Flogging a dead horse
Katsav’s futile bid to cut his 7-year rape sentence leads to similarly empty efforts in the Hebrew media to breathe new life into an exhausted debate
Raoul Wootliff is a former Times of Israel political correspondent and Daily Briefing podcast producer.
In lieu of any groundbreaking or simply breaking news, the only story to appear on the front pages of every Hebrew daily Thursday is the decision not to shorten the seven-year prison sentence former president Moshe Katsav is currently serving for rape.
But in an apparent nod to the vast coverage Katsav’s imprisonment has received over the years and the relative importance of the latest decision, Haaretz, Yedioth Ahronoth and Israel Hayom all relegate the headline to a small box on their front pages rather than the lead.
Nonetheless, Yedioth Ahronoth and Israel Hayom both use a double-page spread to report the decision, including ostensible psychological analyses of Katsav (Dan Margalit in Israel Hayom: “He has never got beyond his own belligerence”) and reactions from his victims (Odelia Karmon in Yedioth: “The feeling of justice reached out and comforted my soul”).
Katsav, 70, was convicted on December 30, 2010, of two counts of rape, among other related charges. He began serving his sentence in December 2011 and is slated for release in December 2018.
He had asked the parole board to cut one-third off his seven-year sentence, which would have meant his release in the coming weeks. After deliberating for over two hours Wednesday, the board unanimously turned down the request.
Haaretz omits both commentary on Katsav’s emotional state and impassioned reactions to the decision, but its report highlights the former president’s lack of remorse and refusal to admit guilt.
“The state opposed Katsav’s request on the grounds that he has never confessed to the offenses and hasn’t expressed remorse, which, according to the state, means he hasn’t undergone substantial rehabilitation,” the paper reports. “Granting parole under such circumstances, the prosecution argued, would send the wrong message to victims of sexual offenses and could do damage to the public’s faith in the judicial system.”
‘Embroiled in Romania’
Instead of Katsav, the papers each chose other stories to lead the front pages: Haaretz went with the World Health Organization announcement that diabetes sufferers have quadrupled since the 1980s; Yedioth Ahronoth tells the story of Herzl Shaul, suffering from cancer as he waits for his son’s body to be returned from Gaza after he was killed in the 2014 war; and Israel Hayom leads with the arrest of Israelis in Romania for spying on the country’s chief anti-corruption prosecutor.
“‘Former Mossad agents embroiled in Romania” reads the Israel Hayom headline, referring to the Romanian media reports that in addition to two arrests, two ex-Mossad spies who head the Israeli intelligence firm Black Cube are also being investigated.
With three Israelis implicated in a separate 136 million euro corruption investigation in Romania, the paper wonders aloud if Black Cube was hired by Israelis trying to settle a score with the anti-corruption attorney.
“Meir Dagan, the former head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency who died last month, was the honorary president of Black Cube. Some unconfirmed Romanian media reports even cited Dagan as the head of this operation until his death,” reports Israel Hayom.
“It was further reported in Romania that a number of other Israelis had left Bucharest in recent days due to ties to the case. Romanian media outlet Mediafax reported that ‘knowledgeable sources’ had claimed that certain well-off individuals involved in criminal activities had employed Black Cube in this case, while other reports cite foreign governments as having hired the company,” the paper continues.
In Yedioth Ahronoth, military commentator Yossi Yehoshua ignores the question of who is behind the operation and whether it could damage Israel, and instead laments the possible damage the story could do to other ex-Mossad agents involved in international intelligence firms.
“What is clear is that this case has caused damage to the private intelligence industry,” he writes.
Merging mobile communications
Haaretz runs a lengthy feature in its business section The Marker on the battle over Israel’s cellular communications.
Golan Telecom, established in 2012, took the Israeli market by storm, offering fixed-price packages that were far cheaper than the competition.
“Golan is the most aggressive of the wireless carriers to emerge from the big regulatory shake-up of the market in 2012. The reform brought a host of new players into a market that was controlled by Cellcom Israel, Partner Communications (Orange) and Bezeq’s Pelephone unit. The price of cellphone plans plummeted, but so did the companies’ revenue, profits and investment in new technologies,” write tech correspondent Amitai Ziv.
But the company’s imminent purchase by Cellcom could stymie changes in the market.
The deal, which would make Cellcom Israel’s largest cellular service provider, still requires the approval of the Communications Ministry and the Antitrust Authority. After acquiring Golan, Cellcom would hold 37 percent of the market, the largest market share in Israel by a wide margin.
Regardless of the possible high prices the merger may cause, Ziv concludes that without it, Golan may go bust and the communications market would suffer even more.
“Golan, in particular, faces a bleak future without a merger. Under its network-sharing agreement with Cellcom, the fees it pays go up sharply this quarter. It already owes Cellcom 600 million shekels for use of the network, a debt that will be canceled only if the two companies merge,” he writes.
