A crack in time

With legal troubles for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and now his wife, continuing to mount, it’s not hard to guess what front pages would have been graced with Tuesday had a helicopter not crashed Monday night, killing its pilot and seriously wounding a navigator.

That’s not to say Netanyahu isn’t totally off the radar in papers Tuesday morning, with a report that Sara Netanyahu is set to be indicted for an expensing scandal still on the front pages of Yedioth Ahronoth and Haaretz — the latter leading off with the news.

But if it bleeds it leads, and the helicopter crash is the prominent news item on the front pages of both tabloids, despite the fact that by the time the papers went to bed at around midnight not that much was known or had been cleared for release about it.

Israel Hayom calls the crash a “disaster” on its front page and in its lede, reporting that “within minutes of the incident, [Air Force head Amir] Eshel arrived at the Air Force command center to oversee what happened,” with an investigation kicking off right away.

Despite the quick dispatching of investigators, the army was mum last night on what might have caused the problem and all three papers can’t offer much more than context and speculation, including the fact that the IAF recently grounded its Apache fleet after a crack was discovered in the rotor (the army has since said it is unrelated).

“The IAF said yesterday that an investigation found that after 2,000 hours of flight, a crack formed in the rotor due to wear. On the basis of those findings, they say in the air force, a decision was made to limit the use of the blade and shorten its use by 80% of what is used today,” Yedioth reports.

Haaretz notes that means that while the blades used to be used for 4,600 flying hours, they are now only in the air for 995 hours. The paper also points out that not all Apaches are the same, and the one with the cracked rotor was the Longbow version, while the one that crashed was a Python model.

Among what little is known is that rumors that IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot was aboard the crashed helicopter are false. While Israel Hayom won’t even name Eisenkot in dispelling the claims, Yedioth subtly blames the army’s tendency to censor information for allowing the rumors to fly.

“While the censor put a total gag on the incident, WhatsApp groups and social media buzzed with rumors and false reports,” the paper writes.

Despite the fact that Channel 2 news’s report Monday night on the attorney general nearing an indictment on Sara Netanyahu (who has memorably pointed out cracks in the wall of the Prime Minister’s Residence on more than one occasion) was totally unsourced, it is treated as not rumor but fact in both Haaretz and Yedioth, both of which play up the news.

“Attorney general expected to announce: Sara Netanyahu will be charged in the Residence affair,” Haaretz’s top headline reads, with the story quoting Channel 2, a Justice Ministry denial and lots of background on Netanyahu accused of using state money illegally.

Yedioth’s story does not even mention Channel 2, but is peppered with apparently’s and seemingly’s, apparently trying to cover its ass. The paper doesn’t offer its own sourcing though, and only adds to the coverage with a few more details about the timeline, though it confusingly notes that the district prosecutor decided right after Passover ( i.e., in April) that “based on the evidence and last-minute investigations to fill out the probe — including one just last week — there is room” to indict.

If there is a time traveling district prosecutor, then Yedioth buried the lede, but it seems even Benjamin Netanyahu is into predicting the future, writing on Facebook that “it won’t happen” in reply to a story about Palestinian officials cheering his downfall.

While Israel Hayom runs only a small sidebar on the Channel 2 report, the paper manages to weave a front-page headline and several hundred words out of Netanyahu’s curt Facebook post. The paper also devotes considerable coverage to a rally planned for Wednesday in defense of the prime minister.

“We are fighting for public opinion against the left and the media, who are trying to create an atmosphere of crisis, which does not exist,” coalition whip David Bitan is quoted saying.

Indeed, despite the news about Sara Netanyahu’s legal woes, it’s still her husband’s problems that have the attention of the pundits, who do see a crisis forming and give little credence to right-wing excuses.

In Haaretz, Chemi Shalev writes that the right-wing defense of Netanyahu — that he is innocent until proven guilty — might work for Netanyahu the private citizen, but not for Netanyahu the elected public servant in the court of public opinion.

“Citizen Netanyahu certainly enjoys a presumption of innocence. He is considered innocent until proven guilty and his guilt has to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Prime Minister Netanyahu, on the other hand, has no presumption of innocence. His guilt does not have to be established in a court of law, certainly not beyond a reasonable doubt,” he writes. “In order to convict him before the benches of democracy – the Knesset, the coalition, public opinion and history – it is enough to harbor reasonable suspicions or to rely on circumstantial evidence or to simply feel disgust and revulsion in your gut. That is sufficient to decide his fate and to deem him unworthy of holding his office.”

The court of public opinion is also given outsized importance in columns in Yedioth and Israel Hayom, which look at whether Netanyahu should be backed, not on basis of the law, but on whether he can get right-wing things done.

In Yedioth, columnist Shlomo Pyotrkovsky criticizes those saying that this is nothing but a political witchhunt, citing the case of former prime minister Ariel Sharon and him surviving his own legal issues just to turn his back on the right and lead the Gaza disengagement.

“The past teaches us that automatically defending the corrupt does not help the Land of Israel. If there is corruption and a culture of corruption, at the end of the day it could end up turning against its own,” he writes. “The right-wing needs to be careful about giving backing to one who can at the moment of truth turn his back. Right now there’s no reason to demand Netanyahu resign. A demand like that is not fair given the early stage of the probes against him. But what should definitely be demanded is intense oversight, to make sure he does not veer from his path under pressure from investigations.”

Sharon’s status as a political “etrog,” or politician that the left thought must be protected like the citrons used on Sukkot and then thrown away, also plays a role in a column by Amnon Lord on Israel Hayom’s op-ed page, in which he says that Netanyahu shouldn’t be compared to any of his predecessors, and wonders why he isn’t being protected like Sharon was.

“The public that supports him won’t turn away but rather the opposite. So his leadership is not collapsing and maybe even getting stronger. The police and the prosecutor will have a problem this time, since the relevant public appreciates his work greatly. It still hasn’t been shown that the investigations aren’t a case of them keeping him from being an etrog,” he writes, making it seem like popularity trumps the law. “Netanyahu is unique because he hasn’t broken like [Ehud] Barak, [Ehud] Olmert or Sharon, but has maintained his integrity all along. He’s stuck to his guns on the economy, policy and strategy and has seemingly only done good for Israel over the last eight years. The proof: People want to take him down.”