Airing dirty laundry: 9 things to know for June 25

1. The laconic police statement on a car found torched in Afula doesn’t mention the name Menny Naftali, but the identity of the car’s owner speaks to suspicions of something possibly very rotten in Israel.

• Naftali, a former caretaker who sued Sara Netanyahu for abuse, has been a leader of a protest movement against her husband the prime minister. The burning of his car being connected to that would be concerning enough.
• What’s unmentioned in most media reports — which are about as terse as the police report — is the fact that Naftali is a potential witness in the case against Sara Netanyahu in which she was recently charged. As reported in March, Naftali testified to police about the case.
• Police are only saying they suspect “attempted arson” (what does one need to do for it to be actual arson?), but circumstantial evidence would point to somebody trying to send a message to Naftali, and it could perhaps even be seen as witness tampering.
• Activist Eldad Yaniv, who is Naftali’s partner in leading protests against Benjamin Netanyahu, writes on Twitter: “This will end in murder.”

2. Naftali, though, is only the tippy tip of an iceberg that seems to go deeper and deeper, with new revelations emerging in the press every day of the Netanyahus’ attempts to get the state to pay for everything, much of it based on recordings and testimony from former aide Nir Hefetz.

• On Sunday night, Hadashot news reported on tapes from 2010 in which Hefetz and legal counsel Shlomit Barnea Farago spoke of Sara Netanyahu’s habit of bringing suitcases filled with dirty clothes to be dry-cleaned at hotels abroad at the state’s expense, and discussed how to bring the spending in line with acceptable standards so the prime minister would not get in trouble.
• “We have to protect the prime minister so he doesn’t get mixed up in these things, and we also have to protect ourselves. Tomorrow they’ll come and ask how we approved all these things,” Barnea Farago is quoted saying.

3. The report also included Barnea Farago bragging that she was able to fudge answers to Yedioth reporter Itamar Eichner about the Netanyahus’ spending.

• Responding, Eichner writes in Yedioth that it was the public she actually misled and it’s nothing to be proud of, and anyway, he managed to publish all sorts of stories about the Netanyahus’ shady spending habits.
• “To lie to a journalist, to mislead me, to trick me — that’s seen in the eyes of the boys as a win. Unfortunately, this culture of lies has spread in the Netanyahu era to other bodies like ministries and security agencies,” he writes.
• Haaretz’s Chemi Shalev also tackles Netanyahu’s lack of regard for the media, along with US President Donald Trump’s similar fight against the press, taking an anthropological approach a la Yale Professor Amy Chua.
• “The media is portrayed as the spearhead of the rival tribe that seeks to deprive the so-called ‘downtrodden’ supporters of the leaders of their recent gains, to enslave them and impose their reviled values on them. It’s a two-headed onslaught that aims to discredit both the messengers and their tidings,” he explains.

4. The press also takes note of the apparent “prophesy” from Hefetz that the spending at the Netanyahus’ private residence in Caesarea would end up being investigated by anti-fraud police.

• In Maariv, reporter Ben Caspit writes that much of the stuff Hefetz talks about in the tapes he reported on in real time “But I didn’t know what it was. When you deal with things one by one, you don’t realize what you have.”
• Now “Caesarea has gotten to the anti-fraud police, together with more trains full of gifts, favors and benefits, cigars, champagne, newspapers, news websites, jewelry, cremes, shirts, ties etc etc. A massive industry of gifts, spanning the globe, a whole system built on getting as much money and favors as possible from the state coffers and pockets of industrialists, in as little time as possible,” he writes.

5. Yedioth quotes Barnea Farago explaining after the report Sunday that she was “between a rock and a hard place,” but saw no sense in trying to get Netanyahu to bring his wife in line with legal norms.

• “What should I have told him? Your wife is making unreasonable demands, demands that are against standard procedure? What would he have answered me? I knew he didn’t want to hear a word about his wife. Whoever went to him and reported on his wife had their heads chopped off,” she’s quoted saying.

6. “The results were written in advance” is the Israel Hayom tabloid’s headline on the Turkish election, after Recep Tayyip Erdogan won by a healthy margin despite analysts predicting a serious challenge.

• “The sultan is staying. … Erdogan is now in total unchallengeable control of his country,” the paper writes.
• Haaretz’s Zvi Bar’el also writes that with the win, Erdogan is paving the way to autocratic rule.
• “One can expect not only celebrations initiated by the ruling party and the president, who will seek to prove the power and quality of Turkish democracy, but also a new round of persecuting political rivals and settling scores. Erdogan, for whom tolerance and patience were never strong points, will now begin to build the new Turkish Republic in his own image,” he writes.

7. As for what it means for Israel, Yedioth’s Smadar Peri predicts that Erdogan won’t let up on Israel anytime soon, after Turkey booted a top diplomat even though Israel allowed his Turkish counterpart to remain in Tel Aviv, but he may soften a bit.

• “It won’t be a warm embrace like a decade ago, when the Turkish envoy to Israel bragged that he ‘had specifically requested to serve here,’ and there won’t be high level visits from the military. That’s over. But certainly a day will come when you start to see little sparkles of restored ties, and we will recognize what once brought us together. Turkey was always important to Israel, and vice versa.”

8. Israel Hayom reports that all the Arab leaders US officials Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt met with agreed to go along with the US peace plan “with or without” PA President Mahmoud Abbas.

• The paper also reports that an interview Kushner gave to a Palestinian paper calling on the street to reject their leaders’ rejectionism and accept the plan was done with the blessing of Jordan and Egypt.
• An Egyptian official is quoted telling the paper that Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar and Egypt all told the Americans that “Arab states will not take part in anything that harms the quality of life for Palestinians because of the mistaken strategies of Abbas and his people, and Kushner and Greenblatt made clear that the Palestinians have a right to a independent state of their own with its capital as East Jerusalem.”
• Those last four words may come as a bit of a surprise, seeing as Trump has previously said he was taking Jerusalem off the table by recognizing it as Israel’s capital, and could be a sign of some ways to go until the plan is fully fleshed out.

9. Kushner and Greenblatt left on Sunday, but arriving Monday is UK’s Prince William, with excitement high for the first ever royal visit in both Israel and the PA.

• Palestinian official Hanan Ashrawi tells the Associated Press that Ramallah is excited to give William a chance to see life under Israeli occupation: “”This visit is the first of its kind and represents an opportunity to enhance relations between Prince William and the Palestinian people on all the levels,” she’s quoted saying.
• Yedioth meanwhile, has a handy-dandy guide on how to treat a royal for any Israelis who might happen upon the prince. MK Oren Hazan will be sad to learn that aside from not being able to shake his hand unless he extends his first, or hug him, he also cannot take a selfie with him.
• Assuming that Hazan will go for it anyway, the paper predicts that he won’t be thrown in the Tower for the faux pas.

  

• “The British understand that in Israel there’s no such thing as ‘unacceptable.’ Prince William at the end of the day is a young guy at 36, and it’s certainly possible he’ll be open to the behavior of those even younger.”
• Hazan, though, is eight months older than William. Maybe they can watch soccer together.

Prince William couldn't watch the @England match live and avoided finding out the score all afternoon. He sat down with the Crown Prince of Jordan to watch a rerun after dinner at the Beit Al Urdun Palace.

Congratulations @England! pic.twitter.com/aAPxd8NS64

— The Prince and Princess of Wales (@KensingtonRoyal) June 24, 2018