A weekend of Bernie

After having a few days to digest Thursday’s Democratic presidential debate in New York, the Hebrew press on Sunday weighs in on Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton’s respective approaches to US foreign policy with Israel. Sanders’s criticism of Israel draws disappointment from the Hebrew media.

Nahum Barnea’s full-page op-ed on the Democratic presidential candidate contest in New York trumps the rest of the news in Yedioth Ahronoth, even though the debate he talks about is two days old and the primary isn’t for another few days. He says Hillary Clinton must beat Bernie Sanders by a wide margin if she hopes to get the candidacy. But for the first time, a Jewish candidate for president has opened the doors by “breaking a taboo” and speaking out against Israel in a presidential debate.

After rambling in his flowery way about the venue, the crowd, and the issues at stake, Barnea eventually returns to the issue he and his readership care most about: US-Israel relations. “To my surprise,” Barnea writes, “the two candidates storm at the issue with full fury.” Sanders stood by his earlier remarks that “Israel had the right to defend itself, but it was excessive in its response,” Barnea writes.

“Free Palestine,” someone shouted behind him as the crowd cheered, Barnea recounts. “I looked at the thousands of invitees. Part were sitting in their seats embarrassed. Sanders youths rose from their seats enthusiastically. As far as they were concerned this was one of the peak moments of the debate, a moment of freedom from the old assumptions, the fetters of the status quo. Among them were blacks and whites, Jews and non-Jews.”

Barnea concedes both candidates spoke falsehoods in their time, but clearly his disdain is for Sanders and the future of the Democratic Party, which he says is anti-Israel. “The Middle East interests Sanders like last year’s snow,” he says, but Sanders’s chances of winning the election are slim to none. Clinton may dislike Netanyahu, but she’ll put her disdain for him aside if she is elected to the White House, he contends.

Haaretz, for its part, highlights Sanders’s comment in the debate with Clinton that “we are going to have to say that Netanyahu is not right all of the time” and says that his policy vis-a-vis Israel has turned him into the “child who cried that the emperor has no clothes.” His remarks about Israel were “like thunder on a clear day,” but not unprecedented, the paper notes.

Israel Hayom, seeking to avoid the issue as much as possible, buries its coverage of the debate on Page 11 beneath a report on Netanyahu’s upcoming trip to Moscow to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin. It says Sanders’s approach was “relatively critical of Israel,” whereas Clinton “came to Israel’s defense.” Surprisingly, none of its pundits weigh in.

Italy called on Israel a month-and-a-half ago to reevaluate the appointment of Fiamma Nirenstein as Israel’s ambassador to Italy, Haaretz reports. Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi dispatched a “discreet” message to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asking him to pick someone else besides the former Italian MP who immigrated to Israel ahead of her appointment last August. The paper cites an anonymous source saying the opposition to Nirenstein’s appointment stems from dissatisfaction with her among the Jewish community, the Italian Foreign Ministry and the armed forces.

It notes that, in violation of diplomatic protocol, Nirenstein continued her journalistic activity in Italy while her appointment as ambassador to Rome was being confirmed.

Have no fear, Israel Hayom quotes an army general telling leaders from the Gaza periphery, “the IDF is always prepared and the residents can be calm.” That’s the paper’s message on Sunday following a false-alarm air raid siren over the weekend and the beating of war drums by Israeli and Hamas officials alike.

See? It’s not just the generals. Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Chairman Tzahi Hanegbi also says there’s nothing to worry about. “It’s clear to everyone that Hamas is rearming,” he told Channel 2 and is quoted in Israel Hayom’s report. “It’s not a secret that Hamas hasn’t changed its spots. It’s nonetheless deterred, but growing stronger.”

Perhaps intentionally, the paper quotes senior Hamas official Ismail Haniyeh saying that the organization will live “by the rifle and the tunnel” at the very end of its report.

Ordinarily stabbings make front page news in Israel, but the murder of a 17-year-old in Afula gets buried in the tabloids on account of a police gag order on details of the case. Yuval Osidon’s death Saturday morning was believed to be criminal, Yedioth Ahronoth reports, and a court gagged all details of the case from being published. But Israel Hayom says that it’s learned that police may have some promising leads to solving the “mystery.”

While the tabloids follow the human interest angle in the case — the teen was about to turn 18 and his father was planning a trip with him to Eilat, he studied at an Air Force preparatory high school — neither of them report, as Haaretz does, that the victim had a criminal record.