Taking flak

An attack in the center of Jerusalem Sunday, in which a Palestinian man stabbed a Border Police officer who managed to shoot his escaping assailant, has the country’s tabloid press singing the praises of the oft-maligned gendarmes Monday morning.

“We are the country’s flak jacket,” reads Yedioth Ahronoth’s headline of the story, while Israel Hayom goes with the even less subtle “He fought like a real hero.”

Much of the coverage in both papers focuses on how the injured soldier’s quick action to down the stabber (called a terrorist in both papers) managed to stop a larger attack, working off the assumption that the man planned to go after more people in a bloody rampage.

Yedioth sets the scene at the hospital where the officer was transported in critical condition after suffering several stab wounds.

“At Shaare Zedek Hospital in Jerusalem, the Border Police officers stood yesterday in a hallway outside the Trauma Unit and waited for encouraging news on the condition of their friend – who only a few hours earlier was attacked by a terrorist but managed to stop a mass-casualty attack,” the paper’s lede reads. “From there they surely returned to a number of streets around the city, to the most volatile places in the Middle East – after a tough morning in which they got another reminder that they are the protective body of Israel’s citizens.”

Yedioth’s ridiculous assertion that Jerusalem is more dangerous than Damascus, Sanaa, Homs, Baghdad, Mosul, Aden, Gaza (I can go on) aside, underlying the coverage is a mounting sense of a return to violence, with the stabbing coming just two days after a fatal terror attack in the West Bank.

In Israel Hayom, Haim Shine goes ahead and calls it a “seemingly new wave of terror,” tying the attacks to the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

“The Jewish people on their fast days take personal accountings, while our neighbors on those days bring accounts to bear,” he writes. “Like a yearly ritual, the Ramadan fast days are days of encouraging bloodshed, the result of an increase in continuing education and incitement. The explanation that we are talking about lone wolves is unfounded. It just removes the onus of responsibility from the religious and political leadership, which push and advance murderous attempts on Jewish lives.”

Haaretz downplays the heroism angle and up-plays the blowback the Palestinians will receive in the wake of the attacks, reporting that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon decided to cancel 500 permits for Palestinians to leave the country, as well as nix entry permits to Israel for residents of the town where the stabber was from, plus other possible future punishments.

The paper also reports that tensions in the Damascus Gate area, where the stabbing took place, remained high hours after the attack.
“Groups of rightists demonstrated in the area of the stabbing, by Damascus Gate and IDF Square, and two of them were detained for questioning. Hours later, dozens of Palestinians threw rocks at police in the area. Nobody was hurt and there were no arrests,” the paper reports.

Come sail away

With tensions on the up and up, a nice summer cruise might be just the thing to calm the region down, but just such a cruise headed toward Gaza, and a possible confrontation with Israel, has sparked worries of yet another international incident.

The decision of Joint List MK Basel Ghattas to set sail on the protest ship to Gaza has his fellow lawmakers and others making him out as more of a Moby Dick than a Captain Phillips.

Yedioth reports that Ghattas has already taken off for Greece, where he plans on boarding the ship, and sent a letter to Netanyahu and Ya’alon warning them to stay away or suffer another diplomatic black eye.

“I call on you to tell the security forces to keep their distance from the ship and to let it go on its way,” he is quoted as writing. “Taking over the ship and stopping it from reaching its destination will only embroil Israel in another harsh international crisis whose consequences you and your government will be fully responsible for.”

If you ask Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely, getting a confrontation that will give Israel another black eye is exactly why the ship is setting sail.

“A ship like this that is making its way to Israel is the fruit of provocateurs who only want to blacken Israel’s face,” Yedioth quotes Hotovely saying. “The participation of an Arab Israeli Knesset member with those who wish to fight Israel is proof of acting on behalf of the enemy under cover of parliamentary immunity.”

The paper also reports that the government is attempting to enlist international support to get Greece from keeping the flotilla from sailing, in a bid to head off the coming storm.

In Israel Hayom, Dan Margalit says Israel can also offer to transfer the humanitarian goods to Gaza itself as an option to calm the waters, but the presence of Ghattas means the organizers are more interested in picking a fight than getting Tylenol to Gaza.

“It’s too early to estimate how Ghattas will act. It’s not clear his level of criminality, especially since we are talking in future tense. But it already needs to be explained to him that his Knesset membership won’t be a legal flak jacket, if there will be any need to prosecute him under the law,” Margalit writes.

In Haaretz, Ghattas also takes flak from an unexpected place: his own constituency, who think with so much international attention on Gaza, he should be concentrating on working to better the lives of the Israeli Arabs he represents.

“There is no doubt that as Palestinian citizens of Israel we identify with our brethren in the Gaza Strip and call for the lifting of the siege,” the paper quotes a “key member” of Ghattas’s Balad party saying, “but from that point to an Arab MK joining the flotilla is a long road. Arab society in Israel has quite a few challenges that require the presence of the MKs in Israel and not on the flotilla.”