Swarming for portfolios

Israeli papers don’t agree on much this fine Wednesday morning, but if they find consensus on one thing, it’s that are a lot of friggin’ locusts in the south. Only Yedioth Ahronoth has the gall to leave the locusts off the front page, instead filling it with a story about political corruption and a bunch of pictures of women, possibly in a bid to end around the new Playboy Israel. Don’t be surprised if the locusts swarm Yedioth’s offices by the end of the day, because if there’s anything those critters hate, it’s being left off of A1.

So yes, there’s locusts on the front page, but what else? How about politicians swarming like some sort of swarming insect around ministerial positions, each trying to devour as many portfolios as it can before being killed off by a pesticide-spraying electorate. Two prominent locusts, Yesh Atid chief Yair Lapid and Yisrael Beytenu czar Avigdor Liberman are currently battling over the Foreign Ministry post, with Israel Hayom and Haaretz both displaying the fight to the death (of any chance of Netanyahu forming a government) prominently.

Apparently Netanyahu promised the post to Liberman, who had to step down from it late last year to fight fraud charges. Israel Hayom reports that Netanyahu told Lapid he won’t break his word, but the paper also writes that Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein may force him to, after the AG ordered a check into whether it is legal to save a ministerial post like a seat on a bus for somebody who might not even be able to assume it.

Haaretz, meanwhile, which highlights Lapid’s intransigence, says that Netanyahu will offer Lapid another “F” ministry: Finance, and if he doesn’t want it, it will go to Jewish Home head Naftali Bennett, which could be seen as another attempt to break up the Yesh-Home alliance. “A senior Likud official said Tuesday that the party never offered Lapid the Foreign Ministry, which is his preferred portfolio. ‘Lapid didn’t receive any offer regarding the Foreign Ministry, but we offered him the treasury,’ the official said. “During the negotiations between Likud-Yisrael Beytenu and Jewish Home on Tuesday, Bennett’s team requested that their chairman be appointed finance minister. We’re still waiting for Lapid’s response. If he refuses, we might offer it to Bennett.'” The paper adds that Jewish Home is denying accepting an offer to be finance minister, and Likud denies making it.

It’s not only the Foreign Ministry that Lapid wants. Maariv notes that he is looking for a laundry list of changes in how the state respects religion, including support for public transportation on Shabbat and civil marriage, on top of his demand to draft Haredim into the army or national service. The paper claims that a deal to make Bennett finance minister is near, but says the sides are still burning the midnight oil to try to come to a deal. “If the deal does go through, Likud-Beytenu wants to swear in the new government by early next week,” Maariv writes. This couldn’t have to do with the upcoming visit of a certain White House occupant? Nah.

PO’d at the P man

Elsewhere in the political cesspool, Yedioth continues its explosive reporting of an emerging vote-buying scandal, which they can now reveal was within the Labor Party, and specifically around former party chief (and current Hatnua MK Amir Peretz). The case is being investigated by police, and the paper reports, quite confusingly, that the affair centers around one Sami Shushan, a brother-in-law of Peretz who is suspected of setting up a meeting between the former defense minister and a mystery man known only as “P” who blew the case open.

Not surprisingly, everybody denied the allegations, but party chief Shelly Yachimovich was quick to distance herself from the affair, drawing flak from Peretz, who accused her of rushing to judgment. The offending statement? “We strongly condemn this phenomenon and are simply disgusted by this. Happily, those who allegedly committed the acts are no longer members of the Labor Party.”

Can’t get enough of Yachimovich’s womanly charms? Yedioth devotes a number of pages to Women’s Day, writing hagiographic odes to several of Israel’s leading females. And number one on the list of feminists, according to writer Zuriyah Shalev? Why, it’s President Shimon Peres, who at last check claimed to be male. “Most of my life I was surrounded by generals and now my senior managers are all women,” the president is quoted as saying. Yes, according to Yedioth, women aren’t even the best at being feminists.

Slightly more worrying is a report by Maariv that armed Syrian rebels with ties to al-Qaeda have been filmed only a few meters from the border with Israel. The story, which is essentially an awkward play-by-play of a video on the Internet, comes with pictures showing rebels holding Kalashnikovs and surrounding an artillery-laden truck right near the border fence. The IDF’s response? Chill, Winston, we don’t have any orders to open fire on the rebels. Well, that’s reassuring.

Xeroxing verdicts

In Haaretz, Amira Hass laments the fact that judges are not more creative when writing their verdicts for why they are locking up Palestinians. She starts by noting a verdict rejecting the petition of a prisoner who was not allowed to question the Shin Bet representative in the trial, and then notes that in eight other similar cases that day, the same wording was used. “Nine people, nine revocations of liberty without trial, on the same day, and in the same words. Attorney Labib Habib said the act of copying the wording raised the suspicion that ‘the judge did not use judgment, or true judgment’ which is sufficient grounds for overturning the decision. In this spirit, Habib submitted a petition to the High Court of Justice this week.”

In Israel Hayom, Uri Heitner writes an appreciation for peacenik settler rabbi Menachem Froman, who died on Monday. “Rabbi Froman was innocent in a naïve way, but also in a way of simplicity and wholeness. The kind of peace he dreamed of was a whole peace, that fills everything and everyone. And even though he and his dream were so unrealistic, he confronted the reality of our lives with a vision different from our days. A vision to yearn for and which longed for him.”