Red (planet) and blue (uniform)

After yet another holiday, headlines in the Israeli press range from as local as the latest nominee for the Israel Police chief post, to the United Nations General Assembly in New York, to Earth’s satellite, the moon, and to one of our closest interplanetary neighbors, Mars.

NASA’s announcement on Monday that it had confirmed the presence of liquid water on Mars is received with a torrent of articles in the Hebrew press. Pictures distributed by the American space agency showing mountains on the red planet grace the front pages of every paper. The coverage, based largely on news wires, highlights the quote by NASA’s planetary science director Jim Green at a press conference that “Mars is not the dry, arid planet we thought of in the past.”

But for such an otherwordly discovery, the Israeli press inevitably looks for a local angle. Yedioth Ahronoth reports that heads of half a dozen international space agencies will visit Israel in the coming month as part of a conference to be held in Jerusalem. Professor Yitzhak Ben-Israel, head of Israel’s space agency, will meet with the head of NASA and the heads of the Chinese, Russian, Indian, European and Japanese space agencies to discuss future international cooperation for space exploration.

Israel Hayom features a column by Ben-Israel who explains for the huddled masses the significance of the discovery of flowing water on Mars. He says it not only makes the prospect of human settlement on Mars more realistic, but it also increases the probability of discovering life on Mars.

“It could be that life won’t be intelligent as it is on Earth, but the chance that we’ll find life is large,” he writes. “It could also change our whole theory of the creation of life and the creation of the Solar System.”

One of the things the scientists will discuss at the October 12 conference in Jerusalem, he says, is what to do now that mankind has discovered water on Mars, and what steps can be taken to search for life on the red planet.

Elsewhere in the cosmos, the papers also get a hoot out of a lunar eclipse that coincided with an abnormally large full moon, with photos of the “blood moon” gracing the pages of the newspapers for those who didn’t stay up Sunday night to see it.

But closer to home, the press reports on the latest nominee to take over the Israel Police: Roni Alsheich, a deputy chief of the Shin Bet security agency. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approved publication of Alsheich’s name ahead of Sunday’s holiday, and he will meet with the Turkel Commission, which is tasked with approving his nomination, on Thursday. Unlike the previous candidate, Gal Hirsch, Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein has already given Alsheich his blessing.

Curiously, however, one of the first points the papers choose to focus on concerning Alsheich, before discussing his career, is his manner of headgear. Israel Hayom reports he wears a kippah, Yedioth Ahronoth notes it’s a knitted kippah — suggesting he’s nationalist religious — and Haaretz reports he wears a kippah and formerly lived in a West Bank settlement.

Israel Hayom reports that the committee will speedily approve Alsheich’s appointment before the end of Acting Commissioner Bentzi Sau’s term, which ends on October 15. Erdan, meanwhile, will meet with Sau and Southern District chief Yoram Halevi in a bid to convince them to stay on the force.

Alsheich, 52, is married with seven children, is religious and lived for many years in a West Bank settlement near Ramallah before moving to a religious community in central Israel, Haaretz reports. During his army service, he served as the commander of the Paratroopers Brigade’s engineering company, a position he took over from the previous candidate for top cop, Gal Hirsch, the paper says. Yedioth Ahronoth notes that he was the star pupil in the Shin Bet’s intensive Arabic course after enlisting in the security agency in 1988.

“He’s brilliant, a genius, a very charismatic leader who was marked for greatness,” Uzi, a friend of his from his early years in the Shin Bet, tells Yedioth Ahronoth.

Haaretz, however, cares far more about the battle of words between US President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin at the podium at the UN General Assembly on Monday. Obama said any future accord related to the civil war in Syria must include the removal of President Bashar Assad from power, while Putin said Assad must be part of any solution. The two leaders met later in the afternoon and even raised a toast, the paper reports. One thing notably absent from Obama’s speech, Haaretz reports, is any mention of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.