Jerusalem goes to Washington

With a lull in violence in Jerusalem, and the press gearing up for ex-prime minister Ehud Olmert’s aide’s testimony against her former boss, the papers split up and cover an assortment of different subjects in their main pages Monday, including the next IDF chief of staff, emigration of former Soviet Israelis, and Israel Hayom’s struggle to survive.

Yedioth Ahronoth reports on a boy (and his parents’) struggle for recognition of Israel at the US Supreme Court. Menachem Zivotofsky, the paper explains, was born to American parents in Jerusalem, but his US passport doesn’t specify that Jerusalem is in Israel. He’s petitioned the United State’s highest court to recognize that Jerusalem is in Israel, and the court’s decision could have far-reaching implications, “and will likely affect the international standing of Israel’s capital,” the paper writes.

“We were surprised that the story became so big and reached the Supreme Court,” Ari Zivotofsky, the father, is quoted from an earlier interview. “We are very proud of our identity, that we’re living in Israel and that our son was born here, and that’s in addition to our American citizenship, of which we are also very proud. Although we made aliyah, we never had any intention of giving [our American citizenship] up.”

Israel Hayom features an editorial cartoon which is strikingly liberal by the paper’s standard. It shows Jerusalem burning, with a fire extinguisher marked with the sign “in case of emergency, break the glass” and labeled “direct negotiations.”

The front page in Haaretz doesn’t mention the Zivotofsky case, but the paper does report on an Israeli ministerial decision to raise the legal punishment for throwing rocks at cars to a decade or two in prison. The amendment to the law approved by the government will allow the conviction and punishment of stone throwers without the state needing to prove that they intended to harm the vehicle or its passengers, Haaretz reports. The bill now needs approval by the Knesset.

Israel Hayom, meanwhile, dedicates the first five pages of its paper to covering what it considers a war for its survival. After running a poll last week which it said showed huge opposition to a bill forcing Israel Hayom to stop being a free paper, the paper on Monday quotes Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein saying that the bill which seeks to require Israel Hayom to charge for its paper has little legal standing.

“At this time no infrastructure’s been formed to permit the basis of the legality of the proposal,” Weinstein is quoted in the lead of Israel Hayom’s coverage of the issue. The paper also quotes Weinstein’s deputy, who addressed a Knesset committee hearing, saying that while the bill sought to prevent a single free paper from dominating the market of public opinion, “it’s not a concrete threat, it doesn’t have basis in the statistics we checked, and therefore the harm that the law would allegedly protect against doesn’t exist.”

The paper reports that the committee chairwoman, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, made a significant effort to push the bill through to a Knesset vote. Israel Hayom responds with a full-page editorial entitled “Livni’s contempt.” Gonen Ginat attacks Livni’s support for the “mouth-stopping” bill, as he calls it, and writes that Livni didn’t give in when officials from her ministry said there was no legal basis for the law.

“It’s interesting: the justice minister doesn’t trust the leadership of her office. She already has brought them more material [to try to support the bill]. From where? Nuni Mozes [owner of Yedioth Ahronoth, heaven forbid?”

Haaretz runs an editorial cartoon in which it shows Labor Party MK Eitan Cabel, the lawmaker behind the bill, blowing away Israel Hayom newspapers while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hands them out.

Haaretz also runs a brief report about a study which found that roughly a third of the Israelis who moved away from the country in recent years were immigrants from the former Soviet Union who were not legally recognized as Jewish. According to an adviser to the Jewish Agency who spoke at a conference at the Knesset last week, the immigrants’ difficulties in legally converting to Judaism caused them to ultimately leave the country.

Yedioth Ahronoth, meanwhile, reports that the attorney general gave the green light to the potential appointment of Maj. Gens. Gadi Eizenkot and Yair Naveh to run for the position of IDF chief of staff to replace Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz once he ends his run as head of the military. Eizenkot, who was caught up in the never-ending legal saga of the Harpaz affair, appears to be Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon’s first pick to replace Gantz, Yedioth Ahronoth reports.