‘It’s like the Cold War never ended’

The mass killings in Homs, Syria, which left hundreds of people dead, leads all four major newspapers today. Death tolls vary from “over 300” (Haaretz) to “350” (Israel Hayom). But all four agree that what happened there over the weekend was indeed a massacre.

The failed diplomatic effort to ramp up pressure on Syrian President Bashar Assad to skiddaddle also plays prominently. Maariv leads with the headline “Obama: Assad needs to go,” and Yedioth Ahronoth calls its shots with the more analysis-heavy lead headline of “Massacre courtesy of Russia and China,” going slightly further than United States UN envoy Susan Rice, who said the countries would have Syrian blood on their hands. Yedioth’s lead story follows suit, concentrating heavily on the failed vote in the United Nations Security Council, in which Russia and China both vetoed a measure calling for Assad’s ouster.

Maariv, while putting news of the UN vote on its front page, uses a more wide-angle lens, screaming with an inside headline that “More than 400 were killed in Syria over the weekend.” Underneath runs a timeline of the 7,000 deaths over the past 11 months in the country, as Arab Spring-inspired unrest has roiled Israel’s northern neighbor.

Writing a depressing analysis next to his Maariv news piece, under the headline “Failed revolution,” Amit Cohen tries to examine why the uprising in Syria failed, in his estimation, where it succeeded in other places, like Egypt and Tunisia. He concludes that Assad is essentially fearless and feels that if he hasn’t been kicked out by now, after 11 months of protests, he is safe. “A more sane regime would prefer to put the safety catch on the firing, for at least 24 hours, to see how the winds are blowing, in order not to give the international community an excuse to intervene. But Assad not only doesn’t attack, but tells his men to put their feet on the pedal.” Mixed metaphor aside, it’s a point well taken.

Continuing the pessimistic theme, Nadav Ayal writes in the same pages that the Russia-China veto shows that the walls of the Cold War never really came down. The disconnect over Syria isn’t between East and West or developed and developing but rather democratic and police states.

Ayal’s words are echoed in Israel Hayom by Dan Margalit, who writes under the headline “As if the Berlin wall didn’t fall.” His point is that while the world rose up in anger after the Sabra and Chatilla massacre in Lebanon 30 years ago, and Israel, which stood to the side, held itself responsible, this time nobody is taking responsibility for the Arab-on-Arab violence. “If only it were Israel’s doing,” Margalit writes,” I would suggest food, water and medicine be dropped onto every city where Syrians are killing their Syrian brothers.”

Haaretz also leads with the deaths and the UN vote. The paper’s veteran Arabist, Zvi Bar’el, writes in an analysis that while the Free Syrian Army, the rebel force battling Assad, enjoys funding and support from a number of Middle Eastern states, in the end it will be Russian President Vladmir Putin, and Assad himself, who decide Syria’s fate.

Iran on their minds

Rising speculation on an attack on Iran also gets heavy play in several newspapers. American news networks have lately detailed what weapons would be used by Israel in an attack on Iran, including Jericho 2 missiles, F-15i fighter jets, and on the ground commando forces, and the  Hebrew papers are picking up those reports. Iran attack expert Ronen Bergman, writing in Yedioth, quotes an American official as saying “we are afraid,” regarding the conclusion by the Americans and others that there is a reasonable chance Israel will attack Iran.

Perhaps to answer just that, Gideon Levy in Haaretz writes, “Yes, we are A-F-R-A-I-D,” a reference to a political speech that does not translate well into English. Echoing a familiar sentiment of his, Levy says bitterly that Israelis don’t have faith in their leaders, except when it comes to truly important things. “We don’t count on them to deal with the Carmel forest fire or the goings-on in their own offices, but an attack on Iran? Life and death, mainly the latter, on a mass scale? Sure, we’ll trust them. That’s how it was with all of Israel’s wars, before they began,” he writes. “For far too long now Israel has been headed by heroes, the kind who don’t hesitate to take the country on yet another dangerous, purposeless adventure.”

Several newspapers also cover the followup to the story of the soldier who was left behind in a Palestinian village during a patrol Wednesday night. IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz suspended Lt. Col. Muli Cohen, who heads Unit 74. In Haaretz, where the story made the front page, the suspension and investigation are presented as reportedly not over leaving the soldier behind, but rather in lying and saying that a “visual link” with the soldier was maintained the whole time.

In Maariv, however, no mention is made about the officer lying in the news story. The newspaper instead reports that Gantz is looking to make an example of the officer over the event. In an accompanying analysis, Hanan Greenburg writes, way down toward the bottom, that the issue is over the officer’s report, corroborating Haaretz’s claim. In Israel Hayom, Yona Lanir notes that the event provides Gantz with a “leadership opportunity.”

On a lighter note, both Yedioth and Israel Hayom take note of the unseasonably warm and sunny weather (especially after the rainiest January in the country’s history), with large colorful spreads of Israelis frolicking on beaches and romping through fields of flowers. Don’t put away the heavy jackets yet, though: the rain and cold are supposed to return in the middle of the week.