Fighting Flame with fire

It seems the geniuses in Tehran’s bureau for great comebacks were burning the midnight oil this week, and they came up with a whopper. A flame-broiled whopper. Just days after Iran found out its been hit with a supervirus named Flame, it threatened to set Israel on fire, should the West take military action against Syria, to say nothing of the Persian motherland.

The (witty?) threat is plastered across today’s front pages, in one form or another. Maariv and Haaretz play the threat story straight, while Yedioth Ahronoth leads with minister Moshe Ya’alon’s assertion from the night before that Iran is laughing all the way to the bomb, stepping up enrichment activities even while negotiating with the 5+1 powers. The paper’s package includes an infographic showing just how much Tehran has sped up its quest for the bomb, with a 66% rise in working centrifuges and a 34% rise in uranium enriched to 20% since February.

Israel Hayom also plays up the Israeli side, quoting Defense Minister Ehud Barak that it’s impossible to sleep peacefully when the sword is at your neck. And this coming from the guy who sleeps in the most expensive bedroom in the country. Barak’s words are juxtaposed with those of former IDF chief Gabi Ashkenazi and former Mossad head Meir Dagan, who both warn that hitting Iran may not be the best option.

Commenting on the ongoing debate, Boaz Bismuth writes in Israel Hayom that Ashkenazi and Dagan are both giving Iran safety assurances it doeasn’t need. “Dagan and Ashkenazi don’t want an Iranian bomb, and the security of Israel is dear to them no less than to others. But their approach is a little different than others and fatalistic. To them, bombing Iran will only speed up the bomb.”

Courting trouble

While Iran is important, Maariv leads off with a humdinger of a quote from Interior Minister Eli Yishai, whose views on African migrants in Israel are no secret. In Yishai’s words: “Many women have been raped by foreigners, and they are afraid to complain because they don’t want people thinking they are carrying AIDS.” The story, a preview of an interview to be run in tomorrow’s Maariv, also includes Yishai claiming that he is acting to deport them “not out of racism but out of love.” How sweet.

Haaretz puts on its front page the news that one of its journalists will be prosecuted by the state for possessing secret documents. Uri Blau, who wrote about Israel’s targeted assassination program with the help of documents pilfered by Anat Kamm (now serving a 4.5 year prison sentence), will be the first Israeli journalist to be prosecuted for possession of sensitive material.

In Maariv, columnist Ben-Dror Yemini battles it out with Blau’s old colleague Shai Golden over which side is right. Yemini claims that the prosecution is correct to go after Blau, as he is in possession of documents that were never used for journalistic purposes, and therefore the issue is not one of free speech. Golden, on the other hand, calls the move a step toward the end of Israeli democracy, though he writes that all the parties in the saga messed up somehow. In the end, he says, “The Supreme Court will clear Uri Blau, and journalists will continue to hold classified documents, not because they want to hurt the state , but because they are trying to the protect the public interest.”

Hit and keep running

In Yedioth, a story details how the accused killer of Lee Zeitouni, who was run over by a car in Tel Aviv last year, is still running free, literally. Claude Hayat, one of two men in the car, who fled to France after the crash to avoid prosecution, has been stopped twice in the last few months for reckless driving. “The stopping of Hayat another time proves that two continue to show contempt for the law,” Zeitouni’s partner, Roi Peled, tells the paper.

Papers also play up Boris Gelfand’s loss in the World Chess Championships, after taking the reigning champion into a speed chess overtime round. Haaretz leads with a picture of Gelfand, while Israel Hayom writes “For us, you’re a champ,” on its front page. Though Gelfand lost, he’ll still be taking home over a million dollars, which means the real winner is the Israeli government, which will take about nearly NIS 2 million for its own coffers, according to Yedioth. Check and mate, Boris.

To reform or not to reform

In Israel Hayom’s op-ed section, Uzi Baram praises the decision Tuesday to give state funding to a Reform rabbi, thereby opening a door for pluralistic religion in the country. “The country isn’t supposed to represent only the Orthodox, and it can’t give up on the affinity for pluralism within the Jewish religious experience. It’s true that the Reform movement doesn’t have a strong hold here, but more and more couples are not getting married by Orthodox rabbis, and whoever wants Jewish life to continue to flourish in the West needs to recognize the great importance of other streams of Judaism.”

In the same paper, Gabi Avital takes the Reform movement, which has a negligible presence in Israel, to task for forcing its will upon the rest of the country. “I have a suggestion for the Reform. Instead of acting like everyone with a skullcap is unenlightened, bring half a million Reform Jews here, start your own political party, and like that you can take over the Rabbinate and the synagogues and convert people to your heart’s content.”