Execution plan
Israel doesn’t use the death penalty, but as lawmakers talk about instituting it, the press focuses on those accused of taking it into their own hands
Joshua Davidovich is The Times of Israel's Deputy Editor
For the first time in over two weeks, the top news in Israel is not about roiling tensions over the Temple Mount. After Friday prayers passed mostly peacefully, the print media moves on to issues of punishments and crimes — namely, house-arrested Hebron-shooting soldier Elor Azaria and Israel’s non-use of the death penalty, unless the criminal is an Arab running away who hasn’t been convicted.
All three major newspapers play up previews of a decision, expected in the early afternoon, on Azaria’s appeal of his 18-month jail sentence for shooting a wounded Palestinian assailant in March 2016, the “last word” in the highly charged case, according to a Yedioth Ahronoth headline.
Like a terrible version of “Rent,” the paper recounts that “493 days since he shot the terrorist lying on the road, 207 days after he was convicted of manslaughter and 159 days after he was sentenced to a year and a half in jail, Elor Azaria will today hear the verdict on his appeal.”
But Haaretz reports that there may be more counting ahead and the saga will likely not end with the ruling at around 1 p.m. Sunday.
“If the appeal is rejected, [Azaria’s] lawyer can appeal to the Supreme Court and delay again Azaria’s sentence,” the paper reports. “If they don’t appeal, Azaria can still turn to IDF chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot, though for that he will have to admit to his actions.”
Yedioth columnist Yossi Yehoshua writes of his hopes that Azaria will pick the latter option, allowing the IDF to put this all behind them.
“Under the reasonable assumption that he won’t win a judgment on his conviction, which would embarrass the army even more, and that the ruling will be on how many months he serves, the military needs to push as fast as possible for an end to the affair. It will need to return to the command structure, and not make mistakes along the way this time, like sending the brigade head to the family’s house, and announce that if they will ensure this is the last word, the IDF is willing to positively consider a pardon,” he writes.
The Israel Hayom tabloid also puts Azaria on its front page, but buries the actual story on way back on page 9, with its coverage carrying a heavy whiff of sympathy for the shooter. But as much as the right-wing paper might love Azaria — it’s its own bad self that really revs its engine, as shown by a lead-off package celebrating 10 years in print.
The paper adorns its pages two and three with pictures of its favorite front pages over the years and perhaps most interesting is the one face almost totally missing from the dozen or so front pages — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who used to count the paper as a veritable mouthpiece but is now apparently No. 1 on its blacklist.
One face that does show up multiple times is editor Boaz Bismuth — alongside US President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi — and in a column he promises that soon you’ll be able to see him with world leaders on the internet(!) as well, as the paper leads the way into the 21st century with a digital presence.
As with the columns Bismuth would write when he was foreign editor, he focuses as much on himself as on the subject at hand.
“Three decades and three years ago I published my first article in a newspaper,” the modern-day Abraham Lincoln says. “I was so excited then, that i imagined it was the peak of my life. But in work as in life, nobody knows what a new day will bring. I could never guess that I would be editor of a paper, and here I’ve become the top editor of the most successful paper in Israel.”
Netanyahu is still in Israel Hayom’s doghouse, but not for lack of trying to move to the right, including by calling for the death penalty for the Palestinian who killed three members of a Halamish family in a stabbing spree earlier this month.
Haaretz’s op-ed page fixates on the issue, with a lead editorial calling Netanyahu’s right-wing slide a “death sentence for democracy,” and shrill TV columnist Rogel Alpher predicting that soon he’ll be able to cover state-meted street justice in his regular slot in the back of the paper.
“On the slippery slope of the death penalty for Arab terrorists lies in wait the inevitable moment when terrorists will be publicly executed, perhaps on live television, as a national ceremony of empowerment. Then too, there will be talk of deterrent and the comfort of revenge. The ratings will be divine,” he writes.
The paper doesn’t quite give Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas the death sentence, but its lead story raises serious health fears over the octogenarian leader.
“Israeli and Palestinian sources believe that Abbas’ health has deteriorated in recent months and that any further worsening could hasten the changing of the guard at the Palestinian Authority,” Amos Harel reports, adding that Israel is concerned over what could happen if he leaves the scene.
Palestinians aren’t the only worry on the minds of Israeli security officials, and a riot in Jaffa over a police shooting there Saturday highlighted how every interaction is a possible powderkeg. In Yedioth, Jaffa resident Ayman Agbaria pens a column in which she accuses the police of having an itchy trigger finger, especially when it comes to Arabs.
“This was an unprecedented case of police shooting in the back a criminal on a bike, who did not represent any threat to them. One chase that was trial, verdict and execution,” she writes. “It seems they have a light trigger finger and it’s impossible not to wonder if it would have ended this way if we were talking about a different place, a different time, a different nationality.”
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