As Clinton email case closes, Israeli papers don’t all cc it the same

It’s not the first time American politics, or any politics, have been compared to Rashomon, and it probably won’t be the last, but a singular event Tuesday — the FBI saying it was closing its investigation into Hillary Clinton while also accusing her and her staff of being“extremely careless” — gets three very different takes from Israel’s three very different main daily newspapers Wednesday.

The story makes the front page of both Israel Hayom and Yedioth Ahronoth, but the tabloids’ treatment of the story could have readers wondering if they are reading accounts of the same event.

Israel Hayom, which has slid further and further into the Donald Trump camp along with its benefactor Sheldon Adelson, makes sure to highlight FBI Director James Comey’s statement that Clinton and her aides were “extremely careless,” treating the fact that they won’t be bringing charges as almost a side point.

Stopping just short of calling Clinton the “most crooked ever” in a sheriff’s star, the paper itself could be accused of being careless in its translation, using the Hebrew word rashlanut, which is normally translated as the more severe “negligence,” in both its front page and page 2 headlines.

Actually, given Israel Hayom’s predilection for criticizing those it disagrees with and downplaying accusations against others (cough Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cough) it might be more appropriate to accuse the paper of negligence. The willful kind.

As if what Comey said was not enough, columnist Boaz Bismuth takes it one step further, putting words in the FBI head’s mouth that he didn’t utter in trying to make his point that Clinton didn’t really succeed in much of anything at all and giving Donald Trump a benefit of the doubt that he blatantly does not extend to Clinton.

“There are those who claim that Trump isn’t fit to be president of the US, and now suddenly comes the head of the FBI saying that Hillary is also not fit. It’s possibly that Trump has gone too far in some of his statements,” he writes of the man who has been dogged by accusations of anti-Semitism and racism, “but now we hear that Clinton is capable of being negligent in her work. In other words, if I were Hillary Clinton, I’m not sure I would breathe a sigh of relief and might even be worried.”

Yedioth’s coverage includes the same accusation of “extremely careless,” and even translates the words the same way as Israel Hayom, yet it’s not splashed across the front page or any headline and even downplayed as a simple “reprimand,” with the paper’s coverage instead playing up US President Barack Obama campaigning with her.

That’s not to say the paper’s treatment of the story wouldn’t look out of place in a pamphlet titled “I’m With Her.” Buried deep inside the news piece, the tabloid notes that Comey’s declaration could still hurt the candidate at the polls.

“The public sees the ability to judge situations as one of the most important tools for a president to have, since according to the law they are also commander of the military. Those who will decide this election are the independents, the undecideds and those who go back and forth.

“As they form their opinions closer to the election, they will remember right away that on top of her low trust rating, she also didn’t do a great job of keeping state secrets,” the paper’s Orly Azulay notes. “For Clinton, this wasn’t a light shot across the bow but a real earthquake, which raises serious obstacles on the way to the White House.”

For a complete 180 in coverage, one can turn to Haaretz, which aside from burying the story on page 10, also translates Comey’s statement as roughly “careless in a severe way,” and only mentions it as a side note to her being exonerated.

The broadsheet’s Washington correspondent Chemi Shalev takes note of the fact that investigations into high-level politicians are common in Israel, comparing Clinton’s get-out-jail-free card with a similar case involving Netanyahu 20 years ago, in which the prime minister got a verbal lashing but no indictment.

“In his dramatic press conference in Washington, Comey was following in the footsteps of a precedent first set by current Supreme Court justice and then-Israeli attorney general Elyakim Rubinstein, in the so-called Baron-Hebron affair in 1997. In a scathing ‘public report’ Rubinstein lambasted then and current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as others, for what amounted to a conspiracy to curry favor with Shas leader Aryeh Deri by appointing an attorney general who would allow him to escape a criminal conviction,” he writes. “The contents of Rubinstein’s report were indeed grave, prompting the police to recommend prosecution of Netanyahu and others, but it was his bottom line that mattered: Netanyahu was not indicted, the details of the affair were ultimately forgotten, and soon he will break David Ben Gurion’s record as Israel’s longest serving prime minister. Since then it’s become a pattern in supposedly open-and-shut cases involving Ariel Sharon, Avigdor Liberman and many others, who went on to bigger and greater things. If America is anything like Israel, Clinton should soon be out of the woods over the email affair as well.”

But even if Netanyahu is still going strong, that doesn’t mean he’s out of the woods. The paper’s lead story, posted by former editor in chief Dov Alfon from Paris, details a claim by accused French fraudster Arnaud Mimran that he gave Netanyahu $200,000 in 2009, for the first time linking that money to the prime minister’s election campaign and possibly landing Netanyahu in a whole tureen of hot soup du jour.

Though the story quotes Netanyahu’s office calling the claim malarkey, Alfon does his own sleuthing and finds some circumstantial evidence to support Mimran’s claim that he met Netanyahu a lot during the election campaign.

“A check of Mimran’s flights to and from Israel confirms his claim: According to lists provided to the investigators by the Israel Airports Authority and its counterpart at Le Bourget Airport in Paris, Mimran flew to Israel in his private plane on the morning of February 2, returned to France on the afternoon of February 5, flew back to Israel on the morning of February 10 and returned to France on the evening of February 12,” the story reads. “The election took place February 10.”

Despite the possible legal troubles, Netanyau looks cool as a cucumber on his trip to Africa, which continues to get front page treatment in Israel Hayom, where it features a picture of him waving a giant Israeli flag (alongside Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta waving a Kenyan one) accompanied by the Yakov Smirnoff-esque headline/quote “In Africa, Israel is thought of as a world power.”

There’s nothing cool and collected about Charlie Azaria, though, the father of a soldier accused of killing a wounded Palestinian assailant in March, with Yedioth headlining a piece on an angry and tearful outburst by him in court Wednesday, “The dad is shooting in all directions,” which is a pretty unfortunate pun considering the matter at hand.

Setting the scene, the paper calls the incident a “drama of an outburst of emotions,” and details Azaria’s claims of a set-up job, though it reports the family’s tears and accusations didn’t really win anyone over.

“Every once in a while the father would start crying and hug his soldier son, who sat next to him. The uncle of the soldier joined in the attack: ‘The army is responsible. The army gave him the gun and pointed it,’” the paper reports. “The prosecutor termed the words of the father incitement and informed the judge about the outburst. He backed him and said, ‘We condemn the incitement against the prosecution. This is a warning – next time people inciting here will be thrown out of the court house.’”