The war the merrier

Syria and Egypt continue to dominate the headlines in the Israeli press Thursday, but whether the stories are news, or flashbacks to the Yom Kippur War nearly 40 years ago, depends on what you’re reading.

Three papers (Haaretz, Israel Hayom and Maariv) lead off their Syria news (as in 2013-style) with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s quote that the message sent to Syria regarding WMDs will be received in Iran.

While Netanyahu made sure to steer clear of directly second-guessing the US decision to get behind a diplomatic solution to Syria’s chemical arms crisis, Israel Hayom’s Dan Margalit makes clear the message Netanyahu was likely trying to telegraph.

“We need to believe that Obama will bring about the isolation of [Syria’s] chemical weapons without firing a single Tomahawk missile. But the American president, who was testing the believability of his warnings to Iran and lost precious time, and may be even past the point of no return, could find himself tricked at the hands of the Russians. They are experts at it.”

Haaretz’s Chemi Shalev also takes a shot at Obama, writing that the American president’s speech to the country Tuesday night (after most Israeli papers were printed) was strong and compelling, and two weeks late.

“If Obama had been as decisive and resolute then as he was on American television on Tuesday night, it would be he who would now seem to be controlling events, rather than the other way around. If he had invested as much then in promoting the strategic importance of a credible American threat to use force, it would be easier for him to convince people now that the Russian offer to dismantle Syria’s chemical arsenal is a product of careful premeditation, rather than an accident of mumbles and fumbles. And if he had seemed clearheaded and resolute from the beginning, Obama wouldn’t seem to be relying now on Vladimir Putin, Bashar Assad and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, for heaven’s sake.”

While Netanyahu is pretty sure Iran is getting the West’s message on WMDs, he may have another way to send it there, Maariv reports, via the uber-popular Rabbi Yoshiyau Pinto. The paper writes that the American Iranian Council invited Pinto, a rabbi with tremendous influence among Israel’s upper crust (and underworld) to sit down with Iranian President Hasan Rouhani when he visits the UN in New York at the end of the month. Pinto hasn’t decided if he’ll join the meet, but those close to him tell the paper that he will bring up the nuclear issue.

Yedioth Ahronoth goes full bore with Yom Kippur war coverage (Saturday is the Hebrew anniversary). While the papers are likely saving their biggest guns for the Friday holiday edition, Yedioth pulls out a not-so-small scoop with a preview of the diary of Haim Bar-Lev, who commanded the southern front in Sinai.

While it’s no secret that Israel thought everything was lost in the first few days of the war, one third-hand quote from the diary drives the point home: “Prime Minister [Golda Meir] told me that the defense minister [Moshe Dayan] came back and informed her that he was wrong about the strength of the IDF, was wrong about his estimations of the enemy and the situation is hopeless.” Which is probably why we also have this quote: “Golda told me that Dayan suggested we use nonconventional methods and we will die together with the Philistines,” a reference to Biblical Samson’s quote before he pushes down the pillar to kill himself and all his enemies.

Taking a page out of the Weekly World News, Maariv reports on another possible Samson in the works, a baby born at Haifa’s Rambam hospital weighing a whopping 6.24 kilograms (13.75 pounds). The mother, who looks like she doesn’t weigh much more herself, tells the paper that her previous two babies were also big, between 4.5 and 5 kilos. The head of the natal unit at the hospital, while clearly wowed, says it’s the second-largest baby he’s seen in his 35 years of work there. “Even in the years I worked in the US, I didn’t see a thing like that.”

Haaretz cartoonist Amos Biderman pays homage to the onslaught of Yom Kippur nostalgia with a cartoon showing a helpless soul fleeing into a bomb shelter to escape all the memoirs and histories of the war. In Yedioth, Yonatan Yavin puts the feeling into words, saying that he’s sorry but he won’t be taking part in all the hubbub surrounding the anniversary. “I really wanted to be part of this ‘everyone together’ here, from this frenetic nostalgia over the 40-year anniversary,” he writes with more than a smidgen of sarcasm. “But I couldn’t. We have too many wars to celebrate.”