Darkness on the edge of town

The public outrage at the prolonged power outage that plagued large parts of the country following what felt like a minor hurricane is still on the mind of Israel’s leading newspapers, who point an accusatory finger at Israel Electrical Corporation workers for apparently deciding to take their time fixing the problem, in deliberate protest of recent budget cuts.

“Hundreds of thousands remained in the dark,” reads Israel Hayom’s dramatic headline alongside a photo of a helpless Herzliya family sitting in a dim, murky room, with several burning candles lighting the space. The daily quotes company officials who accuse employees of engaging in an “Italian strike,” a mischievous tactic in which workers only do the bare minimum amount of labor that is ordinarily expected from them.

Baruch Ron, a contributor to Israel Hayom, offers an almost absurdly theatrical account of his experiences during the raging storm and subsequent blackouts in his central Israeli city of Kfar Saba. “The text you are currently reading was written with a pen and paper. Like in the past,” Ron somberly states. “No one knows when this nightmare will end,” he continues, apparently unaware of the fact that in some countries, even highly developed ones, such power shortages are a common occurrence during the winter months. “Outside, a total blackness, the street lights don’t work either. Kfar Saba is dark. Only the barking of dogs and the unceasing sirens of the rescue vehicles break the silence. A feeling of judgment day. And total helplessness.”

Leading with the headline “The electrical default,” Yedioth Ahronoth is even more critical of the Israel Electrical Corporation, saying it did not properly prepare for the difficult weather aside its workers’ lack of willingness to deal with the problem. “As a result, 200,000 homes remained in darkness,” the paper declares with more than a hint of disapproval. In the same fashion of Ron beforehand, Sima Kadmon, Yedioth’s typically no-nonsense political analyst, records her gloomy feelings over the weather as well. “I’m writing these lines from my dark car, near a dark home, in my dark neighborhood, which is in my dark city,” Kadmon writes. “This situation has been going on for over 10 hours. Yes, 10 hours in which the Electric Corporation could not return to us the thing that seems most elementary in the 21th century: The light.”

Haaretz is more reserved in its familiar, stick-to-the-news style, reporting on the weather and the hazards brought with it, but skipping the sob stories from troubled reporters. The paper’s main headline, however, stays away from the electric company and instead covers a politically charged topic concerning the possibility that the state may revoke residency permits for the populations of entire neighborhoods in East Jerusalem.

According to Haaretz, based on a Channel 2 report, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu already called a meeting to discuss the move, which if accepted will apply to villages and neighborhoods on the outside of the security fence that runs through the capital. Netanyahu apparently is considering the move in response to the recent spate of terrorist attacks in Jerusalem, many of which were carried out by Arab residents of the city’s eastern half. The implications of such a sweeping cancellation of residency permits are destined to be, no doubt, far reaching, yet the country’s two other leading papers only discuss the matter deep within their middle pages.

In Israel Hayom, a seemingly insignificant article about an offensive, yet probably harmless, image can shed a lot of insight on the ever-increasing rivalry between the daily, backed by billionaire media mogul and Netanyahu enthusiast Sheldon Adelson, and nemesis Yedioth Ahronoth, owned by the powerful Mozes family. Israel Hayom reports, almost gleefully, that an editor at the Ynet news site who, following Netanyahu’s remarks on a Palestinian mufti’s alleged role in instigating the Holocaust, published a satirical — albeit horribly tactless — photoshopped picture of the prime minister wearing a Nazi uniform was fired from his position at the site. The paper, of course, does not forget to stress that Ynet is the internet version of Yedioth, as Netanyahu himself pointed out in his own comments regarding the controversial image. Ynet, for its part, refused to reply to a request for comment by Israel Hayom’s reporter, yet did answer the questions it received from another news site, Walla.