Laid to rest

Much ado is made in the press Wednesday about the burial of the four Jewish victims of last week’s Paris terrorist attack in Jerusalem, but a protest by high school students also garners significant attention in the tabloids.

Yoav Hattab, Yohan Cohen, Francois-Michel Saada and Philippe Braham were laid to rest Tuesday in Jerusalem, four days after being shot dead in a kosher supermarket in the French capital. President Reuven Rivlin’s remarks at the semi-state funeral take precedence in Haaretz‘s coverage of the eulogies, but the paper notes that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Labor Party leader Isaac Herzog also made an appearance, along with a French government representative. The paper places the crowd attending the funerals at about 2,000, but Israel Hayom cites a smaller “many hundreds” of people. Israel Hayom also says that they were laid to rest “in their home, in the land that they loved so much” — downplaying the fact that they were French Jews who lived in France.

Yedioth Ahronoth shunts the story down to Page 4, behind a feature about a resident of Kibbutz Nirim who lost his legs in last summer’s war and will testify before the UN in Geneva (more on that later). The paper reports that much of the crowd at the funerals were immigrants from France, and that of the four killed in the attack, one dreamed of moving to Israel, another had already bought an apartment, and a third intended to move.

Yehuda Meshi Zahav, the head of the Zaka organization, tells Haaretz that the government exerted serious pressure on one of the families to bury their kin in Israel. In the end, they agreed to lay them to rest in Israel instead of France.

Rather inexplicably, Israel Hayom reports that the stirring words of Braham’s widow compelled Sara Netanyahu, the prime minister’s wife, “to warmly hug the mourning widow.”

Echoing sentiments expressed by Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman, the paper cherrypicks a quote by a random Israeli who attended the funerals cloaked in an Israeli flag who said: “We need to call on all Jews of the world to make aliyah to Israel. They have nothing to find in France or any other country.”

Haaretz runs an op-ed in which it lauds the universal praises of the social welfare state in France and speaks to one French Jew who says that there’s no reason for him to move to Israel, where the cost of living is higher and the quality lower.

“I don’t think that Israel awaits me,” I.B. tells Haaretz. “Netanyahu can give up on me.”

What’s curious is the lack of scrutiny of the overt politicization of the funerals by both Herzog and Netanyahu.

The press also reports on the Labor Party primaries and its anticipated list to challenge the Likud party for the upcoming elections. Israel Hayom reports that the primaries had a turnout of 59 percent, with nearly 30,000 party members casting ballots for their preferred candidates.

Haaretz says that immediately after the primary results are in, the joint Labor-Hatnua list will set out on its “primary mission”: to enlist support from soft right-wing Likud voters, “young voters from a middle to low socioeconomic bracket,” the paper says.

Yedioth Ahronoth reports that Eshkol Council head Haim Yelin and Kibbutz Nirim resident Gadi Yarkoni are among a group of Israelis who will speak at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva on Wednesday to testify on the damage inflicted upon residents of southern Israel during this past summer’s war. The move comes in spite of the fact that Israel officially refuses to comply with a UN commission headed by lawyer William Schabas tasked with investigating alleged war crimes committed during the 50-day war in the Gaza Strip. The paper reports that the Prime Minister’s Office and Foreign Ministry gave the green light, but that their representation was as Israeli citizens, not as an official delegation.

Israel Hayom and Yedioth Ahronoth report that the national student council called on students in grades 7 to 12 to ditch school over the cancelation of the annual class trip. In protest, they’re going on hikes across the country and threaten not to return to school until Sunday unless the trips are reinstated. An estimated half million students are projected to play hookey, Yedioth Ahronoth says.

Yedioth Ahronoth explains that the teacher’s union announced a list of sanctions last month, which includes canceling all trips except heritage trips to Poland, in order to pressure the Education Ministry to drop criminal liability for teachers in the case of accidents on class trips.

The paper quotes student leaders saying they’re not upset with the teachers but they want to be able to go on their trips. Israel Hayom quotes the head of the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel saying that “we call upon the teachers to take responsibility and end the strike.”