Press puts the ‘um’ in Umm al-Hiran

There’s a saying in Hebrew: What you see from here you don’t see from there. The advent of such an idiom seems natural in a region where actual conflicts so often give way to never-ending wars of words, competing versions of history and reality. We might all be groping at the same elephant, but we see different realities.

The idea seems relevant given that Wednesday morning’s two predawn deaths – a policeman run over, the driver, accused of being a terrorist, shot and killed — as homes in a Bedouin village were demolished are under dispute, as is the question of what kind of projectile sent Israel’s top Arab lawmaker to a hospital. Only the sepia-toned helicopter footage of the suspected car-ramming attack and angry accusations from interested parties are there to guide Israeli news consumers’ way.

And that’s just in the main news story of the day, to say nothing of other affairs simmering in the background – like the criminal investigations into Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President-elect Donald Trump’s plan to move the embassy to Jerusalem, seemingly reiterated in an “interview” to Israel Hayom.

Yedioth Ahronoth’s front page headline, “The running-over and the protest,” gives a taste of what little is not under dispute. Inside, the paper tries to walk a tightrope between the various claims being made, though it seems to do so by swinging wildly between sides.

In one column, Nahum Barnea compares claims that the driver was tied to the Islamic State to claims made by top officials — which have yet to be proven — that the fires that ravaged Israel over a month ago were set by nationalistically motivated Arabs, and describes the sense of utter dismay in Umm al-Hiran following everything that went down.

“[Locals] had trouble saying what was more enraging – the death of Yakoub Abu al Qia’an, their relative who was shot to death as he drove his car toward the police, the claim that the police published widely in the media that the dead man was an Islamic State supporter, the destruction of their homes, or their lack of ability to do anything to stop any of it,” he writes.

Yet in the same paper, columnist Ben-Dror Yemini hurls insults at activists and others who tried to stop the demolitions, accusing them of brainwashing Umm al-Hiran residents into crying racism instead of taking the sweet deal to move off their land and into a nearby city.

“The minority of the minority is those who are in the center of the violence that broke out again yesterday. This minority felt it had great backing. This happened because activists from radical leftist groups, most of all of them in the style of the New Israel Fund, together with activists from Balad and the Islamic Movement, with much financial help from Europe, turned the battle against Israel into a battle against ‘racist’ Israel,” he writes, sounding like a neo-McCarthyite. “This is the infamous red-green coalition, or radical leftists and Islamists, who meddle in any possible arrangement for the Negev Bedouin.”

Haaretz’s front page packs much of the meat of the matter into the headline “Cop and civilian killed during clashes in Bedouin town. Police: It was an attack; the footage raises questions.”

Video aside, the paper’s Amos Harel joins Barnea in casting doubts on the police’s claims that Abu al-Qia’an had ties to the Islamic State terror group, pointing to the bluster over the fires and a similar claim made about the Jerusalem truck attacker.

But he still seems to give the police the benefit of the doubt, and predicts they can keep violence from boiling over if only they would back up their claims.

“If the police present persuasive evidence, soon, that the driver’s intent had indeed been to kill, and if police act reasonably to snuff out the tensions, the fire could be extinguished before it spreads to other Bedouin towns and throughout Israeli Arab society. The Israeli Arab Knesset members also bear responsibility for restoring the quiet, a responsibility that some of them seem reluctant to assume,” he writes.

Haaretz’s Jack Khoury, though, notes that it may be too late for that. Homes have been razed and Israeli Arabs feel hopeless, losing what little faith they had in the government.

“This situation really worries the 1.5 million citizens determined to remain on their lands and in their homeland, both the parents who don’t want their children to take to the streets, and young people who aspire to integrate,” he counsels. “But it should be of no less concern to anyone who calls himself a democrat and a liberal, and who seeks to live a normal life in the State of Israel.”

Both papers at least give some semblance of entertaining both sides of the story. Not so Israel Hayom, which calls the incident a “terror attack on cops during the demolition of illegal homes in the Negev,” parrots the prime minister, gives no credence at all to claims that it may not have been a terror attack, and points to the video as proof that it was an attack, helpfully ignoring what clearly appears to be police firing before the car speeds into them.

A Trump never forgets

But the paper’s coverage of the incidents in Umm al-Hiran isn’t even the most ridiculous thing in its less than august pages Thursday. That award goes to foreign editor Boaz Bismuth, whose slap-happy mug is plastered across the front page as he stands grinning next to a blurry Trump.

Both are in formal attire and as the paper’s lead story explains (yes, lead story, trumping even Umm al-Hiran) Bismuth, whose propensity for putting his own picture in stories is well known, was allowed to exchange a few words with Trump during a gala in Washington for foreign envoys. Or in Israel Hayom’s telling: they conducted an interview.

His account of the encounter is so breathless as to leave one wondering how he had any oxygen to actually speak to the incoming US president.

“The writer of these lines, a former envoy in an Arab country, was also given an amazing chance to speak again with Trump and remind him what he told me in one of the interviews he gave me, about the location of the US Embassy in Israel and recognizing Jerusalem as the capital,” he writes. “So I went up and asked him: ‘You haven’t forgotten your promise about the embassy in Jerusalem,’ I asked. ‘Of course I remember what I told you about Jerusalem. Of course I didn’t forget,’ Trump answered.”

In case anyone is wondering, this is apparently what passes for non-fake news.

Bismuth isn’t the only one excited about Trump. On Yedioth’s op-ed page Elyakim Haetzni welcomes the new president on behalf of what he claims is a silent majority of supporters in Israel.

“This guy uses every opportunity to express warm and friendly ties toward Israel,” he writes. “He appointed as ambassador to Israel a Jew who is proud of his heritage and country, and made his son-in-law, a Torah-observant Jew and Israel lover, in charge of talks with Palestinians. After the Obama ice age, this is a breath of fresh air.”