A villa divided against itself

That divide Americans are feeling as their country zooms to one of the most insane elections ever, that divide that seems like there are two Americas having two parallel conversations and never the twain shall meet, is also present in the so-called 51st state, Israel. As Bill Clinton would say, we feel your pain.

That divide, part of which is directly related to goings-on in the US and part of which is local, is on display in Israel’s print press Sunday morning. Stories in the three major dailies highlight widely divergent views on both the presidential elections (mostly thanks to Israel Hayom’s refusal to give up stumping for Donald Trump) and on Israel’s relationship with the UN and international community (as well as its own civil society) on West Bank settlements.

As a paper, or more precisely, a tabloid, Israel Hayom has never been one for subtlety, unabashedly supporting whomever owner Sheldon Adelson supports, political and popular winds be damned. Many times that has meant parroting talking points of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, even as he took fire from all sides.

On Sunday, continuing a trend on display for the last several months since Adelson made peace with a Trump nomination, that largess of positive (or at least not negative) press is bequeathed to the GOP nominee, showing the paper is sticking by its man even as the rest of his campaign seemingly falls apart amid a flurry of sexual assault accusations.

Thus, while Yedioth Ahronoth’s front page has a headline “Already making excuses,” with correspondent Orly Azulay reporting from a Trump rally that his campaign is toast (“In a big voice he says he’s happy to see 7,000 people who came out to see him. The cops alongside him chuckle. ‘There’s maybe a thousand here,’ one says”) and that he is claiming the vote is rigged, Israel Hayom’s front page is emblazoned with the news that Qatar’s “terror-supporting” royals donated $1 million to Hillary Clinton.

The paper’s headlines also plays up Trump’s claim that Clinton is using steroids. (Yedioth calls the claim “a gimmick” and goes so far as to use the jokey headline “Uncle Sam,” a play on words on sam, Hebrew for “drugs.”)

Headlines aside, though, the paper’s coverage focuses mostly on Trump denying the claims of women who say he sexually assaulted them, though instead of reporting on the fact that he said they aren’t attractive enough to rape (which, you know, could the make an already monstrous figure look even more monstrous) it leads with Trumps claim that the allegations are part of a plot by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim to wage a media campaign against him.

If that weren’t the pot calling the kettle “billionaire meddler” enough, Israel Hayom commentator Boaz Bismuth, the guy who works for a media organization that is bald-facedly boosting for Trump at the behest of its billionaire owner, has the audacity to accuse the American media of hypocrisy, reprising an accusation he usually reserves for the Israeli media vis-à-vis Netanyahu.

“Twenty-two days before the election, and only Trump’s troubles interest the media. The Wikileaks revelations on Clinton don’t make the headlines. Nu, so what’s with Hillary’s two positions, one public and one private, regarding banks, regarding wealth, regarding borders, regarding energy? Nu, so what? The nation may choose, but the media always picks first,” he writes.

It’s not true, though, that Clinton doesn’t make headlines. In fact, on Haaretz’s front page, right there above the fold, is a report emanating from those Wikileaks emails that Clinton told her advisers that a for-show-only “Potemkin process is better than nothing,” regarding Israel and the Palestinians.

It’s Potemkin processes at the UN regarding Israel, though, that have more of the media’s attention, exposing another divide between the papers and within Israeli society. After Israeli left-wing NGO B’tselem testified at the hated UN Security Council against settlements, both Israel Hayom and Yedioth are focused on anger at the treachery of the organization, while Haaretz instead plays up on what the group, and the UN body, actually said.

“UN Security Council to Israel: End settlement building,” reads the main headline in the left-leaning broadsheet, though the most interesting thing in the report on the non-binding meeting is what B’tselem head Hagai El-Ad and Americans for Peace Now head Lara Friedman said there.
“El-Ad accused Israel of using the peace process to buy time to take over West Bank territories through settlement construction. He said it is the Security Council’s moral imperative to send a message to Israel that ‘it can’t occupy another people for 50 years and call itself a democracy.’ He further asserted that words have no effect on Israel, calling on the Council to take action to end the occupation,” the paper reports.

In Yedioth, commentator Ben-Dror Yemini claims he is no fan of the settlements, but still calls El-Ad’s appearance “much worse than a disgrace.”

“Working together with these dim bodies doesn’t advance peace, not a compromise and not a peace arrangement. The opposite. Appearing before a forum like the UN boosts the evil anti-Israel winds there. There’s no Palestinian civil society group who will explain, for example, that the refusal of the Palestinians to any serious peace idea entrenches the conflict,” he writes. “But we have the B’Tselem representative, who appears there to give a shot in the arm to the unenlightened majority.”

While Yemini accuses the group of supporting Israel haters like Iran, Sudan and Saudi Arabia, in Israel Hayom (whose news report focuses almost solely on Netanyahu’s unrighteous fury and denunciation of B’Tselem), commentator Dror Eydar charges that El-Ad is actively supporting terror.

“Despite its lying propaganda, [B’Tselem] enjoys the tolerance of Israeli democracy, who allow them to numb the world with their libeling in the name of a distorted morality. El-Ad’s half-truths divorced from their historical and geopolitical contexts will help diplomatic terror against us, which will eventually turn into real terror, and so any measure against them is justified,” he writes.

Israel’s own official response to the UN session, which the country boycotted, tied it to the recent decision by UNESCO that ignored the Jewish connection to its holiest spots in Jerusalem, a measure that drew no small amount of Israeli anger and indignation.

In Haaretz, Barak Ravid, putting on his analyst hat, bemoans the fact that both Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas are fighting over the religious significance of holy sites and selling the chances of a more peaceful future down the river in the name of ancient history.

“If in the past, historical and religious narratives remained behind the scenes or played only a marginal role in the conflict, in the Netanyahu-Abbas era, both leaders have deliberately moved these explosive issues to center stage. Instead of talking about borders, security and practical solutions to issues like Jerusalem and the refugees, Netanyahu and Abbas argue over things that happened 3,000 years ago, over national narratives and religious beliefs,” he writes. “Ever since 2009, and especially over the last two years, both the Israeli and the Palestinian leadership have been talking in a way that leads to a religious war.”