Courting criticism
The state and a bereaved mother find few backers in the press after a testy exchange in the High Court
Joshua Davidovich is The Times of Israel's Deputy Editor
The press turns on the government, and on itself, Friday morning, as tales of stabbings, shootings and other terror give way to coverage of a court battle over destroying terrorists’ houses that turned into a sharp back and forth between a judge and grieving mother.
Israel Hayom leads off with what it calls “the cry of the bereaved mothers,” pegged to an impassioned plea against the High Court by the mother of terror victim Danny Gonen, who is angry at the judges who put an injunction on the destruction of the homes of Gonen’s alleged killer.
“I sit here and hear that the families of the terrorists are destitute. And we aren’t? You’ve turned the victims into the defendants,” Devora Gonen is quoted as saying, before Court President Miriam Naor is recorded angrily cutting her off.
“Even for a bereaved mother there are limits. The missus will not use the right that was given her to throw around accusations,” Naor is quoted saying.
Ganon might have the state behind her, but some commentators in the press, even those normally in the government’s court, are decidedly not.
Somewhat strangely for the paper that is a perennial backer of the Netanyahu-led government, Israel Hayom commentator Dan Margalit comes out on the side of the judges for giving the state a hard time about requesting home demolitions and then not carrying them out.
“The High Court judges were correct to request from the state prosecutor information on the demolition crews, who stand like an immovable boulder. Why request new permits to raze homes when the old ones are still valid? Will the okay to tear down the homes they are requesting provoke more terror in the West Bank? In the balance of wins and losses, is the state assured that the pluses are greater than the minuses? When the state prosecutor requests a permit to tear down more houses of terrorists, will these homes still be standing? As in cases before, what was will be,” he writes.
Similarly, Yedioth Ahronoth’s Ben Dror Yemini says all the opprobrium heaped on the High Court judges over the issue is unjustified, and Naor’s outburst was the inevitable outcome.
“High Court judges are sometimes criticized rightly over their activism. But with everything related to the demolition of terrorists’ homes they have kept cool and balanced. Long days they have spent staying silent in the face of outrageous criticism, until yesterday Naor let loose with a bit of anger. Righteousness is on her side,” he writes.
If you can’t beat ‘em, go around them, as the old saying goes, at least in the Netanyahu camp, which is planning on establishing a special “terror court” to get its way, according to Haaretz.
The paper reports that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu brought up the idea at a recent Knesset hearing, but has refused to provide details, both to the press and to lawmakers, though those in the know have their ideas.
“MKs who were present at the meeting surmise that Netanyahu is interested in a court that would deal with issues such as the demolition of terrorists’ houses, administrative detentions, and the revocation of residence and citizenship from people suspected of terrorism. It could also deal with the wider issue of terrorism and its financing,” the paper reports.
The fact that the government needs to set up in own special courts when it can’t get its way via normal procedures likely comes as no surprise to Yedioth Ahronoth columnist Nahum Barnea, who says the only thing that surprised him about the rainstorm and flooding that walloped central Israel over the last few days was Israelis’ surprise, given the government’s bumbling response to just about everything.
“We know that the regime can’t provide national or personal security, and is not able to funnel tax dollars we pay into public services. Yet still, we react with shock when the power goes out, or when the drainage system floods. This is the limit, Israelis say, this is the limit,” he writes.
While Yedioth is busy lashing out at the government, rival tabloid Israel Hayom takes a shot at Yedioth with the help of Sara Netanyahu, who told a court on Thursday that disgruntled caretaker Menny Naftali was being paid by a secret cabal who wanted to see the Netanyahus go down, surmising that he couldn’t possibly bribe other workers to testify against the couple on his own.
While Mrs. Netanyahu doesn’t mention the name of Yedioth publisher Arnon Mozes, Israel Hayom is only to eager to make the connection, reporting that she hinted it was him.
“It’s forbidden to say his name. What’s important is the pattern of butchery against me by a man who gives me a bad image. He’s my big butcher,” Sara is quoted telling the court, before the paper goes into a frustrating transcript of a back and forth in which she is asked repeatedly if the man is Mozes and she coyly refuses to divulge, acting as if he is Voldemort.
Mozes isn’t the only media mogul under the gun in Friday’s press. Haaretz’s lead story is an exposé claiming that news site Walla has taken a pro-Netanyahu stance in recent years in exchange for political favors for Shaul Elovitz, who controls Bezeq, which owns the news site.
As an example of the ostensible pro-Netanyahu stance the site has taken, the paper reports that editors were forced to insert a picture of Sara Netanyahu into a story about her husband and two former prime ministers attending a movie premier about an Israeli commando raid on a hijacked Sabena plane in 1972.
Reporter Gidi Weitz surmises that a reader flipping through the story “could be fooled into thinking that Mrs. Netanyahu was one of the unit’s soldiers, who were disguised as mechanics and rescued the hostages.”
“This wasn’t the first time, and it seems not the last, that we were forced to push pictures on stories favorable toward Sara Netanya, and the orders clearly come from upstairs, without any journalistic justification or benefit to the public,” he quotes a person from deep inside the site saying. “Nobody is able to stop the PR campaign.”
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