Ambiguous no more, sorta: 9 things to know for January 14

1. No more victorious secrets: A day after outgoing IDF chief Gadi Eisenkot revealed the scope of Israel’s air campaign against Iran in Syria, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took the revelations a step further Sunday, saying publicly that Israel had been responsible for an airstrike on an Iranian storehouse at the Damascus airport over the weekend.

• For years Israel has maintained a sort of strategic ambiguity regarding its activities against Iran and Hezbollah in Syria, which it justified by saying that it gave those who had been attacked room for plausible deniability without being pressured into attacking Israel.
• Whatever one thought of the argument, it’s now either apparently no longer relevant, was always just an excuse for the heavy-handed military censor to keep a tight lid on what information is released, or those real security concerns are now being trumped by jockeying for credit between Eisenkot and Netanyahu.
• “It might indeed be time for Israel to stop pretending about the attacks in Syria. But the backdrop – the end of Eisenkot’s tenure, and more importantly, the beginning of a tumultuous election campaign – raises doubts whether the considerations behind the new approach are purely germane,” Haaretz’s Amos Harel writes.

Politics are now playing a role in this narrative. It was better left unsaid, IMHO. https://t.co/d6gEKd1qgr

— Jonathan Schanzer (@JSchanzer) January 13, 2019

2. Confidence or callousness: Yedioth Ahronoth notes that a number of ministers criticized Netanyahu for breaking the rules, calling it “unneeded and dangerous chatter born of electoral considerations.” According to the paper, cabinet members fear it could lead to an escalation of tensions or violence with Iran, Syria and Russia.

• Pro-Netanyahu Israel Hayom pushes back, quoting senior Israel officials who say the information was released “to send a clear message to the Iranians that Israel is determined to halt weapons smuggling via Syria and is serious in it’s words.”
• The paper also cites sources close to Netanyahu saying he would never endanger the country’s security, so that settles that.
• The New York Times notes that the policy shift “may stem from the paucity of responses so far, both to the strikes in Syria and to the dismantling of tunnels from Lebanon.”

3. Goodbye hootenanny: The apparent change in policy comes as the Israeli military brings in Aviv Kochavi as the new army chief, replacing Eisenkot, who was given a fond sendoff Sunday night.

• How fond? The cover of Yedioth Ahronoth has a large picture of Eisenkot kissing a baby, and the paper’s top news is a gushing roundup of his goodbye party, complete with musical guest Shlomo Artzi.
• The Walla news site features a photo gallery of Eisenkot jet-skiing, playing basketball, taking selfies and planning wars.
• “Don’t discount the possibility that as part of this farewell festival Eisenkot will now enter the Big Brother VIP house,” reporter Barak Ravid jokes on Twitter.

4. Kochavi’s challenge: Being IDF chief won’t be all jet-skis and bourekas parties for Aviv Kochavi.

• “Like for his predecessors, Hezbollah will also be Kochavi’s main headache and the main military threat against Israel,” Yoav Limor writes in Israel Hayom. “On the agenda: their guided-missile project and attempts to thwart other ’surprises’ being planned for Israel in the next war.”
• Makor Rishon’s Ariel Ziegler writes that Kochavi will have to deal with issues regarding troop safety during training, which was raised to the fore with the death of a soldier during an exercise last week.
• “A too-long list of training accidents occurred during Eisenkot’s tenure, and the last of them last week shows that the army still has a long way to go on safety issues,” Ziegler writes.

5. That’ll teach him to speak: Benny Gantz, another former chief of staff, has barely opened his mouth, but he said enough to make some headlines Monday morning, promising to “fix” the nation-state law.

• “7 words were enough: The right is fuming at Gantz, and the left is also not happy,” reads a headline in the Walla news site.
• In fact, though, the right is quite happy, now having something on which to base its claims that the shadowy Gantz is a leftist.
• “The comments, as well as the enlisting of Alon Schuster to his party last week, testify as to what direction his party will go,” reads a story on the Israel National News website.
• The story attacks Schuster, a former regional council head near the Gaza border, for having said in the past he would give land to Hamas for peace. Last week Schuster told The Times of Israel that he had not joined Gantz’s Israel Resilience party, but the rumor apparently still persists.

6. If American politics is three-dimensional chess, then Israel’s is three-dimensional guess-who: Haaretz reports that Gantz is considering a union with Orly Levy-Abukasis, another chimeric politician, though Yesh Atid head Yair Lapid is trying to court Gantz even as he moves left and toward Tzipi Livni and her Hatnua faction.

• “Over the past two weeks, the Yesh Atid chairman has concluded he needs to increase his strength within the center-left bloc, after his failure over the past three years to gain ground by expressing right-wing opinions,” the paper reports.
• Yedioth reports that in Likud, Netanyahu is jockeying to try and get his most faithful allies higher spots on the list, while pushing otherwise popular lawmakers who may have their own opinions out. That means Amir Ohana and David Amsalem may find themselves high on the list while Gideon Sa’ar will face an uphill battle, with activists trying to convince Likud Central Committee members to “block” him.
• “On the Sa’ar issue, Netanyahu is trying to distance himself from the whole thing, but the trail is clear,” a Likud source is quoted saying.

7. Election pitfalls abound: At the same time, Israeli election officials say they are getting ready to run a national vote that will be interference-free, but there are several questions about what the country is doing to thwart fake news and other influence campaigns, and if it will be ready for the election.

• In an in-depth expose, ToI’s Sue Surkes finds that the personal data of many Israelis has been leaked, laws are outdated, opaque and unenforced, and opportunities for misuse of information are rampant.
• The key to success for politicians prepared to play dirty is to exploit and deepen existing divisions in society and empower one group at the expense of another, according to Noam Rotem, an activist who has exposed bot networks working to subvert democracy in the past.
• Key to this is Facebook, which can take down content it deems problematic or fake while choosing to leave other content up, without having to answer to anyone.
• And one person involved in that policy is Facebook Israel’s head of policy and communications, Jordana Cutler. A former adviser and close aide to Netanyahu and Israel’s US Ambassador Ron Dermer, Cutler was a member of the Likud party’s campaign team for the 2009 national elections before she joined the Prime Minister’s Office in 2009.
• Repeated requests by The Times of Israel since October to interview Cutler have been turned down.
• A statement received from Facebook last week says simply: “We are working on different tools which will help us to protect the integrity of the elections and we’ll provide an update on the details in an organized fashion.”

8. Tulsi and Sheldon: America is also gearing up for its presidential elections in 2020.

• When Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, a Democrat of Hawaii, entered the race over the weekend, much of the coverage focused on her friendliness toward Syria’s Bashar Assad, her homophobia and her opposition to selling Israel’s arms.
• In Haaretz, Amir Tibon notes that it’s even more complicated than that (if that can be possible): “during her six years in Congress Gabbard has developed some surprising relationships with right-wing supporters of Israel who are affiliated with the Republican Party.”
• Among those Gabbard has made nice to are: Christians United for Israel, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach and Sheldon Adelson.

9. Rock of ages: There may be nothing new under the sun, but scientists say they have found a new type of mineral in Israel’s Carmel mountain range that may soon find itself on your fiancee’s finger.

• The stone, called carmeltazite, is a mix of titanium, aluminum and zirconium with a chemical composition previously only found in outer space, the company says. The result is a dreamily milky mix of dark and light blues.

Shefa Yamim (LSE: SEFA), is pleased to announce that carmeltazite, a mineral found in one of its gemstones, the Carmel Sapphire™, has been recognised and approved as a new mineral by the International Mineralogical Association ("IMA") https://t.co/rbv9GBoKY5

— Shefa in Israel (@shefagems) January 7, 2019

• Though discovered in 2014, it was only confirmed as a unique mineral last week.
• The Shefa Yamim mining company plans on marketing the rock as “Carmel Sapphire” but with the size of deposits unclear, according to geologist David Bressan writes in Forbes, “carmeltazite gemstones could possibly become more expensive than diamonds.”