Winds of warning

The debate over the budget continues to rage as the front pages of Israel’s daily papers are covered with opinion pieces on how to solve the crisis. Finance Minister Yair Lapid is taking a front-page beating with three of the four major dailies using cartoon caricatures of him instead of actual pictures (Yedioth Ahronoth and Haaretz both portray him as Edward Scissorhands).

“Netanyahu will decide: (a) four billion-shekel cut in the defense budget or in other sectors,” reads Maariv’s front-page headline. The page is packed with a lifelike cartoon of Lapid along with intros to six different opinion pieces about the budget.

In one of those pieces Alex Lord writes that the IDF budget cuts are necessary in order to trim the fat in the military. He points out that 60% of the defense budget is for pensions, salaries, disability benefits and other expenses, not necessarily the bullets and bombs people envision. “There’s just no choice, and the situation demands that the defense sector also cut back,” he writes. Lord reasons that now is the right time to audit the IDF and find areas of mismanaged spending.

Aside from the opinion pieces, Maariv reports that six cabinet members are threatening to vote against the proposed budget. Prime Minister Netanyahu returned from China on Friday, and the paper expects that next week’s cabinet meeting will be particularly volatile. Tourism minister Uzi Landau (Israel Beytenu) is worried that the proposed budget could harm Israel’s tourism industry by making visitors pay VAT.

Despite the Edward Scissorhands caricature on its front page, Yedioth Ahronoth relegates most of its budgetary opinion pieces to its weekend supplement. Yedioth devotes half of page 2 to pointing out possible wasteful spending by Netanyahu: such as bringing his favorite driver along to China even though he doesn’t need a driver. The paper points out that the PM’s driver cost Israeli taxpayers thousands of shekels with this trip. He also went to Washington, DC, with Netanyahu, even though the PM didn’t need a driver there, either.

With its own version of the Edward Scissorhands cartoon, Haaretz launches into a front-page assault on the budget. Yossi Verter writes in a piece called “Riki’s going to pay” (referencing Yair Lapid’s middle class heroine Riki Cohen, Israel’s version of “Joe the plumber”) that “Lapid has fallen victim to his own rhetoric.” Verter writes that it wasn’t Lapid who brought on the situation, but he is still disappointing his voters by failing on his promises to get money from the tycoons. “Instead,” he writes, “he is saying: Riki will pay.”

Israel Hayom is the only paper to go cartoonless on its front page. Instead, it offers survey results that find, unsurprisingly, that Israelis don’t like budget cuts and do support action against Syria. On economic issues, almost 49% of respondents disagreed with the budget cuts, only 16.6% believe the economy will get better in two years, and 53.9% have little faith in Lapid. On military matters, a whopping 79.4% support the alleged Israeli strikes on Damascus, and the majority have not changed negatively changed their perception of IDF chief Benny Gantz or Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon.

Israel Hayom’s Dan Margalit writes that Lapid might have reignited the social protest movement, only this time it’s begun in front of his house. According to Margalit, one of the first economic issues that should be addressed is reforming the bloated unions — something that Netanyahu did in his stint as finance minister.

A new front?

The situation in Syria is continuing to worry Israeli officials who, according to an article in Maariv, are trying to stop the sale of Russian anti-aircraft missiles to Assad’s regime. Israel reportedly asked the United States to send a message to Russia asking it not to deliver the weapons as this could further destabilize the region.

Further complicating the picture is the speech given by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Thursday. Israel Hayom reports that in the speech, which Nasrallah gave to commemorate the founding of the Lebanese-based terrorist organization 31 years ago, he stated that Syria would give the group more advanced and strategic “game-changing” weapons as the first stage. The next stage would be Hezbollah opening up a front on the Golan Heights.

While the challenge of protecting Israel’s borders is becoming more difficult, police officers in Israel are also facing an outcry after they failed to stop a husband from killing his wife. Yedioth reports that police were called to the home of a Tel Aviv couple after neighbors heard screaming. An officer looked in through the window, determined that nothing was wrong and left. An hour later the husband called the police and told them that he had murdered his wife. The suspect, who claimed that he is sick, was arrested and is being held. Tel Aviv police have begun an investigation into the actions of the officer, who is suspected of not following police procedure.