‘Clicking our tongues from the bleachers’

All eyes are on Lausanne, Switzerland, where talks between Iran and the P5+1 continue. But with news of the negotiations constantly being updated, some of Monday’s newspapers are better sources of information than others.

“If there’s anyone in Jerusalem who still wishes the talks will blow up, that person is living in an illusion. There will be an agreement,” Alex Fishman writes in Yedioth Ahronoth.

But not all of Yedioth’s coverage is that poignant. In their infographic on what was agreed to on Sunday — and what is on the day’s agenda — Yedioth includes “Transferring uranium: Some of the enriched uranium in Iran’s hands will be transferred to Russia as a deposit.”

But Iran’s chief negotiator Abbas Araqchi insists, “There is no question of sending the stocks abroad.”

Without knowing Yedioth’s exact printing schedule, it’s hard to tell if this error was the result of a change in Iran’s stance or a mistake from the outset.

The rest of the coverage is more on point, and Yedioth even features the story of a journalist who spent two weeks in Iran itself to get a feel for the facts on the ground.

Unlike Yedioth, Haaretz forgoes committing to print the exact details of the negotiations, and runs “The gaps in the agreement have yet to be closed, the sides expect negotiations up to the last moment.”

Barak Ravid reports from Lausanne that everything from uranium-enrichment levels to the length of time the agreement will be in effect are still being discussed.

Israel Hayom is decidedly less noncommittal in its reporting on the negotiations.

“Iran lies — and what’s more, will receive a prize,” the paper quotes Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon as saying.

If that headline wasn’t proof enough of the Israel Hayom editorial board’s opposition to the Iran deal, Boaz Bismuth and Haim Shine drive the point home.

“Incomprehensible policy, bordering on delirium,” Shine writes of the US negotiations.

The current administration’s policy reminds me of the US stance on Germany in the early 1930s, Shine writes, overlooking the clear threat to the Jewish people as mere talk.

“In the history of the United States, they will tell of the first black president who was a great hope, almost messianic, who left behind him a tired nation, broken and weakened, that did not know how to differentiate between good and bad, truth and lie,” Shine says.

Bismuth calls the agreement “a glorious step in the march to folly.”

The terrible thing is that the “world is expected to return Iran to the family of nations,” he writes, “to remove the hard-won sanctions and to allow Iran to preserve nuclear capabilities that are dangerous and (if their aims are indeed innocent) unnecessary, only because the world does not really care about the outcomes and the consequences.”

But to calm Israelis, both Yedioth Ahronoth and Israel Hayom publish some beautiful new photographs of Israel’s recently acquired submarine, the INS Tanin. These pictures, in close proximity to their reports on the Iranian nuclear threat, are a not-so-subtle reminder to readers that even if the deal is bad, the Israel Defense Forces is good.

Student protests, Nellie Bly wannabes and ‘virtual rape’

Haaretz reminds its readers that, although the world may be rocketing toward a bad deal with Iran and Israel’s role is only “clicking its tongue and reprimanding from the bleachers” — as its commentator Amos Harel puts it — life carries on.

The National Council of Students will be protesting outside the Teacher’s Association building in Tel Aviv throughout the holiday of Passover, the newspaper reports.

Some 15 schools have stopped offering the annual trips normally offered by high schools around the country, a decision the students find unfair.

The pupils, therefore, will man a tent throughout the week-long holiday, and they even plan on holding a march on Wednesday to express their frustration.

Israel Hayom reports that the Tel Aviv District Court has included digital harassment in its sex crimes — calling it “digital rape” — although no one from the court calls it that in the article.

This change, the free daily newspaper says, will update the law to match a constantly changing reality where predators use the Internet to prey on children.

Yedioth Ahronoth, meanwhile, sent three of its writers deep undercover to expose the unknown world of… Passover preparations.

Akiva Novick — sporting an oversized yarmulke — writes about his experience baking unleavened matzot for the holiday. And Meir Turgeman learns that life isn’t so easy for a baggage handler at Ben Gurion Airport.

And Eitan Glickman serves up olives and cheese to shoppers buying Kosher-for-Passover food. “When I was a kid,” he writes, “there were two kinds of olives, green and black; and two kinds of cheese, white and yellow.”

Glickman quickly learns, allegorically, that the world has become more complicated since then.