Death by steel and by fire

Two killings make top billing in the Israeli press on Wednesday; one a murder of a settler in the West Bank, the second a targeted killing of a Palestinian terror leader in the Gaza Strip.

Hammering home the human element, all of Israel’s major papers run a photo of the body of Evyatar Borowsky, the father of five stabbed to death by a Palestinian at a junction outside Nablus. One of his children hugs the prayer shawl-wrapped corpse. Yedioth Ahronoth tugs at the heartstrings with a headline “Dad, don’t go,” presumably uttered by the child.

Israel Hayom gives the headline “Murdered because he was a Jew” to the story about Borowsky’s death. It reports that the suspected murderer, a Palestinian man named Salam Zaral (or according to Maariv Salal Zaraal) approached the bus stop at Tapuah lunction and stabbed Borowsky multiple times with a knife, then took Borowsky’s sidearm and attempted to shoot soldiers at a nearby checkpoint. (Curiously, Makor Rishon, which owns Maariv, does not mention the Palestinian’s name in its reporting, and suffices to merely call him “the terrorist”. His full name is Salam As’ad Zaghal.)

The soldiers returned fire, severely injuring the terrorist, who was taken to a hospital in Petah Tikva under arrest.

Zaghal, a Fatah member, was released in the past year after serving three years in Israeli prison for throwing rocks. According to Maariv, Zaghal’s brother was recently arrested by Palestinian authorities for collaboration with Israel and sentenced to 10 years in prison (according to Israel Hayom, four years in prison with hard labor). The man was believed to be trying to “purify” his family’s reputation by killing an Israeli.

Makor Rishon elaborates on its headline, “The first time in a year and a half: An Israeli murdered in a stabbing attack in Shomron,” saying, “Despite settlers’ claims that a third intifada has begun in the area, there has been a drop in the number of terror incidents in recent weeks, and since September 2011, when Asher and Jonathan Palmer were killed by stones thrown at their car, no Israeli has been killed [in the West Bank].”

Makor Rishon captions a picture of Borowsky with the acronym HYD: God will avenge his blood. Maariv suffices with “of blessed memory.”

An outraged former Yesha Council spokeswoman Emily Amrusi writes in Israel Hayom: “A Jew was murdered yesterday. You need to read it again, this time shouting, A JEW WAS MURDERED!” The ever optimistic Amrusi says that the incident “happened exactly at the time that every radio station in Israel excitedly reported the new peace proposal [by the Arab League]. This is the face of peace: a clown doctor murdered at a bus stop. This was the face of peace in 1929, and this is how it shall be.”

The return of targeted killings

The second killing in Wednesday’s papers is the IDF strike on the Gaza Strip that took out the man Maariv calls “the Gaza Strip’s rocket expert.” According to the paper, Ziad Ibrahim Masshal was reportedly responsible for a recent rocket attack against Eilat and his cell “planned… to carry out additional attacks from Gaza and Sinai.”

“It was decided to carry out the assassination as part of the ‘preventive strike’ policy,” it writes. Although Israel agreed to cease targeted killings as part of the deal that ended Operation Pillar of Defense in November, “it insisted it could do so to prevent a chain of attacks.”

Israel Hayom notes that, according to Palestinian reports, a second man was seriously injured in the missile strike on Masshal’s motorcycle. It also quotes (of course) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying “I said we won’t let this pass quietly and this is an extension of our policy. We won’t accept a drizzle of fire from the Gaza Strip or Sinai. We will work to protect Israeli citizens and we are working [to do so].”

 2,000 called up; defense minister in the dark

Yedioth Ahronoth’s top story is that Northern Command on Tuesday called up approximately 2,000 reservists for a surprise drill to test military response time. It identifies the reason for the drill as “the background of the use of chemical weapons by Syrian President Bashar Assad “and the concern of fighting spilling over into the Golan Heights.”

“At first we thought it was a joke,” Yedioth quotes Yaron, 28, who was called up by the army. “They didn’t tell us until when and how much time we’d be staying.” It reports that even the senior officers who arrived earlier in the week were unaware of the circumstances of the call-up.

Haaretz reports that the fog of war surrounding the IDF call-up extended to the senior-most ranks: Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon was not notified of the drill “even though its timing was especially sensitive.”

Israel Hayom notes the defense minister being caught unawares in the final sentence of its report. Those around Ya’alon “emphasized on Tuesday that the minister doesn’t need to know about every military drill.”