Stakes and ladders

The idea that life is nothing more than a game of Snakes and Ladders, where you can be climbing high one minute and sent back to square one the next, shines through in Monday morning’s Hebrew print press, filled with tales of people being sent back to the starting gate, those trying to climb out and avoid the snakes in their way, and not-so-surprising reversals.

The closest thing there is to a consensus lead story is the High Court’s decision to refuse (again) to allow the opening of a separate pediatric blood cancer unit at Shaare Zedek hospital in Jerusalem, after a compromise agreement to send a few doctors to set up a temporary unit there was rejected by parents and doctors — which is seen a sending the sides “back to the starting point,” in the words of a Yedioth Ahronoth headline.

The paper plays up the quixotic nature of the parents and doctors’ battle but says in the end the judges had “no choice” but to reject the opening of a new unit according to a “dry” reading of the law.

“Seven months of a stormy and turbulent war, seven months of threats, spin, ugly politics and above all some months of kids suffering from cancer fearing that they won’t have anyone to care for them, all of this came to end with the unanimous decision by the High Court,” the paper writes.

Giving a taste of one sides’ disappointment, the tabloid turns to its cancer-stricken 14-year old diarist Roee Ben-David, who says he is about to collapse from the fight, but isn’t giving up (making one wonder if the treatment he will get now it is worth making yourself sicker over, or if he is being manipulated).

“We will not stop our righteous fight until we get permission to open a pediatric hemato-oncology unit at Shaare Zedek,” he writes.

Giving the view of an analyst a bit less invested, Israel Hayom’s Ran Reznik writes that the High Court ruling makes a loser out of everyone.

“Everyone, all the sides in this unprecedented confrontation, wound up losing. Lost, bruised and humiliated. Health Minister Yaakov Litzman and ministry director Moshe Bar-Simantov have lost, in dramatic fashion, the public’s trust in the fair, rational and just manner that they run the health system in Israel. The public understands now, unfortunately, that the heads of the ministry are willing to do almost everything to protect Prof. Zeev Rotstein, the head of Hadassah hospital,” he writes. “Hadassah also came out bruised and smarting, after several months during which harsh claims were made against it — among the most severe to ever come out against a hospital in Israel — by senior doctors, nurses, parents and patients … Hadassah used to be thought of among the best hospitals in Israel. You cannot say that anymore.”

Haaretz also puts the hospital kerfuffle on its front page, but leads off with the Labor primary runoff taking place on Monday between former party head Amir Peretz and newcomer Avi Gabbay, two men waiting to find out if they are climbing ladders or sliding down snakes. The paper writes that 50,000 people can vote in the election, and calculates that a higher turnout will help Gabbay, who is expected to get the support of most of the people who voted for the losers in the first round.

“In telephone surveys the party found 18,000 potential votes [for Gabbay]. Peretz, according to Gabbay’s camp, is expected to bring in 15,000 votes. Thirty thousand voted in the first round — 59% percent — and according to the party Gabbay will need to keep that number in order to win,” the broadsheet writes

For those who are still undecided, Yedioth runs side by side last-gasp pitches by each candidate and also runs a story summing up interviews with each of them, with them both promising victory for the party in the next Knesset election.

In the paper’s op-ed page, Nahum Barnea counsels voters to realize that the next elections (like the last) will be a referendum on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and they should choose somebody who can match up well against him — in his eyes, probably Gabbay.

“Peretz is experienced, that’s a plus. He knows the arena and is battle-scarred. On the other hand, his ceiling (of maximum number of voters) is quite low. Gabbay know how to bring in diverse groups, voters for Lapid, Kahlon and maybe even Likud. His political ability remains a riddle. It’s possible he’ll be a one-off, a momentary visitor, kind of like Amram Mitzna, but it’s also possible he will be the one to bring the party to the masses,” he writes.

Even Israel Hayom, which has mostly downplayed the Labor race as uninteresting to its right-wing readership, gets in on the act, running a two-page spread on pages two and three, complete with two columns. In one, Amnon Lord writes that even if Labor isn’t the party it once was, the runoff vote is still important, deriding Gabbay as a puppet of more powerful and radical forces (perhaps showing that the paper is still mad at him for defecting from Netanyahu’s cabinet) and and writing as fulsome a hagiography of Peretz as the paper has probably ever given a Labor Party figure.

“Peretz won’t vacate his spot for some generalissimo waiting in the wings,” he writes, referencing Ehud Barak and his bushy beard. “First on his agenda is the good of the public, even if some disagree with his ways on the economy and security. He’s not part of his unholy alliance between international corporations and the radical left. Gabbay, Stav Shaffir, Barak and Haaretz are all part of this alliance.”

Hungary, Hungary hypocrites?

If words like that out of the paper often seen as a government mouthpiece sound like something out of an anti-George Soros campaign, it’s not a coincidence. Haaretz reports that after an Israeli diplomat in Budapest complained about anti-Semitism surrounding an anti-Soros campaign,“ at Netanyahu’s instruction, the Foreign Ministry took back its criticism of anti-Semitism in Hungary,” as the paper’s A1 headline reads.

“Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon issued a clarification that refrained from criticizing [Viktor] Orbán but also sharply criticized Soros himself, using claims similar to the ones being made against him by the Hungarian government,” the paper reports, leaving out the part where Nahshon also deplored anti-Semitism.

But hinting at forces acting behind the scenes, the paper notes that the ballyhoo comes as “Netanyahu is scheduled to meet Orbán in Budapest on July 18, during what will be the first visit of an Israeli premier to Hungary in 30 years.”