Bar none, police beat hajj for front page

What’s more important than 800 or more people being trampled to death in a stampede in Mecca? Bar Refaeli’s wedding! The tabloids care far more about the 30-year-old supermodel’s second marriage and new regulations aimed at curbing Palestinian stone throwers than the horrific deaths of Muslim worshippers on the hajj.

Only Haaretz devotes a front page story to the tragedy in Mecca in which over 700 were trampled to death (albeit its main photo and a snippet from its main coverage on Page 10). Israel Hayom and Yedioth Ahronoth give far larger modules to Refaeli’s wedding. (Yedioth Ahronoth also employs a tasteless pun on the Hebrew name for the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, the Festival of the Sacrifice, in reporting on the hajj slaughter.)

But the story preoccupying Yedioth Ahronoth in Friday’s paper is the never-ending search for a new police chief. After Gal Hirsch was dropped as the top candidate amid allegations of misconduct, Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan has turned to senior IDF officers ranked major general and up and senior Shin Bet officials, the paper reports. He is said set to make his new nomination in the coming days. Erdan tells the paper that despite the failure in appointing Hirsch, “I haven’t changed my mind, that the situation in which the police finds itself today needs a commissioner from without.”

At the same time, the paper reports, Hirsch’s woes are not yet over. Even though his nomination for commissioner has been dropped, the police still want to investigate his company, Defensive Shield, for alleged impropriety in receiving a tender for clearing mines in Rishon Lezion.

Haaretz calls Hirsch’s failed appointment “a major defeat” for Erdan and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “The nomination was problematic from the start and Hirsch’s confirmation got hopelessly tripped up due to the press of time.”

Hirsch’s failure, the paper points out, is the latest in a long line of rejected nominations pushed by Netanyahu in his near decade as premier. “Netanyahu and Erdan should have had these and other precedents in mind when choosing a candidate as police commissioner, but they gave short shrift to proper procedure.”

“It can only be hoped that they will draw the appropriate lessons when it comes to the next nomination for police commissioner and the upcoming ones for Israel Prison Service commissioner and the heads of the Shin Bet security service and Mossad.”

For Israel Hayom, however, the security cabinet’s approval of a series of measures to increase punishments for convicted stone throwers gets top placement. Among the steps are more liberal live-fire regulations, minimum sentencing and fines for rock throwers, and sanctions for convicted minors’ families. A senior official says that the change in the live-fire regulations is significant and “includes permitting police to shoot if they see a person throw a Molotov cocktail or throw a stone at a vehicle and endanger a life,” the paper reports.

Simultaneously, Yedioth Ahronoth reports that Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon approved a NIS 10,000 bump in salary per year for cops on the beat in Jerusalem because of the rise in violence. The move, the paper says, was aimed at thanking police in Jerusalem for their difficult service in the past year and to make serving in the demanding district more attractive.

Without too much surprise, the two pundits who weigh in on the measures in Israel Hayom only heap praise upon the government’s decision to level greater punishment on stone throwers.

Haim Shain writes that “since the beginning of Jewish settlement of the Land of Israel there has been an ongoing struggle with stones. Between the stones of construction and creation of Jew and between the stones of destruction and ruin of the Arabs.” He says it’s “unbelievable that in the heart of the historic homeland, the lives of Jews would be threatened on roads” and praises the government crackdown.

“Those who understand force will find that the people of Israel have much more force,” he says.

Likewise, Dan Margalit says that aggressive punishment “is necessary, [and] without them Israel can’t contend with Palestinian terror.” He, however, has some reservations, and says Israel’s “understandable and justified urge” to crack down may get it into trouble with the International Court of Justice. “The direction is worthy of support, the execution is still premature.”