Crash and burn

The fate of the Kurds in Kobani hangs in the balance and the Israeli press stands by and watches along with the international community. But a deadly car crash in southern Israel makes front page news in the tabloids, drawing attention from the possible massacre unfolding in northern Syria.

A head-on collision between two vehicles on the highway near the southern town of Arad killed a husband, 40, and 4-year-old daughter and seriously injured his wife, 45, and 6-year-old daughter. The driver of the second vehicle was also seriously injured in the crash. Both front ends of the cars were completely crumpled.

The car carrying the family was heading uphill from the Dead Sea when an oncoming vehicle, attempting to pass a bus on the two-lane road, collided with them head-on. Yedioth Ahronoth calls the move “such an unnecessary” attempt to pass another vehicle that ended in tragedy for a family. Israel Hayom calls it “a disaster returning from vacation,” as the incident took place Saturday afternoon, the tail end of a long holiday weekend.

The three injured in the crash were airlifted to Beersheba’s Soroka Medical Center, about 45 kilometers (27 miles) away as the whirlybird flies.

“We managed to arrive quickly because we were on our way to another accident in the area, and another team joined us from Arad,” firefighter Aharon Avisror tells Yedioth Ahronoth. The hospital drama only increased when doctors discovered that the driver of the solo vehicle was married to one of the doctors at Soroka Hospital, the tabloid reports.

Israel Hayom reports that parts of the vehicle and belongings of passengers of the cars were scattered on the road, which is considered “one of the most dangerous in the country because of the fact that it has steep declines and many twists and turns.”

The car crash gets a few paragraphs on Page 8 in Haaretz, alongside a study that found that the lack of shepherds in Israel makes fighting wildfires more difficult. It instead focuses its editorial energies on larger issues, such as Ebola, the Islamic State and Malala Yousufzai’s winning of the Nobel Peace Prize.

But what makes the top billing in Haaretz is the jihadists’ unencumbered advance on the Kurdish city of Kobani, on the border between Syria and Turkey. Drawing its coverage from The New York Times, the Associated Press and Reuters, the paper reports that Turkey refuses to open the border to allow much-needed arms to reach the Kurdish fighters and let noncombatants flee the besieged city. It quotes a UN official saying that if Kobani falls to the Islamic State it will result in the mass slaughter of thousands, comparing its fate to that of the village of Srebrenica, where thousands of Bosniaks were slaughtered during the Balkans war.

Israel Hayom headlines the story “On the cusp of a massacre,” showing an Turkish tank on the outskirts of the city watching the smoke rise. It reports that despite American and coalition airstrikes on IS targets near Kobani over the weekend, the jihadist group has moved reinforcements near the city, which is expected to fall in the coming days.

To combine the worst of both worlds, the paper also quotes “terrorism experts” saying that the Islamic State may carry out suicide attacks in Western cities in order to spread Ebola. The paper cites a report in Forbes from last week quoting Naval War College Professor Al Shimkus saying that Ebola could be harnessed as a bio-weapon.

All three papers jump on the report that an Israeli Arab from a Galilean village who joined the Islamic State was reported killed fighting in Iraq. Ahmed Habashi, 24, from Iksal, left Israel several months ago, without telling his family where he went, in order to join the ranks of the jihadist group. On Saturday the Habashi family received word that Ahmed was killed in combat near the Iraqi city of Ramadi.

“There were no warning signs that he thought about a step like this; we don’t know if he went through Turkey or another country,” Habashi’s brother Hussein tells Haaretz.

“A few months ago he traveled to Syria,” Yedioth Ahronoth quotes the father saying. “The first week we didn’t know where he was, and only after a week did he call and tell us he was there. After a short while he called again and told us he was in Iraq, but we didn’t know who he’d joined there.”

“I’m personally against such acts,” Muhammad, the father, is quoted saying. “I told him that if he doesn’t return I’ll be mad at him and he won’t be my son. I call on young people not to do such things and to attend to their futures. Acts like this don’t help in life.”