News in deep freeze as snow covers Israel

From the top of Mount Hermon in the north down to the city of Arad in the south, Israel is covered in snow, and the Hebrew papers, as usual, can’t get enough of it.

Israel Hayom leads with the catchy headline “White Sabbath” above a series of photographs from icy Jerusalem. In short bullet points, the newspaper reports that all roads leading to the capital were closed, and that emergency and rescue teams throughout the country were on high alert. Even as the sun peaks out for a moment on Friday afternoon, the Israeli daily vows that the storm is only set to truly pass on Saturday night.

Perhaps in an attempt to warm up its readers during the cold weather, the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper leads with the headline “Fifty Shades of White.” A huge image of a man walking his dog on the frozen Jerusalem train tracks covers about half the paper’s main page, while the photo’s caption announces that “Switzerland is here,” no less. Yedioth Ahronoth delivered its weekend sections early on account of the storm, but in at least four supermarkets in Jerusalem, its daily edition was nowhere to be found.

In Haaretz, the snow is pushed to a small box at the bottom of the front page, echoing the warnings and forecasts for the coming days as they were reported in the competing papers. Instead of the weather, the paper leads with an interesting survey on Israel’s Arab population, a majority of which were found to support a move by the newly-formed Joint (Arab) List, which is expected to gain 12 seats or more in the next Knesset, to join a left-wing coalition following the upcoming March 17 elections. The findings come contrary to the party’s official stance on the matter. Joint List leader Aymen Odeh has stated that the faction would not join the coalition in any case, but would offer support to a left-wing government from the opposition.

According to the Haaretz poll, which was conducted by the Stat-Net Institute, 70% of Arab Israelis are more inclined to cast their vote based on social and economic issues rather than based on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, while a surprising one in nine believe Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should remain in his position for another term.

In a separate story, Haaretz reveals a series of shocking excerpts from the interrogations of several female police officers who had accused their supervisors of sexual assault. The paper reports that investigators from the police’s internal investigation department put extreme pressure on the officers, often suggested that they had fabricated the charges, and repeatedly requested that the police officials recreate their experiences to a “pornographic” extent.

Israel Hayom, on Page 7, delves into the ever-juicy story of the alleged mistreatment of Menny Naftali, who is suing the Netanyahus over abusive working conditions during the years he served as the couple’s house manager. According to the daily, Naftali, who recently offered his testimony to police, was not guaranteed immunity in case his actions during the suspected affair proved to be criminal. Haaretz, however, indicates that Naftali was, in fact, offered partial immunity for his testimony.

A second Israel Hayom article on the matter reports that the Ometz organization, which works to combat corruption in government offices, accuses Naftali of displaying a lack of coherency in his testimony, and calls on police to investigate the former house manager’s motives.

Haaretz’s Page 9 covers the Chief Rabbinate’s ongoing efforts to thwart any attempts to break its monopoly on Jewish conversions. Yair Ettinger’s report states that Sephardi Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yossef vowed not to allow for conversions to be performed outside the rabbinate, even if the Supreme Court was to rule against him on the matter. A reform in Israel’s official Jewish conversion process has been on the works for several years, as a number of noted religious-Zionist rabbis have offered various plans to ease the procedure.

Later on in the paper, Middle Eastern affairs analyst Zvi Bar’el offers a detailed analysis on the advances made by organizations affiliated with the Islamic State group in North Africa. Bar’el cites an internal document released recently by the governor of a West Libyan province, which urges citizens to be cautious of attempts by an IS-affiliated militia to take control of the region’s main city. Bar’el continues to explore the turmoil in Libya, noting the various dilemmas posed to the country’s ruling factions, as well as the difficulties that are expected to face the international community as a result of the extreme Islamist group’s gains in the region.

Reporting for Haaretz from Copenhagen in Denmark, Anshel Pfeffer notes that the country’s Jewish community is determined to recover from last week’s shooting at a local synagogue which left one beloved community member dead. “The result of the attack is that we now feel more Danish,” Pfeffer quotes a community member as saying. Pfeffer states that Denmark’s Jews overwhelmingly disapprove of the Israeli prime minister’s recent calls for European Jewry to leave the continent in order to reside in Israel. “What [Netanyahu’s] words signal to us is a disrespect for our choices,” another community member is quoted as saying.