The fact that they didn’t radio before the crash shows that it was likely a sudden malfunction, harsh and violent.”

In Israel Hayom, Aharon Lapidot says that though the Cobra helicopter is old, it is still considered reliable, and in fact, the ones in Israel aren’t even that old. “On the current IDF battlefield, against Hamas or Hezbollah, the Cobra is king. In a joint operation with ground forces it has no contender. And even more, even if the model has been in service since 1975, the helicopters used by Israel only arrived after 1985.”

Still, the paper gives a timeline of other helicopter crashes in the IDF history books, including two involving the Cobra, in 2008 and 1998.

Maariv, like the other papers, also focuses on the personal side of the two pilots killed, noting that the Ron family lost a son, also a helicopter pilot, in an accident 16 years ago, and that Flexer was the brand-new father of a 4-month-old boy: “Erez was the definition of salt of the earth,” his brother-in-law is quoted saying about him. “He was extremely connected to the land of Israel, to the Israeli experience and to the landscapes of this land. When he had a free moment he would just grab a tent, go to the Negev and hike. That’s what he loved to do.”

Where have all the Arab parties gone?

Haaretz leads off with the late-breaking news that the sides negotiating a coalition deal agreed to up the electoral threshold to 4% of the popular vote in the next elections, a move that would have booted all three Arab parties and Kadima had it been in place this time around. The paper notes that the move would force the Arab parties to merge in order to cross the threshold, which is something the Arab public has been wanting for some time anyway.

Maariv reports that Likud-Beytenu fears a ploy to discredit Yesh Atid No. 2 Shai Piron, who is gunning for the education portfolio against Likud’s Gideon Sa’ar, may backfire, with Yair Lapid’s party doubling down on its embattled candidate, who — it came out on Tuesday — has said in the past that Jewish law forbids selling homes to Arabs. “I don’t see how Likud can come out of this with the Education Ministry,” a Likud source told the paper. “This has already turned into a battle for Rabbi Piron’s respect. Once it becomes personal, it becomes much harder.”

Yedioth Ahronoth cites a senior American source that US President Barack Obama is setting October 2013 as the deadline for diplomacy with Iran, after which he will decide whether or not to attack the country’s nuclear sites. The paper reports that he will break the news to Israeli leaders during his trip here, which may cast a pall over the visit, as Netanyahu has maintained that the Iranian “red line” is just around the corner, and definitely before Oktoberfest. Yet Obama’s visit will be one that preaches peace and not war, Yedioth says, quoting a source that claims to have an inside line on Obama’s speech here: “We find ourselves in an era of the end of the big wars,” the paper reports he will say, more or less. “We ended the war in Iraq, and we are on the verge of ending the war in Afghanistan. Israel’s security will be strengthened if it comes to a diplomatic agreement with the Palestinians, and following the creation of a Palestinian state, many Arab countries are expected to establish diplomatic ties with Israel, which will contribute much more to security than a situation without a two-state solution.”

Second-class citizens

Haaretz’s op-ed page takes a novel turn, with Uri Misgav writing that the beating of an Arab worker in Tel Aviv last month is symptomatic of a larger malaise among the wide Israeli public: “Most of the public sees Arabs as second-class citizens, if as citizens at all, potential traitors who don’t rise for the singing of ‘Hatikva.’ They don’t serve in the army, and therefore a wide variety of employment opportunities are closed to them, as is the right to live among Jews who seek a better standard of living. Their representatives are traditionally banned from being part of the government coalition and recently also from a bloc in parliament.”

In Israel Hayom, Aviad Hacohen goes to bat for another group of second-class citizens: high school students, whose plight was recently brought to light by a teacher’s email badmouthing students that accidentally leaked out. “Students have been witness to their deteriorating place in the Israeli education system. Instead of teaching, many instructors have turned into police. And the police, as police do, build a composite character of the ‘criminal,’ label him, and blacklist him, which makes it impossible for him to escape from [the stigma.]”