Rhetoric rolled

If rhetoric were shekels, the Israeli press alone would have the GDP of Germany. As it is, the seeming run up to war, and reams of words therein, don’t show any sign of fading away.

First up is Haaretz, which has decided to couch its rhetoric in the form of an unnamed official. After leading off the Friday with threatening words by Defense Minister Ehud Barak an unnamed well placed decision maker who has a grand piano in his living room, today, the paper splashes more “Iran is almost there, run for the hills” pabulum across the front. The leaked info is, drum roll please… Iran is closer than ever to producing a nuclear bomb. That’s right folks. The unnamed “senior Jerusalem source” tells the paper that Iran is “progressing far beyond the scope known to the International Atomic Energy Agency.“

This info is of course included in the latest United States National Security Assessment, which Haaretz has been using to make top news hay for the last several days. Unfortunately, these words do not stray much from what the paper already reported earlier.

Israel Hayom reports the same ostensible facts about Iran’s nuclear progress, but also says that top officials believe that US President Barack Obama is pushing off any move on Iran for political reasons. “Senior officials are expressing themselves anonymously, though harshly against Barack Obama. In their words, it’s clear to everyone that he can make the needed choice, but is prevented from doing so by upcoming elections in November.” The paper also quotes former Mossad spy agency head Shabtai Shavit saying that Israel’s fate needs to be in its own hands. “The US can live with a nuclear Iran,” he is quoted as telling Channel 2.

The paper, seen as close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, no lover of the media he, dispatches two of its columnists to take the Israeli media to task for all its fulminating and pontificating. Dan Margalit wants to know why every columnist thinks he can ignore the facts and Itzik Saban comes out saying Israel’s fifth estate is sick in the head: White lies or half-truths are part of everyday life, and for some there is a morality in using them to protect innocence. Yet recently, more and more media outlets are suffering from the psychological malady known as “pathological lying.”

Next up is Maariv, which recently made its digital edition free. The daily reports that the United States is still saying there’s still time for sanctions, and room for Jell-0.The headline comes courtesy of White House spokesman Jay Carney, who used his bully pulpit Friday to once again warn Israel off going it alone. The paper focuses on the “not quiet diplomacy” currently being used by both the US and Israel to make their positions heard. (If the US is smart, it should know that nobody is louder than an Israeli when it comes to making oneself heard): “Against accepted national security practices, instead of passing messages in closed meetings between government representatives or secure phone conversations, the two governments are mostly using the media to deliver messages that match their positions. The goal is clear: an attempt to influence public opinion in Israel and the US, and through them the opinions of the leaders who are making the fateful decision.”

Yedioth Ahronoth skips the whole enflaming rhetoric deal and gets straight to the “tachlis” — the nitty-gritty. “We are not ready for war,” the paper screams across the front page, along with a fighter jet that is also apparently not ready for war. The special “scare the bejesus out of the country to stop it before it’s too late project” includes stories on the fact that the air force has been training for years and is still not sure it is prepared; that 700,000 Israelis don’t have easy access to bomb shelters; that half the people don’t have gas masks; that we can’t fight large fires; that our industrial chemical stores are not properly defended; that we won’t have a home front defense minister after next week; that schools will have to be closed and that hospitals will only have been prepared for a possible attack on Israel in three years. So how about those sanctions?

Into Africa

The recently uncensored story that Israeli soldiers are entering the Sinai to grab migrants before they make it into Israel, according to the Associated Press, is also big news across the board. Because the censor only allowed the papers to report what AP wrote, however, all the stories come across pretty much the same.

Haaretz, which put the story on the front page, includes the IDF’s response that it “only acts where there is no border fence,” and that in the past several weeks it has had to enter Sinai “a number of times to keep the infiltrators [the government’s term] from entering illegally.”

Lest you thought that the summer was just going to be about Iran and Sinai, Maariv reminds readers that there are plenty of great places to hide until the world ends hike around the country during the summer break happening now. On its top five list of hikes is Gishron spring and Zefahot Mountain near Eilat, Hacarbolite Mountain near the Ramon crater, the Yarkon stream in the center of the country, Kadesh stream up north, and nearby in the No. 31 spot Nahal Snir near the Lebanon border. The page is rounded out with a topless picture of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, without his famous hoodie for the first time ever.

Looking for a leader

In Yedioth’s op-ed section, Eitan Haber laments the days of yore, when David Ben-Gurion would set us straight. “We need a leader that most of the country will follow, but not blindly, who will … explain, will justify, will influence, and will lead the State of Israel in its tough hours.”

Haaretz uses its op-ed page to decry the decision by Netanyahu and Barak to take their case for a strike on Iran to the public by engaging in scaremongering.

“The goal might be democratic, but the method is demagogic. There is no real difference of opinion between the public and its leadership when it comes to determination not to live in the shadow of Iranian nuclear weapons as long as the regime in Iran is extremist and openly seeks Israel’s destruction. The question is not ‘acquiescence or war,’ but rather whether all other means have been exhausted, leaving no choice but to attack soon, on the eve of US presidential elections.”