A deafening din of outcries

Between Melania Trump, the mayor of Jerusalem and Naftali Bennett, there’s enough outcry in Wednesday’s papers to deafen discontent that a convicted rapist might get out of jail early this morning.

First things first: the Donald’s third wife appears to have cribbed from the first lady’s speech eight years ago, and the Israeli media has caught up with the fecal typhoon that has ensued.

The fact that Melania Trump appeared to rip off Michelle Obama’s speech is downplayed by Israel Hayom‘s Boaz Bismuth, and his story is pushed out of the limelight as much as possible, down to Page 5. He assures his readers that despite the fact that it was all over the news in the US and Israel, you can’t trust the lame-stream media on this one.

Bismuth calls Mrs. Trump “the great hero of the first day of the Republican Convention, for good and bad,” and rather than explain her almost word-for-word duplication of a passage from the first lady’s 2008 speech, he leads by telling how she offered insight into Trump’s personal and family side. He reports that Trump was outraged that the media chose to focus on the outcry over Melania’s speech instead of the addresses by his other supporters at the convention.

It’s a good thing Israel Hayom didn’t fall into that trap.

The media’s exposure of the apparent plagiarism “may strengthen the impression that the elites are fighting Trump. The people, according to reactions, don’t accept the narrative the media tried to paint — that it’s a major scandal. There may be proof, but it’s not something of great importance,” he says.

It’s Melania’s photo that graces the front page of Haaretz, which is far more straightforward in its headline, “Melania Trump copied Michelle Obama’s speech.” Unlike Israel Hayom, Haaretz calls the speech and its aftermath “a media catastrophe.” Yedioth Ahronoth simply says “She stole the show” in its headline and its reporter calls it a “fiasco,” but the paper finds the issue less pressing than domestic matters.

Chemi Shalev, the paper’s reporter at the Republican National Convention, kicks off the article by pointing out a baldfaced lie by Trump in a Fox interview — he claimed that he chose Cleveland as the venue for the GOP powwow even though it was picked long before he threw his hat in the ring — just before his wife took the stage in Cleveland. “But that’s not what roiled America yesterday,” Haaretz reports, “rather the plagiarism of his wife, or more correctly her speechwriters, who apparently lifted a sentence or two from a speech delivered by Michelle Obama in 2008 — when she was, like Trump is today, the potential first lady to be.”

While the Trump issue focuses on the American media, Education Minister Naftali Bennett snipes at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the freedom of the press in Israel.

Haaretz reports that Bennett let loose on Netanyahu for a series of measures, foremost the decision to put off establishing a new public broadcasting corporation for a year and a half, saying “a series of laws to limit the media raises deep concerns about the future of free expression. A free press is the basis for democracy.”

The decision to delay establishing the new public broadcasting corporation was the result of a deal stuck by Netanyahu and the head of the Histadrut labor union to preserve jobs at great cost to the state.

Pushing off the foundation of the new body will cost the state NIS 400 million ($100 million), the paper cites government ministries saying, and quotes a senior official involved with setting up the new corporation saying that the delay until 2018 “is a joke.”

Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon is quoted in Yedioth Ahronoth saying he wasn’t aware of the deal struck behind his back, while the Finance Ministry was working on securing the funding for the new broadcaster, which was set to go live in October. He adds that he won’t allocate the funding for the decision.

Readers of Israel’s most-read daily, Israel Hayom, might find criticism of Netanyahu’s move on Page 15 — if they break out their magnifying lenses and bother reading a tiny block of text overshadowed by its article quoting the head of the Histadrut labor union defending the decision.

Instead of leading with the Trumps, Israel Hayom gives a heads-up on “The moment of truth for Katsav,” the former president found guilty of rape who goes before a parole board on Wednesday. The paper’s Dan Margalit argues in his column that while there are arguments for keeping him in jail and for letting him free, “releasing him under these conditions will cause additional damage to the rule of law as it will be interpreted by most of the public as preferential treatment.” He suggests that, like Jewish Underground extremists imprisoned by the state who had to express contrition before being considered for parole, a similar measure be considered for the former president.

Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat is the focus of Yedioth Ahronoth’s outrage as he tells the paper that “I won’t attend the [Jerusalem] pride parade. It’s damaging to the religious community.” Thursday’s event marks the anniversary of the murder of Shira Banki at last year’s event when the march was attacked by a religious extremist.

“I won’t march, because I won’t want to be part of an attack on the ultra-Orthodox community and on the religious nationalist community,” he tells the paper. “The LGBT community receives services from the Jerusalem municipality to their satisfaction. Of course it’s their right to march. The Jerusalem municipality, myself and the police will do what we can to ensure they fulfill their right, but they need to know that this harms others. Tolerance isn’t just to let others march, it’s also to find the way to achieve your demands without harming the beliefs of others or feelings of others. Jerusalem has a large community that has a really hard time with the parade.”