Down and out in London

Israel has never been an Olympic powerhouse, but Israeli athletes have won medals in every summer Olympics since 1992 — until now.

Disappointing results in judo and men’s gymnastics put Israel’s medal hopes squarely on the shoulders of windsurfer Lee Korzits, who through Tuesday looked to have a realistic chance of finishing the competition on the Olympic podium. But her disappointing final round result left Israel brokenhearted as shown on the front pages.

“Sea of tears,” writes Maariv with a disappointed Korzits on its front page. Haaretz goes poetic with “The wind is not enough,” Yedioth Ahronoth states simply, “Olympic disappointment.” Israel Hayom focuses on what is lacking “Empty handed” complete with a picture of the three athletes who had the best chance to win a medal but ultimately failed.

The papers focus their coverage on this being the first Olympics in 24 years without an Israeli medalist. Israel Hayom tries to cheer up readers with an inspirational little article titled, “Jewish athletes are worth gold.” The article concedes that these Olympic games have been disappointing for Israel, but Jewish athletes from other countries have medaled so we can take solace in that.

After the pressure of the Olympics, some of the athletes may want to take a vacation and if they decided to go to Sinai, they wouldn’t be the only Israelis there. “Israelis in the land of terror” reads the headline for Yedioth’s other lead story about Israelis continuing to vacation in Sinai. The article interviews some Israelis who told the paper that they felt safe and were enjoying themselves. One tourist told the paper, “I saw the warnings from the foreign ministry and they didn’t affect me. There are a million warnings, also in Israel.”

The only other paper to feature Sinai on its front page is Haaretz, which features a story on the Egyptian army preparing to take action to close the tunnels into Gaza. “Egypt reinforces in Sinai for an operation against the tunnels,” reads the headline which sums up the short front page article.

Israel’s upcoming austerity measures obviously have not made everyone happy and Maariv gives front page coverage to hospital CEOs against the impending budget cuts. The article, a preview of a feature to appear in the weekend supplement, interviews four directors of major Israeli hospitals and the reasons they’re against cuts. All the directors focus on a lack of patient care as the main reason for their opposition. Prof. Ze’ev Rothstein of Sheba Medical Center described it taking 14 hours to set a broken bone because of a lack of supplies.

While the hospitals fear an upcoming tragedy with the budget cuts, Israel Hayom reports on a tragedy that occurred Tuesday in the Ramat Aviv neighborhood of Tel Aviv. A 15 year-old boy was playing basketball at a public park when the hoop collapsed crushing him to death. The teenager, an excellent student and athlete, had recently won a medal at the Israeli championships.

Heated debate

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared on Tuesday at the Knesset inquiry committee on the 2010 Carmel fire disaster attended by family members of those who perished in the fire. As Yedioth reports, the committee was in session to review the findings of the comptroller’s report; members of the families believe witnesses lied to the comptroller. New state comptroller Yosef Shapira stated that the committee was not a place to begin a complete review but “this undermines the report, we need to correct it and return.” The family members yelled at Netanyahu who did not respond laying the blame for the fire on the fact that Israel did not have firefighting aircraft as in other countries. “There are gigantic fires in California, Siberia, Canada, Greece. Fires the size of the State of Israel. By the way, they don’t set up inquiry committees, “ Netanyahu told the committee.

Haaretz reports that there is some unusual IDF training practices south of Mount Hebron that has raised the fear of Palestinian villagers. The village of Jinba is close to eight other villages that have been ordered destroyed by Defense Minister Ehud Barak and it was thought that the Israeli soldiers were planning to destroy Jinba as well. Haaretz reports that the soldiers (who arrived with their faces covered) were collecting information on the houses and mapping the village, raising fears by the villagers that it too would be destroyed.

In the opinion pages Maariv columnist Shai Golden rails against Israel’s duplicity about its athletes. Golden dislikes the idea that athletes become ambassadors against their will to lift the national mood. “The eagerness with which Israelis take a ride on the backs of the hard-working athletes, and then the ease with which they criticize, is another line in the story of this country written in toxic ink.” Golden explains his cynicism in the final lines of the piece, “After all, even if Israel won ten gold medals in London, two days after the fake high we would return to ourselves, with the same troubles and issues that the playing of ‘Hatikvah’ at the Olympic stadium wouldn’t be able really to delay or mitigate.”

The Iranian story hasn’t disappeared either, but with no real news about it, Israel Hayom writes an article on a Washington Post opinion piece by Colbert I. King. The article mostly quotes King’s piece from August 4, “Iran’s anti-Semitism makes it the greatest threat to Jews,” which, as expected, discusses the threat that Iran poses to the world Jewish community. Israel Hayom’s article closes with the final quote from King’s piece, “If we are to honor the pledge of “never again,” will we be up to preventing the potential genocide of the 21st century?”