A hero of I need more time: 6 things to know for December 20

1. The miscarriage: Questions are swirling around Israel’s relationship with Russia following a Moscow court’s decision to reject the appeal of Israeli-American backpacker Naama Issachar and her drug-smuggling conviction.

• The news of the rejection is met with anger, disappointment and hopes for a diplomatic resolution.
• Much of the news coverage is colored with a healthy distrust of the Russian justice system.
• “Farce,” reads a headline on Israel Hayom’s front page.
• “Justice was not served,” Yedioth Ahronoth writes, adding that the “appeal was rejected out of hand.”
• Channel 12 news makes a point that the judges came back with a decision after only 25 minutes of deliberation, following a 7-hour hearing, which their reporter indicates does not smell right.
• Walla News’s Dana Yarkechy contends that it was only 10 minutes, says the judges and prosecutor were sleepy and uninterested and calls the whole show “the theater of the absurd.”
• “Three judges entered the room, two women and a man who didn’t say a word during the whole hearing or even show any expression. The two women didn’t pay attention to the claims brought up, unless required to,” she writes.

2. The idiot? Serious questions are being asked about whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu actually hurt matters by declaring publicly that he was going to get Issachar out. His spokesman later tried to walk back the comment by saying he would need more time but the damage was seemingly done.

• Channel 13 reporter Barak Ravid notes that by promising publicly to bring back Issachar, Netanyahu “did much damage: On the one hand, he raised expectations among Issachar’s family, and on the other he raised the price that Putin knows he can ask.”
• “Ahead of the hearing, Netanyahu’s sentence created insane expectations among the family and friends of Naama Issachar,” writes Yedioth’s Amichai Eteli. “They were sure he had told them that Naama was going home. … He is toying stupidly with people’s emotions.”
• Haaretz’s Noa Landau notes that Netanyahu has often looked to play up his relationship with Putin, even though Putin has repeatedly made it clear that he does not see Netanyahu as an equal.
• This case, she writes, is just the latest, after several other incidents, like Netanyahu recently being made to wait around a Sochi hotel for hours for Putin to show up.
• “This insistence on creating a false image, according to which Netanyahu’s supposedly good relationship with Putin will save the tangled situation, is irresponsible to say the least, and counterproductive at worst,” she charges.

3. Unhappy families: The sense of betrayal on the part of Issachar’s family and friends after Netanyahu didn’t get her out is palpable following the verdict.

• In a video widely shared by news outlets, Naama’s mother Yaffa Issachar is seen outside the courtroom speaking to Netanyahu over the phone and pushing back at what appears to be him asking her to be patient. “What do you mean time? Give me hope,” she’s heard saying.
• Haaretz notes that the family is demanding that Israel ban Putin from visiting next month unless Issachar is released.
• “Naama does not need to carry all the interests and disagreements between Israel and Russia on her shoulders,” the family is quoted as saying. “We ask the prime minister, fulfill your commitments. Don’t permit a situation in which Putin lands in Israel for a state ceremony without Naama coming home.”
• Yaffa Issachar tells Kan that she came to support her daughter, but it was her daughter who ended up having to support her: “She was very beautiful, during the whole hearing, she kept her composure and serenity. She knew exactly what was going to happen, and when she told me that during one of the breaks I got mad at her and told her she was leaving today. Unfortunately, she was right.”

4. What is to be done: Channel 12 news reports that Israeli officials were also not surprised by the decision and goes through the various options now for getting Issachar released, with the wheels already turning on some.

• This includes raising money to keep appealing, with her friends launching a WhatsApp campaign asking for donations, and possibly going to the international human rights court in Strasbourg, in order to raise the profile of the case and put pressure on Moscow.
• But the news channel reports also that Israeli diplomats think any hopes of a legal solution are pretty much done for and are preparing to put maximum pressure on Putin ahead of his trip to Israel, seeing it as a “window of opportunity.”
• Kan reports that Israelis are hoping that just before or during Putin’s January 23 visit, there will be an announcement on the case, though they are far from certain it will happen.
• Channel 13 news reports that Israeli diplomats already handed a case file over to their Russian counterparts with a dossier on reasons she should be released and personal pleas for pardons from Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin. They asked that it be handed to Putin.
• Ynet reports that another option being explored is offering to have Issachar serve out the rest of her term in an Israeli prison, though it says this is “a last case scenario, after all other options have been exhausted.”

5. Russian dressing down: In a sign that the government may now see the case as a liability, Israel Hayom offers only a bit of coverage on Page 11, as if trying to lower expectations and turn public attention away from the potentially embarrassing failure.

• In an interview with Maariv, Russian Ambassador Anatoly Viktorov rebukes Israeli officials for their “haughty tone.”
• “The way in which the issue is being portrayed in Israeli media, plus the intervention of senior officials in such a haughty and boastful tone, is utterly objectionable,” he says.
• Former Israeli ambassador to Russia Zvi Magen tells Army Radio that Issachar’s plight is just one small part of a larger and more complicated relationship: “Personal relationships between leaders .. are nice, but what determines things are interests. The center of the tiff between Moscow and Jerusalem is Iran, seemingly regarding their place in Syria.”

6. Popular fronting: Journalists are taking a harder look at the arrest of some 50 PFLP members announced as part of a wide crackdown following a deadly bombing at a West Bank spring in August.

• Among those arrested was Khalida Jarrar, a Palestinian lawmaker. Earlier in the week Israeli news sites played up her arrest and accusations that she had planned terror attacks.
• However, Walla news’s Maya Horodniceanu tweets that the Shin Bet had described her as responsible for all of the PFLP’s activities, but “the actual indictment includes only a charge of membership in an illegal organization, with no direct connection to terror.”
• Haaretz’s Amos Harel notes that Jarrar has been arrested several times and held in administrative detention in recent years, but the Shin Bet’s decision to describe her as the group’s leader indicates its hoping to put her away for good on actual charges that it’s hoping will materialize.
• “The Shin Bet’s statement doesn’t say what exactly Jarrar may have known about members’ terrorist activities and how she may have been involved in decisions about attacks. It seems we need to wait for the evidence, if it is presented in court, before reaching any clear conclusions. More than once we have seen a not-insignificant gap between the announcement issued to the press and the details that later appear in the indictment,” he writes.
• Walla’s Amir Buhbut doesn’t mention Jarrar in his account of the IDF’s attempt to bust the ring responsible for the bombing, including interrogating them with extraordinary methods, aka torture, all while keeping the crackdown secret.
• “Members of the organization, most of whom had already been questioned in the past, showed a large tolerance in the interrogations,” he writes. “The long detentions didn’t bother them … when some of the information became clear, they artfully cross checked it, which took patience and much psychological warfare, to get into the minds of the terrorists.”