Summertime miracles

It’s a Hanukkah miracle — for Israeli parents. It’s the middle of winter, but that’s not stopping the Education Ministry from thinking about summer. An announcement by the Education Ministry aims to give some relief to Israeli parents during the long summer vacation.

Yedioth Ahronoth puts the story smack-dab on the front page, proclaiming, “Summer vacation will be less vacation.” Now for three weeks during the summer break, first- and second-graders will attend a summer camp at school run by the Education Ministry. Education Minister Shai Piron defended the program from critics, saying, “This will be education, not babysitting.” In the more outlying areas of Israel, third- and fourth-graders will also attend the camp. And that’s just this summer. The ministry plans to expand the program in the coming years to other grades as well.

Israel Hayom writes that the program is aimed at sparking children’s creativity with programs focusing on sports, environmental education, and reading clubs. However, the program won’t be free. Underprivileged children will have the NIS 450 fee (about $125) subsidized by the government. And a large chunk of the program’s budget comes from the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, which will contribute NIS 30 million each year towards the project’s NIS 200-million price tag.

Along with its coverage, Israel Hayom offers a short op-ed piece by Yishai Ben Shalom, who calls the program “A rest for grandparents.” He praises the curriculum as being a boon to the Israeli education system. But he balks at Piron’s labeling of the program as an “education revolution.”

“The use of the word ‘revolution’ should be kept for the day when the education minister finally announces the implementation of comprehensive reform, which dozens of committees have recommended… All we got now is a 14-day summer camp. It’s nice, but that’s all.”

Schoolchildren aren’t the only ones looking ahead to summer: Maariv reports that President Shimon Peres is planning to retire in July… as scheduled. There had been speculation that Peres might try to stay on as president if the Knesset extended his seven-year term (which ends in July 2014). “I finish my role as president in July 2014 and oppose any initiative or attempt to extend the tenure or modify the legislation on the subject,” Peres told the paper. However, not all is clear cut: The paper hints that, in off-the-record conversations with Peres’s aides, after July everything is possible, including Peres running in the next elections.

The subject of the loosening Iranian sanctions makes the front page of Haaretz, as the paper reports companies are champing at the bit to resume business there. The article gives a laundry list of large Western companies — such as Siemens. Peugeot, and the French oil company Total — that are looking to get back into the Iranian market. In Europe and Asia, companies are preparing for the moment when certain sanctions are lifted (expected to be around mid-December), but over in America the situation is different. The US government is preventing companies from doing business with Iran until the second round of sanction-lifting, which worries American companies that they’re going to miss out on the Iranian market. All of which underlines Israeli concerns that the Geneva interim deal marks the beginning of the end of the sanctions pressure on Iran.

Hostile acts

A two-year-old infant was injured on Thursday when a rock was thrown at the car in which she was traveling. Her family was driving in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Armon Hanatziv when a rock flew through the back window and hit the infant in the head. Israel Hayom reports that police suspect the attack was “nationalistic” in nature and they began searching the area for the perpetrators. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reacted to the attack, promising, “We will find these criminals and we will bring them to justice.”

While police continue to search for the attackers in Jerusalem, in Haifa on Thursday the court sentenced four people in connection to the lynching death of Jewish terrorist Eden Natan-Zada. Maariv reports the seven defendants were sentenced for their roles in the beating to death of Natan-Zada: 6 received a sentence of between 11 and 24 months, and the 7th defendant was punished with eight months’ probation.

In 2005, Natan-Zada opened fire on a bus in the Arab Israeli city of Shfaram, killing four. After the attack he was arrested, but an angry mob overwhelmed the police force and beat him to death. MK Jamal Zahalke called the verdict “A hostile message to the Arab public in Israel.”

Druze soldiers who arrived at Dimona to partake in an army exercise also received a nasty message. According to an exclusive in Yedioth, the officer and two soldiers who arrived with their air force unit at the nuclear reactor in Dimona were denied entry because they were Druze. Instead they were forced to wait on the bus while their comrades completed the exercise. “We felt like we were worthless,” one of the soldiers said. “I don’t believe it; why do we deserve this? We’re good enough to do the army, but they don’t trust us?” The army said it had investigated the incident and created guidelines to prevent this from happening in the future.

Courting disaster

In the opinion pages of Israel Hayom, Dan Margalit takes on the possibly fraudulent elections in Beit Shemesh, and urges the court to call for new elections. Margalit discusses how Beit Shemesh is not the classical culture war — it’s not religious vs. secular, but rather Orthodox vs. ultra-Orthodox. Margalit feels that the only way to fix the divide in Beit Shemesh is for more integration of different communities, not to continue the separation that currently divides the city. But the scale of the allegations against the elections in Beit Shemesh shows that something is rotten in the city, and that one way to fix it is through new and fair municipal elections.

In the Haaretz editorial, the paper takes on the religious court that decided to fine a woman 500 shekels a day (about $140) for not circumcising her son. “The question of whether a baby should be circumcised at all should not be decided by a religious court, but by its parents,” according to the daily. The paper hopes that the High Court of Justice will take the case and overturn the verdict, which will send the message that “individual rights take precedence over religious customs, however widespread they are.”