From Islamic State to subs

Security matters ranging from the Islamic State to the IDF dominate the headlines in the Israeli press on Monday.

Yedioth Ahronoth interviews the former head of the CIA and NSA about the current predicament with the Islamic State. Michael Hayden tells the paper that the best method for dealing with the radical Islamist group overrunning Iraq and Syria is to assassinate its leadership in the same way the US dealt with al-Qaeda.

“We need to act against IS exactly as we operated against al-Qaeda: to go where they are and neutralize them,” Hayden is quoted in Hebrew speaking to the Israeli daily. “Israel is the only country in the world that thinks, like the United States, that assassination [of terror leaders] is legal.”

Hayden also lauds the close relationship between the Israeli and American intelligence communities, saying he is very close with his former Mossad counterpart Meir Dagan.

The much-vaunted full interview with the man the paper calls “the No. 1 US spy” is slated to be published in Yedioth Ahronoth’s Friday edition.

Israel Hayom gets its kicks from US President Barack Obama telling NBC that the US strategy against the Islamic State is to halt its momentum, which he said shortly after the US announced that it had carried out airstrikes against the radical group in Iraq and Syria.

Oudeh Basharat writes in Haaretz that the Islamic State is the heir to the brutality of Arab governments, such as that of Saddam Hussein, Hafez Assad and the house of Saud, but that it will vanish as quickly as it appeared.

“That’s how a pumpkin plant grows; within days it reaches the height of a palm tree, but within days it’s back on the ground,” Basharat writes. “That was the fate of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and that will be the Islamic State’s fate in Iraq and Syria.”

How, precisely, that will happen, he doesn’t say, but Dan Margalit writes in Israel Hayom that if Obama doesn’t want to send troops in to fight IS, he’s going to have to “close his eyes to modern international laws of war” and carpet bomb them like Dresden, both in Iraq and Syria, and curb civil liberties as home to curb IS supporters.

The upcoming replacement of Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz as IDF chief of staff takes center stage in Haaretz, which reports that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is leaning toward nominating reservist Maj. Gen. Yoav Galant for the post. Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, however, prefers Maj. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot for the position, as does Gantz himself.

New Zealand, a traditional ally of Israel, is in the throes of a diplomatic row with Jerusalem over Israel’s reported refusal to allow Wellington’s ambassador to also serve as envoy to the Palestinian Authority, Haaretz reports. The paper quotes Foreign Ministry officials saying that the issue was a standard matter of protocol.

Ambassador Jonathan Curr, New Zealand’s envoy to Ankara, who also serves as its ambassador to Jordan, Israel, Azerbaijan, and the Palestinian Authority, was supposed to arrive in Jerusalem to present his credentials to President Reuven Rivlin, but the ceremony has been postponed due to the conflict over his appointment as envoy to the PA.

What’s big and black and never comes back? The new German-made Israeli submarine on the front page of Israel Hayom which set sail for Israel on Sunday. In a go-figure moment, the paper reports that the Israeli-crewed vessel will make most of the 4,000-mile journey underwater — as one would expect of a submersible. While most of the cruise will be made nonstop, the sub will make a call at the site of the sinking of the INS Dakar, 270 miles off the coast of Haifa, where a flotilla of Israeli Navy ships will commemorate the submarine that went down in 1968.

The paper also reports on the conflicting claims by anonymous Israeli officials, one of whom told the Israeli press Sunday that Hamas is rebuilding its tunnels and replenishing its rocket arsenal not two weeks into the month-long truce with Israel. The second official says there’s no accuracy to the other official’s claim.

The paper calls it the “war of the Jews,” and the entire report is a convoluted jumble of competing unsourced claims by Israeli officials from which the reader can glean nothing more than resentment for elected officials’ predilection for forgoing putting their name on anything.

With all quiet in Gaza, it’s Jerusalem’s turn to go to hell in a handbasket. Yedioth Ahronoth reports that Arab rioters took to the streets of the capital, stoning cars and torching a gas station and its adjacent convenience store following the death of a Palestinian teen from injuries sustained in clashes with the police last week. The incident isn’t reported on in the other two dailies.