Waze and means

The news that Ra’anana-based Waze will be getting a massive $1.3 billion buyout from the overlords at Google is a big deal across Israel’s media landscape Monday morning, with only the bad news bears at Maariv preferring to highlight all the reasons we will soon be dead (or back in the Stone Age) and have no need for the traffic and navigation application.

Israel Hayom runs the puntastic headline “Navigating toward the riches” for its story on the buyout. The paper’s Ilan Gattegno writes that the acquisition will give Google the one thing it does not have, a social network that people actually want to use and that isn’t the butt of jokes. “If it knows how to steer Waze [There’s those puns again!] correctly, it will finally manage to put together a meaningful social network to challenge Facebook, and will replace all the failed attempts of the past.”

Dan Margalit uses both sides of his mouth, trumpeting how great the deal is for Israeli high tech, but wonder whether the exit is really the preferred option for Israeli companies. Just look at the example of Gil Schweid’s Check Point, an insanely successful company that never sold out to a global conglomerate, he says. “Blessing to Waze and nobody is doubtful of its contribution to Israel’s economy and the generations of young innovators. But the preferred model is registered under the names of Schweid and those like him. Check Point is a bigger contribution to the national economy.”

Yedioth Ahronoth notes, however, that the deal will deposit NIS 1 billion ($280 million) into the state’s coffers, a full 1/39th of the country’s deficit, and will join with two other deals that will all together put in NIS 3 billion, enough to bring the VAT sales tax down 1.5 percent.

Not so fast, though, reports Haaretz, which leads off with a story that taxes should go even higher in the next two years. The report, based on Bank of Israel figures published Sunday, claims that the budget Israel is about to pass will solve few problems while leaving a bigger mess down the road, including the need to raise another NIS 11 billion in taxes in 2015 and the state’s economic growth dropping to 3.3%.

Over in Maarivland, dark clouds are forming over the landscape and trouble is brewing. The paper leads off with the dedication of the Arak heavy water facility in Iran, which will be able to process nuclear material for warheads, and fills the rest of the page with a story on Hezbollah’s growing role in Syria, bribery in Hadera city hall and over a thousand cases of physical abuse against the elderly being reported.

The always sunny Amir Rappaport writes that the news of the Arak facility getting ready to come online shows that international efforts to stop Iran have failed.

“The news on the activation of the heavy water facility at Arak proves that Iran is continuing to laugh all the way to the bomb. The news is important first and foremost because of its timing: right after another round of harshened sanctions on Tehran and a few days before the election.”

In Yedioth, security correspondent Ronen Bergman weighs in on the PRISM scandal, saying that Americans are shocked, shocked, but wondering if they should be. “A few years ago already it was published that the National Security Agency was running a system that tapped into phone calls, a network that could recognize voice signatures and keywords, flag them, monitor them, record them and store them in what is described as the largest database in the world. So what’s the difference between phone conversations and tapping into internet histories? Why are Americans so shocked?”

Israel Hayom reports that a delegation of parliamentarians from Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world, made a secret visit to Israel, meeting with Knesset head Yuli Edelstein. The story is short on details, but does note that the group was brought to Israel by an Australian Jewish group aiming to help Israeli public relations.

In Haaretz’s op-ed section, the paper pays tribute to Yoram Kaniuk, writing that the great Israeli author’s disillusionment with the direction the state went in must not be forgotten.

“Kaniuk was an example of an intellectual who pursued social justice. He and his friends first fought to create a state for the Jews, and afterward to establish that state as just, secular, democratic and egalitarian. They succeeded in their first mission, but subsequently failed. Israel in 2013 is not the country of their dreams and for which they fought. Kaniuk was not the first to be disappointed by it, and unfortunately will not be the last. More attention should have been paid to him during his lifetime, and his struggles dare not be forgotten after his death.”

In Maariv, author Aviah Ben Avi writes about her coffee shop meetings with Kaniuk: “Many times I would walk him home after the large wave of the Friday night crowd already left. I enjoy nothing more than walking someone home. Yoram would chide me the whole way. He didn’t like my tattoos. He did like my writing, but would get annoyed that I didn’t use more realistic elements. He thought there was a therapeutic element to it. He was wrong. To try and think about how I feel now and to rummage through the memories that he took partially proves that.”