Who warred it better?

If the State Comptroller’s report on the 2014 Gaza war were the Oscars, then the press over the last few days would be the gossip-mongering presenters who line the red carpet, reporting on who is wearing what opinions, who is mad at who and what’s at stake, while getting everyone pumped up for the big show without revealing too much to take away from the main event.

Monday morning’s papers feature the latest round in the catty tit-for-tat proxy battles happening between generals and politicians increasingly in front of the cameras ahead of the report, which will apparently present a damning picture of the army and the government’s conduct in dealing with threats in the lead-up to the war and during the fighting.

Like acerbic comedians and emcees commenting on clothes and expectations, the press and pundits give politicians space to take aim at each other while predicting who will end up with the worst showing of the year award.

A day after putting former IDF chief Benny Gantz on its front page and highlighting his preemptive defense, Yedioth Ahronoth on Monday does the same with Gantz’s bosom buddy and former boss, then-defense minister Moshe Ya’alon, who is expected to be criticized in the report for misreading Hamas’s intentions and thus dismisses it as politics.

The paper starts off by taking readers back to the war room on June 14, 2014, as the cabinet mulled how to respond to the kidnapping of three Jewish teens by Hamas, with Ya’alon opposing a plan pushed by Jewish Home leader Naftali Bennett to crack down on the terror group in the West Bank, a fact Ya’alon still thinks led to an escalation in tensions that Hamas did not want.

“Those who played politics in the cabinet then, in an unprecedented way, are continuing to do so this week,” he’s quoted saying on Facebook Sunday. “They will tell you they didn’t know, they weren’t told. And the biggest lie? That we weren’t prepared and lost. This is nonsense.”

In a show that the battle continues over who knows what is going on under the Gaza frontier sands, Israel Hayom runs a front page headline declaring that there are at least 15 Hamas tunnels crossing into Israel at this very moment. Perhaps because the information is sourced only to a “senior diplomatic source” and not someone willing to put their name behind it, the paper buried that information at the bottom of its story on the report. The lion’s share of the report is taken up by the angry denunciations of the report and its authors by a source who was a senior minister at the time of the war but is no longer in the cabinet, and who also is unwilling to put his name behind his words.

“They never waged war, aren’t professional and so adopted the narrative of Naftali Bennett. I spoke to them in one language and they responded in another language,” the minister is quoted saying. “What they came up with is a mistake. It’s better that this report should have never happened. It’ll be used for political ends.”

One person who was willing to put his name behind his criticism is former general and current minister Yoav Galant, who wasn’t a player during the war but has inserted himself forcefully into the debate, helped along by Israel Hayom printing his comments in full, as a full page column.

Galant, who was famously pushed out of the running for the top IDF job as part of a massive scandal, takes aim at the way the war was run like a snot-nosed armchair general.

“The Gaza test should have been the easiest military challenge possible. In Protective Edge the level of operation was low. It was a relatively simple, easy challenge compared to those lurking in the future for us, and yet we barely made it over the bar. Our enemies around us are asking what will happen when the bar will be raised to a realistic height, as part of a real war against stronger forces. They are liable to consider their moves in accordance with their memory of this failed war. A war like Protective Edge should be short, high-quality and without injuries or damage to resources. But in practice it was long, failing and costly by any measure.”

Galant also goes on the attack against the “lies” of Ya’alon and Gantz and in Haaretz, Amos Harel points out that there is no love lost between them, after Gantz ended up snatching the IDF chief spot from Galant. Harel notes that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who should take the most heat from the auditor’s findings, is actually managing to stay above the fray for the most part.

“Most of the fire is being aimed at Ya’alon and the army officers, while Netanyahu is returning from an important diplomatic mission to Australia and Singapore and continues to bolster his image as a statesman cruising somewhere in the strategic heights, far from the petty squabbling of Ya’alon, Galant and the state comptroller,” Harel writes, adding that it’s doubtful that the public will care much, especially as the report includes no practical steps to be taken against those responsible for the snafus.

That depressing view is also expressed by Yedioth columnist Eitan Haber, who writes that the report will take its place alongside a host of other ignored watchdog reports, making it “a waste of paper.” Still Haber notes that the one who will take the brunt of the barbed-wire bat is Gantz, whom he portrays as a helpless victim of circumstance.

“You don’t need to be an astrologer or prophet of doom to understand that almost all the arrows will be shot at Gantz,” he writes. “He is the bad kid of this story. Gantz was quick to speculate about joining politics, not necessarily alongside Netanyahu. But he’s not eloquent like Netanyahu and not exultant and bubbly like Bennett. Benny Gantz is a convenient target for criticism over this unneeded operation in Gaza.”

Bennett may come out Tuesday afternoon smelling like anemones, but that doesn’t mean he’ll be totally shielded from attack on other fronts. Haaretz makes that clear with its lead editorial taking aim at the education minister over his plan, first reported in the paper yesterday, to hire a spymaster for the school system.

The paper’s lead editorial puts little faith in the post being kept to just making sure textbooks are up to standards and prices are kept honest, seeing the confluence of the right-wing Bennett and spying as a recipe for a new Golem.

“The ostensibly innocent job posting raises concerns that a new intelligence unit is being set up in the state educational system. That’s how it is when the government and the parties in the coalition compete with each other to be more extreme, more nationalist, and persecute those who dare to express opinions that stray from the official line,” the editorial reads.”The content of textbooks, lessons, lectures and plays are measured against a right-wing, settler standard. ‘Education Ministry objectives,’ backed by ‘legislation and court rulings,’ can be used against principals and teachers just as they can against publishers or food-service providers. The slippery slope toward students and parents informing on principals and teachers is short and steep. This new monster, Bennett’s intelligence office, should be nipped in the bud.”