A poor man’s government

The tension between Israel’s capitalistic inclinations and more socially minded tendencies is apparent in Tuesday’s Hebrew papers, as the state regulator threatens to break up the gas monopoly, while politicians decry the staggering poverty rates and fault government policy.

A chilling murder-suicide in central Israel also dominates headlines.

Both Israel Hayom and Haaretz lead with a recommendation (implemented on Tuesday morning) of the Antitrust Authority to the courts to wrence exclusive ownership of the offshore Leviathan gas fields from the Delek and Nobel Energy companies.

Israel Hayom seems to be gung-ho about the move, headlining its story “The public is more important than Tshuva,” in reference to Delek gas tycoon Yitzhak Tshuva. But it says the move is far from final. The matter is complicated further by the assessment that breaking up the monopoly would have Delek and Nobel Energy bring the matter to court and tie up the development of the gas fields for years until it is resolved legally. Furthermore, Israel has already signed agreements with Jordan and Egypt, and any delays in supplying the gas may upend those deals, it reports.

So the pundits at Israel Hayom have reservations. Dan Margalit asserts that “monopolies are always bad” and Israel has been “traumatized” by previous monopolies. Nonetheless, he says Israel’s decision to reverse its arrangement unilaterally is troubling.

“What foreign source will want to invest in a country that backtracks on an agreement that was revised, and came apart, and was sealed twice? If the state made a mistake and fixed it – but not sufficiently – let it deal with the result and punish those who made the mistake by firing them. Respecting agreements is a basic condition for the social, economic, and political stability,” he writes.

Meanwhile, on a separate economic front, former president Shimon Peres lashes out at the current leadership following a new poverty report released on Monday which states that one in three children is living in poverty. Peres said the report is “a serious indictment,” and, without addressing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu directly, said, “You can’t feed children and old people with statements to the press,” according to Yedioth Ahronoth.

A statement from Likud retorted that the Latet NGO’s report was “inflated” and that a National Insurance Institute report, released a few days earlier, which showed a decrease in poverty rates, is a more accurate evaluation. The Likud statement accused left-wing leaders and Peres of attempting to use the inaccurate statistics to steal away right-wing voters, in order to “make the concessions and withdrawals that Shimon Peres has dreamed about all these years.”

Over in Haaretz, the paper quotes Settlers’ Council head Danny Dayan, a candidate in the upcoming Jewish Home party primaries, leveling fierce criticism at Peres. “This is a man whose budget for his 90th birthday party, which was celebrated for an entire year, could have fed tens of thousands. Peres is not the man to teach us what social justice is,” he said.

Labor party leader Isaac Herzog swiftly came to Peres’s defense, saying the former president “lives and breathes the good of the country since it was founded. Loudly, clearly and in a Zionist fashion, he voiced the feelings of most of the concerned Israeli citizens.”

Former finance minister Yair Lapid, also responding to the poverty report, said Netanyahu had poured cash into remote settlements rather than feed the poor.

Alongside the political sparring on poverty, Yedioth features a report on Israel’s (7,000) overworked social workers, tasked with assisting the (450,000) poor families. “Most of the poor families that we are supposed to help, we simply don’t manage to reach,” one says.

A gruesome murder-suicide in Rishon Lezion also grips the Hebrew papers, after a husband stabs his wife repeatedly, runs away, and hangs himself at a nearby park.

Yedioth reports that “in this story there were no red flags: no police complaints, and no reports to the welfare authorities. This is a story of a family that seemingly lived peacefully, with a mother who faithfully raised her five children.”

When the murder took place, two of the couple’s five children were home: a 16-year-old girl and a 3-year-old boy. The daughter stepped into the room when she heard her mother screaming and witnessed her being murdered. The toddler, meanwhile, fled the house.

“We heard screaming and then there was a knock on the door,” a neighbor, Eitan, told the paper. “We opened it and saw a small boy crying. We asked him what was wrong, but he didn’t answer. He just cried.”

Yedioth quotes relatives who said the couple had briefly separated but recently agreed that the father should move back home. The Mitiko family immigrated from Ethiopia in 2004, it reports, and their eldest son, 20, was injured in the summer Gaza conflict.

Contradicting the Yedioth report, Haaretz writes that the couple had sought help with a nearby welfare center up until two years ago, but not for domestic violence.

The paper reports that 102 women were killed by their husbands between 2004 and 2012, and that over 20% of the victims were Ethiopian women, despite the Ethiopian community representing only 1.5% of the overall population.