Back in the frying pan

It’s been a few weeks since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his family have really come in for a beating from the press, with killings, mother nature, and other scandals taking precedence.

But the woes that have hounded Netanyahu and his wife over the last several months are back with a vengeance Wednesday morning, both on the domestic and international fronts, in two of Israel’s major dailies.

Yedioth Ahronoth leads off with an expose laying bare the attorney general’s suspicions against Sara Netanyahu, which until now had only been known in broad strokes.

The paper puts the most damning passages from the attorney general’s suspicion sheet on its front page. Among them are “aggravated acquisition through fraudulent means, fraud, and acting willfully and methodically in the Prime Minister’s Residence,” relating to a scam she is suspected of running with the family’s so-called moneyman to have private chefs come to the house and cook for them on the taxpayer’s dime.

The paper notes that the suspicion sheet is not the same as a charge sheet but is rather a document sent to a suspect to let them know what they may be charged with, and could change after she has a hearing with Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, scheduled for sometime in the next two months.

The story details the list of times she is suspected of having private chefs come to the house to cook meals for her and friends, with the several-thousand shekel bill (for all of 6 people) charged to the taxpayer, despite the fact that the residence already had cooks in its employ paid for out of the state’s coffers.

“To make it so the [Prime Minister’s] Office would cover the expenses of the chefs, even though they had a cook and against regulations, Mr. [Ezra] Saidoff and Ms. Netanyahu acted together to create a false impression by which the residence did not employ cooks. That, even though they knew it was not so and in order to defraud the relevant parties,” the paper quotes from the document.

And lest one think Sara Netanyahu was just a rube, the paper includes a section in the sheet that makes clear she was (allegedly) more of a Lady Macbeth.

“The home was run by her rules and under her watch,” the paper quotes from the document. “Ms. Netanyahu hired and fired the workers. Workers needed to get her permission to take time off.”

Things aren’t much better for Netanyahu in Haaretz, though in this case it’s not his wife scamming the state, but his best friend apparently talking smack behind his back. The broadsheet’s lead story reports that US President Donald Trump told the UN secretary general that Netanyahu is more bad! than Abbas when it comes to trying to push the peace process forward.

“Trump said both leaders are problematic,” the paper quotes from a Western diplomat who was informed on what happened in the meeting last month between the president and Antonio Guterres. “But the general context was that from the two of them, Netanyahu is the bigger problem.”

At least Netanyahu is safe when it comes to Israel Hayom, considered practically his personal media arm, with the paper continuing to focus on the Las Vegas shooting rampage. The paper’s coverage is all translated from sister publication the Las Vegas Review-Journal, with a focus on the “mystery of the mass killer,” according to its front page headline.

As a day earlier, there is little to no focus on American gun culture or calls for gun control (unlike Haaretz, which calls the US “the land of unlimited guns” on its front page to accompany its coverage).

There is a focus on prying guns away when it comes to the Hamas terror group though, which Israel Hayom columnist Yaakov Amidror says will be the test of a Palestinian reconciliation effort.

“If Hamas continues to hold its military abilities, with the Palestinian Authority unable to impose the terms of the agreement and disarm it, it will be clear that the agreement is just a facade, an unconvincing show of unity without any real value, an umbrella for Palestinian terror,” he writes. “We can praise the Palestinians for an internal achievement if it really stops bloodshed, either Palestinian or Israeli. At the same time, we need to be clear that if the deal is just a screen of foggy words behind which Hamas will only be strengthened, Israel cannot allow it to go forward. One cannot allow, for the sake of internal Palestinian calm, the bolstering of a group that does not hesitate to vow its intent to fight Israel, and with all due respect to [PA President Mahmoud] Abbas’s standing, his interests cannot muddy Israel’s interests and prevent them from advancing.”

In Haaretz, though, Amira Hass says that the deal, even if it is flawed, is still in Israel’s interest, given the worsening humanitarian situation in the Strip.

“Despite its denials, Israel bears primary responsibility for Gaza’s disastrous situation. But right now, that doesn’t matter. Right now, it’s necessary to rise above the usual clichés about ‘funding terror’ and Abbas ‘linking up with a murderous terrorist organization,’ as Education Minister Naftali Bennett said Tuesday. Right now, it’s necessary to act,” she writes. “ This isn’t just a Palestinian interest. Israel, too, has an interest in Gaza’s sewage being treated rather than flowing into the sea, in Gaza’s aquifer not collapsing and in its residents getting suitable medical care. Israel, too, has an interest in preventing epidemics in Gaza.”

With all this seriousness and bad stuff, it’s nice to know that there’s also room in the papers for some clowning around, even if it is scary clowns terrorizing Israel’s cities. Yedioth devotes a full page to the spooky clown epidemic, calling it a “bad joke.”

“What started as a game between kids has turned into a phenomenon that local authorities, the Education Ministry and even the police are having to deal with,” the paper reports. “Youths dressed up as clowns, ambushing passersby in order to scare them, sometimes when they are armed.”