Cast away

Israel’s got a fever and the Hebrew media has a prescription for what ails them. No, not more cowbell. Elections! All four major Hebrew-language dailies lead off with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s announcement Tuesday night that Israelis will once again be heading to the polls early to pick new leaders, who will be nothing like the current crop in the Knesset. Where’s Shaul Mofaz to come and save us now?

Of course, in the spirit of true Israeli democracy, anybody who’s ever had an opinion about anything ever is given space on today’s front pages to exegete talmudically on what the call for early elections means.

In Maariv, Ben Caspit and Mazal Mualem go toe to toe on whether the impetus was the economy or the threat of the return of Ehud Olmert. Caspit argues that Netanyahu wants the nation to vote before Olmert or Tzipi Livni or Gabi Ashkenazi can get some wind behind their backs, seeing as they’re the only ones who can possibly challenge Netanyahu for the premiership. Mualem also writes that Netanyahu is calling it early in a political maneuver to buy himself time and says his biggest challenge will be fending off the center left, which will have the upper hand if the conversation is focused on the economy: “Those that vote for [center left] are supposed to bring attention to the social protest of summer 2011 that got hundreds of thousands out of their homes to mega rallies and that for a moment shook the prime minister’s office. The protest disappeared from the streets but its wind is still blowing. It is in a big way the wind at the back that will push up [Labor Party head] Shelly Yachimovich.” The paper also tries to parse the biggest questions surrounding the elections, including when it will be (probably January), and whether or where Livni, Aryeh Deri, Olmert, Ashkenazi and Ehud Barak will run.

Aluf Benn in Haaretz goes through the laundry list of everything Netanyahu has done or not done over the last 3 years and then laments the fact that Israel can probably expect another round of the prime minister’s ineffective management of the country: “Netanyahu succeeded in removing the masses from the squares and boulevards, but he did not give them new hope or a solution to their plight. Fortunately for the prime minister, none of his potential rivals has a vision any more compelling or sweeping than his own. Under these conditions, Netanyahu sought early elections before matters got any worse, and before a heavyweight rival could find his or her way onto the political scene.”

Yedioth Ahronoth’s Sima Kadmon goes against the grain and says Netanyahu is anything but a shoe-in to be prime minister a third time, despite what the polls may say. Surprises, after all, have a habit of surprising. “Whoever thinks they know the results already should think again. Waiting for us are heaps of surprises, from candidates still preparing to announce their candidacy to different and strange coalitions.”

But Israel Hayom’s Matti Tochfeld says you don’t need to comb through goat intestines to see where the elections are headed and where the battle lines will be drawn. “It’s clear where everyone will push. Likud, Kadima, Independence and [Avigdor] Liberman [he doesn’t get a party?] will bring up political diplomatic matters. Labor, Lapid [his party does have a name] and Shas on economics – the 2013 elections are already underway.” Sounds like a plan. However it’s likely we still won’t get a free pass from all the blither-blather and kerfuffles sure to dominate the news over the next three months.

Droning on

In the meantime, there is other news afoot, like the revelation in Yedioth that the F-16 tasked with shooting down a drone that flew over Israel on Saturday actually missed on its first try. The unmanned plane eventually lost the dogfight (to much Israeli chest puffery), but news of the miss, plus the fact that the plane made it nearly the breadth of the country before being downed, means that the operation may not have been the unabashed success officials have been crowing about.

Visitors to Israel, especially ones who like taking pictures of stacks of fresh produce, know the country is chock full of authentically oriental open air markets . Unfortunately, according to Maariv, nobody is shopping in them anymore, instead choosing the Shufersals and Rami Levis of the country for their groceries. “Who comes anymore? Old people, new immigrants and foreign workers with pennies,” a worker in Petah Tikva’s shuk told the paper. Indeed, according to government numbers, only 4.8 percent of the population does all their grocery shopping at the open air market, though you would never know it from the crush of people in Jerusalem’s and Tel Aviv’s shuks.

Cheesed off

Israelis may prefer closed markets, but Hezi Strernlicht argues in Israel Hayom’s op-ed page that the time has come to open the dairy market to imports as a way of bringing down prices, Tnuva and Strauss be damned. “In countries where the simple concept of ‘competition’ works, it serves first and foremost the general public. What we need here is … less protectionism.”

Haaretz’s Amalia Rosenblum compares her colleagues at Maariv to contestants on a game show, with 400 winners allowed to keep their jobs and the rest being voted off the island, if you will. “Job insecurity is one of the greatest conceptual changes that we citizens are experiencing in the past decade. Few of us can allow ourselves to depend on our workplace as a central component of our identity. The need to hold on to that workplace sometimes demands guile, perseverance, self-sacrifice and moral compromise. But even if we employ all of these there’s no guarantee that we will hang on.”