From Des Moines to de moans

If one needed further proof that Israel is the 51st American state, one would need look no further than newsstands in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Kiryat Gat Wednesday morning, as papers train their focus on the results of an obscure, probably meaningless vote thousands of miles away — the highly anticipated Iowa caucuses.

But if one needed proof that Israel is a Jewish state, one would also need look no further than the papers, where the same news story produces a slew of different takes.

One constant, though, is that the caucuses had no shortage of surprises, with the big winner of Monday’s voting being declared as Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who garnered a surprisingly strong third-place finish, and Donald Trump, who failed to best Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, tattooed as the biggest loser.

“Marco Rubio gave a victory speech in Iowa,” Israel Hayom’s Boaz Bismuth writes. “According to his words, it maybe sounds a bit much, but the way Rubio closed the big double-digit gap with party rivals Trump and Cruz in just a few days has turned him suddenly into the ideal candidate of the Republican Party. In Iowa the winner finishes third.”

Yedioth Ahronoth also reports that Rubio is thought to be on his way to becoming the GOP frontrunner, though Orly Azulai, part of the small Israeli gaggle of journalists dispatched to the Hawkeye State, focuses much of her coverage on Trump’s apparent downfall in a piece that’s equal parts reporting and hedging. Even she doesn’t seem convinced Trump’s loss is more than a one-off, reporting that the state’s particularly large evangelical community was put off by the loud-mouthed New Yorker and thus flocked to Cruz.

“Cruz is seen by many as too extreme: other senators call him ‘nutty’ and he’s close to the Tea Party. That may work for him in Iowa or New Hampshire, but in most states it seems he’ll have a hard time garnering a majority of votes. All the polls show Trump still leading, but Iowa has created a new reality. He’s badly bruised and the momentum is now in the hands of Cruz and Rubio.”

Somewhat surprisingly, there is little focus on Jewish socialist candidate Bernie Sanders’s unexpected run on frontrunner Hillary Clinton, whom he practically tied.

Yedioth’s front page plays up Clinton’s victory in Iowa as if she had won by 80 percent and not .04% or so over Sanders.

Haaretz’s Chemi Shalev, meanwhile, declares the real loser not Trump or any other individual, but both parties’ establishments, given Cruz’s victory and Sanders’s strong showing.

“In both parties, the established powers that be suffered a stinging defeat at the hands of their enemies on the edges. Half of the Democratic caucus-goers preferred the nonconformist senator from Vermont over the tried and tested Clinton; two-thirds of the Republicans gave their votes to Cruz and other candidates who are estranged from GOP cliques, elites and benefactors,” he writes. “The extreme right and the radical left celebrated while the established, moderate center dissipated, as it has in many countries around the world, including Europe and Israel.”

The end of the caucuses also marks a stop to the thousands of gallons of ink spilled on what and what didn’t happen in the heartland, and Yedioth commentator Alon Pinkas is happy to have the last word relieving himself all over the punditry and flushing it down the tube.

“The building drama, the mounting tensions, the media circus, hundreds of polls and dozens of talking heads, talking seriously about seeing the light and discovering the code of Iowa, won’t change a simple fact: in Iowa the next president is not chosen,” he writes. “Iowa has 3.2 million residents, representing exactly 1% of the US population. For the sake of comparison, it is the size of Bangladesh, with 167 million people. It also has the same political input. Iowa sends a similar amount of delegates to the two party’s conventions. Just 2% of delegates to the Democratic Convention and 1.5% Republicans come from there.”

Israel, of course, is not actually a US state, and further evidence of that was provided Tuesday with the passage of a law that gives police wider powers to stop and frisk people, which makes Haaretz’s lead story.

Unlike in the US, and up until now in Israel, where police needed reasonable suspicion to detain and search someone, the fuzz can now cop a feel even if there exists just the “fear” a “suspect” may be up to no good.

The paper includes a laundry list of those opposed to the measure, who say it’s actually the cops and legislators who are up to no good. “Searches without a reason and without limits don’t protect the public’s welfare and security. This won’t provide security but will augment the harm to individual rights and the mistrust between the police and many populations in Israel. Overly zealous searches will also lead to more incidents of sexual harassment of women,” MK Dov Khenin (Joint List) is quoted saying.

Airing grievances

While the police are busy searching whoever for whatever, the rest of country is still busy searching for pollution in Haifa, which is either definitely causing birth defects or maybe causing birth defects, depending on whom you believe.

Yedioth and Israel Hayom offer opposing viewpoints of the bay city, with one paper portraying a city under siege of the smog monster and another describing a minor hubbub that isn’t affecting day to day life.

Under the headline “We’re afraid,” Yedioth brings the story of a group of self-proclaimed Haifa-loving families who refuse to leave the city, but say it is ruining their health and are calling for authorities to take action.

“I want clean air. We don’t deserve to breathe second-class air. I’m afraid of getting cancer,” the paper quotes 7-year-old Alon Goldschmidt, whose mother just happens to be the head of the Green movement in the city.

Israel Hayom columnist and Haifa area resident Daniel Siryouti writes on the other hand that the whole pollution debate is just a bunch of hot air. Apparently unaware of the uselessness of anecdotal evidence, Siryouti notes that his parents and his family, all lifelong Haifa-area residents, are perfectly healthy.

“Given the dramatic headlines in the last few days, since Channel 2 reported the findings (very partially, it must be noted) everything has blown out of proportion,” he writes. “The only ones who seem to care about the supposedly worrying publications are the media, and it hasn’t interested the residents of the Haifa metro area. If the situation were the other way around, thousands would be out in the streets protesting.”