Every bronze medal has a touch of gray
Even as papers fete the returning Olympic ‘champs,’ coverage is suffused with reminders, subtle and less so, of the smallness and ethereality of it all
Joshua Davidovich is The Times of Israel's Deputy Editor
Like the gift that keeps on giving, the return of Israel’s bronze medal-winning athletes and attendant airport celebrations gives Israel’s tabloids a chance to keep the country’s Olympic almost-glory in the spotlight Monday morning, aided by the lack of any other major news to gum up the works.
Despite not doing better than third place (no small feat, but still) judokas Yarden Gerbi and Or Sasson are feted as “Our champions” in Israel Hayom, while Yedioth Ahronoth crows on the front page that the two “return as winners.”
“They returned as heroes: Yarden Gerbi and Ori Sasson, Israel’s freshest medal-winners, landed last night at Ben-Gurion International Airport and were greeted with a rare reception reserved only for the greatest athletes,” Israel Hayom reports.
Yet beneath the bombast, there is a sense of pettiness and recognition of the ethereality of the wins.
Israel Hayom notes that the celebrations were reminiscent of pandemonium at the airport as Israel’s first two medal winners, Oren Smadja and Yael Arad, arrived in the country in 1992, albeit with one difference: “This time the main request was for selfies.”
Yedioth Ahronoth offers more details, though it describes a scene, like Israel itself, more modest than one might expect, including families greeting the medal winners “with bourekas, croissants and sweet drinks.”
Sasson’s description of the flight back from Rio is equally pedestrian. “It was happy. We slept, slept and slept. The rest of the time the other passengers feted us, took pictures. It was an interesting flight.”
Doing his best to rain on what parade there was, the paper’s Eitan Haber bitterly predicts little celebration in the future for the two after they leave the arrivals hall of joy.
“In a day or two, you’ll be standing in line for a bus, and you won’t get any discount at the clothing store near your home,” he writes. “Don’t be mistaken: You did something real, you brought home medals, were on the front pages, the whole country danced to your tune, was glued to the television, saw you win and be crowned as heroes. Yes, we love heroes. But we love you mostly when you are being victorious. And in a day or two, you’ll go back to the routine of your tough workouts, your hard days, your dreams to make it to Tokyo. And us? In another four years the State of Israel will do its best to embitter you, and at the same time hang all our hopes that you can’t possibly fulfill on you.”
Haaretz, which doesn’t cover the celebrations anywhere in its main section, shows that there’s no reason to wait four years, or even two days, to start in on the judo team, with correspondent Nehemia Shtrasler slinging arrows of indignation at men’s coach Smadja for hogging the credit and refusing to let Sasson speak at a press conference Saturday.
“If there was an Olympics for ego and lack of self-awareness, Smadja would win the gold hands down,” he writes, employing the oldest cliche in the book. “He only spoke about himself. He told of how he started the team from nothing. Before him there was nothing, no Yael Arad and no Arik Zeevi. Who are they, even? Just me, me and me.”
Razing hell
Even without Haber and Shtrasler, the papers are filled with reminders of just how Hobbesian and mean a place Israel can be, including coverage of the never-ending battle with Palestinian terror, this time taking the form of the destruction of part of the home of the Hebron-area teen who knifed a 13-year-old girl to death in her Kiryat Arba bedroom.
Yedioth reports on the measure under the headline “The response to terror,” and gives a rare peek into the thinking of the soldiers charged with carrying out the controversial demolitions.
“At the end of the day it’s very exciting to me to be the end of the line, the operational daggerpoint that carries out the destruction of the homes,” a commander from the unit is quoted telling the paper. “In every briefing from a division or brigade commander we understand the rationale of our actions. We are driven by our values and by our intention to prevent collateral damage, with an emphasis on civilians, so it’s important to emphasize to soldiers that we aren’t destroying homes for nothing or as revenge. We are destroying homes under the decision of the political leadership and with the understanding that it will prevent future attacks.”
Yet despite the demolition, and the army’s claims of its effectiveness, Israel Hayom reports that the family of slain teen Hallel Ariel feels it’s not enough.
“We need to deport the families of terrorists and to create a situation in which terror doesn’t pay,” Rina Ariel is quoted saying. “Every house like this should go automatically to Jewish ownership.
“A ridiculous situation has been created in which the families of terrorists aren’t deported, and they’re not destroying the entire homes, and the areas where it’s possibly [for Jews] to settle are not being settled. These things are giving a tailwind to terror.”
Bennett’s millions
One person likely on Ariel’s side is Minister Naftali Bennett, though Haaretz’s lead story reports that he’s busy elsewhere, pumping tens of millions of dollars into a program aimed at strengthening links to Israel and Judaism among Jews on US college campuses.
While the headline reports that the aim of the program is to bring them closer to being religious, the Diaspora Affairs Ministry denies that, despite the fact that two of the three groups getting the funds, Chabad and Olami (Hillel being the third), do Orthodox outreach.
Yet the most interesting criticism comes not from Jewish groups left out but from the Foreign Ministry, which the paper reports was caught completely off guard by the program, learning of it only through the paper.
“A Foreign Ministry official said that no one in the Diaspora Affairs Ministry had discussed the plan or its content with the Foreign Ministry, nor did anyone consult with the ministry’s Diaspora division regarding which organizations would be receiving funds and for what types of activities.”
“Foreign Ministry officials added that the whole thing was strange because the consulates in North America are intensively involved with the activities of Jewish organizations on campus, and are in regular contact with these three groups, as are the Israeli embassies in most of the world’s countries,” the paper reports. “The Foreign Ministry officials added that from their close ties with the Hillel organization, they didn’t think Hillel needed such large sums of money, nor was it clear why it was decided to give money to Chabad or Olami, the latter of which these sources, who deal with the Diaspora, had never heard of.”
