Hot air and Cleveland

Tuesday is one of those days where it seems like the two tabloid editors got together in advance and agreed to put out identical papers, albeit with different angles. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump are the main events in the news, with the Republican National Convention kicking off in Cleveland and Netanyahu fielding questions from members of Knesset.

If Israel Hayom could have put Netanyahu’s dismissal of any and all allegations against him as “hot air” and “nonsense” over its own name at the top of the front page, it would have. “There’s no fire, there’s no smoke, there’s just hot air,” blares the paper’s headline, quoting the prime minister’s response to a query by a member of Knesset about allegations of malfeasance against him and his family. Whereas the story of Netanyahu’s statements gets top billing on the front page, the paper uncharacteristically has it play second fiddle to the Trumpathon in Cleveland.

Haaretz takes a different tack, leading not with Netanyahu’s rejection of any wrongdoing, but with the police’s investigation whether foreign businessmen transferred funds to Netanyahu’s wife or children for their personal use. Its front page shows Netanyahu’s former chief of staff at the police high-profile crimes unit headquarters, where he was grilled for a second time for over 10 hours. Netanyahu’s strident rejection of any allegations gets booted to the bottom of the article on Page 6.

The editors at Yedioth Ahronoth appear to be split on the issue, with its front page headline reporting that police may call Netanyahu in for questioning but its coverage leading with the prime minister’s dismissal of allegations. Citing a “source familiar with the issue,” Yedioth Ahronoth says that Netanyahu is expected to be brought in to tell the police his version in the coming days — though how something so vague and unattributed is worthy of front page news is unclear.

But, alas, the chaotic attempt at question and answers in the Knesset that yielded Netanyahu’s headline-worthy rebuffing of allegations barely compares to the uproar at the Republican National Committee. Each of the major papers is eager to show that they have a reporter on the scene, with Israel Hayom going so far as to put a picture of Boaz Bismuth at the Quicken Loans Arena to prove he was actually there.

The chaos in question was the scene at the RNC convention in which GOP officials tried to pass the party rules while but opponents to the presumptive Republican nominee attempted to override the motion and force a state-by-state roll call vote, which could have proved embarrassing for Trump.

Haaretz unloads its highfalutin Hebrew to describe the scene in Cleveland as androlamousia — a Greek term used by the 11th century sage Rashi to describe absolute chaos in which good and evil alike are slaughtered. The accompanying picture, of course, is a group of Texas delegates wearing shirts in the design of the state flag and 10-gallon hats and howling like a coyote with his tail stuck in bear trap. This is Trump’s America according to Haaretz’s Chemi Shalev, who describes the overwhelmingly white crowd that gathered in Cleveland “in the shadow of the murder of three policemen in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on Sunday under the well-timed slogan ‘Make America Safe Again.'”

Israel Hayom’s Bismuth writes that “the first day of the convention turned as expected into an opportunity for Trump opponents and supporters of [Texas Senator Ted] Cruz to make their voices heard. They essentially wanted to embarrass Trump at his convention. To embarrass and not depose — since Trump legally won the hearts of the voters in the primaries.”

Israel Hayom and Yedioth Ahronoth cover the funerals of the two soldiers killed in a grenade explosion on the Syrian border on Sunday, and both give distinct priority to the Jewish American volunteer over the Arab Druze soldier. Both tabloids employ the same hackneyed headline “No longer alone” to report on the throngs who turned out to the funeral of lone soldier Shlomo Rindenow.

But the ongoing crisis and crackdown in Turkey following the coup gets little attention in the pro-Netanyahu tabloid, whereas in Yedioth Ahronoth and Haaretz it remains at the fore. Yedioth Ahronoth reports on the public humiliation of officers involved in the failed coup attempt with the headline “So they’ll see and fear.”

Haaretz reports that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan banned public officials from leaving the country and has rounded up 10,000 civil servants and police officers suspected of involvement in the attempt to take down the government over the weekend. Its reporter calls it a “purge.”