Liar, liar, party on fire

In the age of Trump, journalists have increasingly wrestled with how to call out a president who tells whoppers while still maintaining necessary distance and appearing unbiased. Most have found that simply adding in the truth suffices, stopping short of yelling “liar, liar, pants on fire.”

It’s a subject that Israeli tabloid Israel Hayom, known as a staunch Trump backer, doesn’t often have to deal with, but thanks to a scandal surrounding apparent deal-making behind the scene for the Labor Party and Histadrut labor federation leadership contests, we now know how it might react.

“An agreement to lie,” shouts the front page of the tabloid, above pictures of Shelly Yachimovich and Eitan Cabel. Turning inside, readers are met with the more in-your-face-headline “Liars.”

The story also leads Yedioth Ahronoth, while Haaretz’s lead story deals with a secret agreement between Labor and Likud to join the government and push a peace deal that never came to pass. But Israel Hayom takes the cake when it comes to pure unadulterated outrage at the seeming lies of Labor MKs Yachimovich and Cabel, who continued to deny any good ol’ boys deal despite a tape that appears to catch them red-handed and the publication of a document in which the deal is set down in ink.

“Eitan Cabel and Shelly Yachimovich aren’t letting the facts and the proof confuse them,” the story’s lede reads.

Columnist Mati Tuchfeld takes the offensive up a notch, calling Cabel and Yachimovich’s response “grotesque.”

“In regards to how intelligent they think their supporters are, Yachimovich and Cabel seem to underestimate them,” he writes. “Nobody really buys their [stories]. … These are two hardened veteran politicians, with a level of cynicism that knows no bounds.”

Yedioth Ahronoth is also critical of the deal and the two getting caught, and columnist Sima Kadmon writes that what bothers her is not the agreement — of which there are many worse ones in the annals of Israeli politics — but the lying. She aims her worst criticism at Cabel, who is heard in the tape revealed last week making salty pronouncements about his ambitions and willingness to screw everyone over, offending the virgin ears of Kadmon, who apparently thinks politicians are saints.

“We want to think that our leaders don’t talk like that, even behind closed doors. Especially those who have designs to be no more and no less than the prime minister,” she writes. “It wasn’t just the language. It was the pretentiousness, the cynicism, the saltiness, the egotism, spitting in the face of idealism. And this ridiculous threat of his, that if he is not chosen as Labor chief, in his words, he’ll help destroy Israeli politics and go home. I’m shaking in my boots. Clear a path fast for the new chief. Ben-Gurion, Eshkol, Golda, Rabin, Peres, Barak and Cabel. Eitan Cabel.”

One name Kadmon left off that list of great Labor leaders is the party’s current chief, Isaac Herzog, and the low regard many in his party have for him is borne out by Haaretz’s lead story, which reports on a secret deal in the works with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to bring the opposition party into the coalition and work toward a peace deal with the Palestinians.

The article reports that Netanyahu sent Herzog a joint statement relaunching peace talks and committing to a two-state solution with Jordan and Egypt’s backing. The story gives a detailed account of various talks and back-and-forths between Netanyahu and Herzog trying to put together the agreement and working out various sticking points. While the paper seems to indicate that Herzog eventually agreed to the deal (albeit without sourcing, writing that Herzog’s office refused to comment) it blames the demise of the proposal on Netanyahu backing out.

“Netanyahu began to gradually withdraw from his political declaration. Little by little he tried to back down from what had already been agreed on and tried to postpone it all because of Amona and pressure by Jewish Home,” a Labor Party source is quoted telling the paper.

It’s not just secret meetings and lies in Israel that have the press riled up, but accusations of such in the US, after President Donald Trump accused his predecessor Barack Obama of wiretapping his phones.

Yedioth’s front page calls Trump’s accusation, made over a popular micro-blogging platform, “tweets of war,” and correspondent Tzipi Shmilovitz writes that the missives destroy any goodwill Trump may have garnered through his “presidential” congressional address.

“‘A new Trump,’ they said about the American president just a few days ago,” she writes. “But the string of tweets sent out at the crack of dawn Saturday leave no room for doubt that even if his words are moderate, his tweets remain as extreme as ever.”

In Haaretz, columnist Chemi Shalev notes that even if he’s extreme, Trump may not be crazy, but correct, and if so, it could end up confirming some damning suspicions about him.

“Trump’s tweets refer to a ‘lower court’ that failed to approve a request for wiretapping his headquarters, which means that a higher court did. That means that the FBI, after being duly authorized by the Justice Department, succeeded in convincing a special tribunal set up in accordance with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that despite the danger of being accused of improper interference in the political process, there was enough ‘probable cause’ to suspect that Trump and/or his underlings were in contact with a foreign entity or foreign intelligence service (and we all know who that might be),” he writes. “If this is the case, then Trump himself may have offered the noose from which he might ultimately hang, politically speaking.”