Heavy headlines on straw stories

Sure the Tel Aviv shooter is dead, the stabbing attacks have quieted to a low roar and the Hezbollah threat of revenge on the northern border fizzled out with a trifling explosion, but does that mean Israeli can sleep easy?

No, not at least according to Hebrew papers Tuesday morning, which lead off with headlines heralding a wide array of threats the country had until now been able to push into the recesses of its hive mind — threats like Hamas tunneling from Gaza into Israel (Haaretz), Russia supplying advanced arms to Iran (Yedioth Ahronoth) and whatever undersea monsters Israel will battle with its shiny new submarine (Israel Hayom).

Luckily, though, not all may be as it seems.

Like a Hamas grunt shoveling his way from Gaza City to Nahal Oz, Haaretz’s Amos Harel buries his lede well inside his front-page story headlined “Hamas rebuilding its tunnel system; according to estimates, some are already in Israel.”

Unfortunately for Haaretz, and fortunately for the rest of the country, Harel’s headline is a check that his story can’t quite cash. The veteran correspondent takes his estimation of tunnels inside Israel from a recent Hamas propaganda video, which mentioned that a tunnel collapsed “east of Khan Younis.”

“The only thing east of Khan Younis is Israel,” he writes, though some might point out that there are a number of neighborhoods not known as Khan Younis standing between the Palestinian city and the frontier with Israel.

Nonetheless, “the reasonable estimation is that the number of tunnels crossing the border is closing in on the number before Operation Protective Edge,” he writes, referring to the 2014 Gaza war.

Harel isn’t the only one placing heavy headlines on top of houses of straw.

Yedioth’s lead headlines make it seem as if advanced Russian planes, tanks and missiles will be on their way to Iran in the coming days, with Moscow unable to wait until sanctions are lifted on the Islamic Republic.

It’s only after slogging through the fine print of the story that a reader will realize that long-standing economic sanctions are on their way out this Friday, and that Iran and Russia are in talks for arms deals, talks that have been going on for months.

Both headlines may be misleading, but that doesn’t make the threats any less real. Much of Harel’s info is likely a regurgitated form of official Israeli defense thinking, which is often fed to reporters on condition they take out any sourcing and present the material as their own (though there is a chance that is not the case here). And on Iran, Yedioth writes that Jerusalem is worried about Iran developing its military, and that the Great Satan doesn’t seem to care.

“Senior Israeli sources accuse the American government of ignoring — knowingly and intentionally — the military dimension of the sanctions, and not putting any pressure on Iran on anything related to the development of strategic weapons — for instance the development and stationing of long-range ballistic missiles that can carry a nuclear payload,” Alex Fishman writes. “Israel sees the public Iranian tests of these missiles in recent months as a test for how the international community, and the US in particular, responds. The decision of President [Barack] Obama to not put pressure on Iran over this gives support to the Iranians to continue eroding the international agreements designed to prevent nuclear proliferation.”

Roll tide

Iran isn’t the only country punching up its arsenal. Israel Hayom curtain-raises the much ballyhooed arrival of a German submarine to join the Israel Navy’s fleet, its fifth.

The paper celebrates the newest recruit as an “anchor of strength” and reports that after making a 3,000-mile (4828-km) journey from the German port of Kiel, stopped Monday 265 miles (426 km) off the coast of Israel at the site of sunken Israeli sub Dakar, where it held a ceremony. All that is just a preview of the revelry planned for Tuesday, as the prime minister, president, IDF chief and Navy chief all rejoice over the arrival of the hero sub.

Why all the excitement?

“The submarine fleet is considered the long arm of the navy,” the paper explains. “According to foreign reports, it gives Israel ‘second strike’ capability in case of a nuclear conflict — which makes it the most important part of Israel’s deterrent strategy. Submarine crews carry out missions near and far, under a heavy blanket of secrecy.”

His own worst enemy

First strike or second strike, what seems to be clear is that the man with his finger on the red button will continue to be Benjamin Netanyahu, at least as long as Likud stays in power. Israel Hayom reports on the farcical Likud leadership primary, which will see Netanyahu run unopposed with voters unable to even cast ballots against the prime minister, and reports forgivingly that it will happen “because it’s needed by law.” The Netanyahu-friendly tabloid cites sources close to the prime minister defending the NIS 4-million price tag on the vote by saying that not doing so now could result in an actual democratic process, which would be much more expensive.

Yedioth is less kind to the leader, headlining its coverage “Bibi versus Netanyahu,” and noting that the situation is the result of the prime minister moving up the date of the poll to prevent any possible challengers from having time to mount a campaign.

“It’s true we’ve seen strange things here, but nothing has come close to the current carousel of the absurd,” Sima Kadmon writes in an accompanying commentary titled “North Korea is here.”

“So the elections will happen, Bibi will beat Bibi and Benjamin Jung-Il will be elected again to the head of the Bath, sorry Likud, party. And there’s not even one righteous person in the Likud who will stand up and ask why. For what. What’s the point. Because that’s the face of the Likud, and that’s the face of the country.”

Haaretz’s Yossi Verter agrees that the inability to even vote against the lone candidate is unprecedented, this time comparing the prime minister to a despot of a less-recent vintage.

“He’s too scared to even run against himself. Even when he stands alone, as befits a Caesar, even when there is no challenger, he shamelessly seeks to clear from his path any possibility of embarrassment, scandal or farce,” he writes. “He fears that the number of ‘against’ votes will be greater and the whole process will look pathetic.”