Fury of bereaved parents focuses on Netanyahu

If the prime minister is publicly lambasted, but nobody hears it because the most-read newspaper in the country turns it into a non-event, does the outcry still make noise? Readers of Israel Hayom would immediately assume that there was no vocal criticism of Netanyahu from citizens and politicians alike, and that the memorial for the soldiers killed in Israel’s last war went off without a hitch.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took the podium at the second anniversary memorial for the fallen of Operation Protective Edge and took flak from the bereaved parents of soldiers who were killed in the 2014 war in the Gaza Strip. The photo of an outraged parent both literally and figuratively pointing the finger at Netanyahu during the ceremony on Mount Herzl is on the front page of Wednesday’s Yedioth Ahronoth and Haaretz, but the protests against the prime minister find no place in Israel Hayom.

Instead, the fact that Netanyahu doubles down on his denial that Israel wasn’t properly prepared for the war in Gaza two years ago gets front page prominence for the second consecutive day in Israel Hayom. It’s reported as a footnote to Netanyahu’s proclamation, with a tiny front page headline that reads “A few bereaved parents interjected at the prime minister” and the article stuck on Page 7.

Israel Hayom downplays any protest, saying it was just two members of the crowd, and quoting the prime minister’s response that, as someone who lost a brother in combat, he knows their pain.

Yedioth Ahronoth, on the other hand, reports that when Netanyahu responded to the bereaved parent, he was met with boos from the crowd. The paper quotes one of the parents after he stormed out of the memorial.

“This man [Netanyahu] is a man without values, he harms Israeli democracy, tries to control the media and does a lot of things that are inappropriate. It’s not for this that I lost my son, this is not the price, this man is not worthy to stand as prime minister of a democracy,” Yoram Tal tells the paper.

Education Minister Naftali Bennett also lectured at Netanyahu, and is quoted in Haaretz as saying that those who refuse to learn from their mistakes are doomed to repeat them.

“Every platoon commander in the army draws conclusions at the end of an exercise to prevent future mistakes and improve, and what’s good for an infantry commander is doubly good for the military-political leaders of the State of Israel,” he says.

Contrasting with Haaretz, Israel Hayom leads with the Likud party response to Bennett’s remarks, calling them “complete falsehoods.”

In his Yedioth Ahronoth column, veteran journalist Shimon Shiffer asks Netanyahu: “What are you afraid of?”

Shiffer says that if Netanyahu expects the grieving families of the fallen to trust him, he should hold an inquiry into the 50-day war.

“With all due respect, Mr. Netanyahu, the parents who were forced against their will to join the list of grieving families aren’t satisfied by your warm words about your experience as a bereaved brother, which you wave in their faces again and again at every opportunity, at every memorial ceremony. They turn to you not as a mourner, but as prime minister, a captain who sent their sons and daughters to war.”

Netanyahu was among the first to call for an investigation into the government’s handling of the 2006 Second Lebanon War, Shiffer says, “but when the issue concerns him, he has blocked his ears and refuses to take the necessary steps.”

And, Shiffer argues, “If Operation Protective Edge was a success story like Netanyahu described in his speech on Mount Herzl yesterday, what does he have to be concerned about? What would an investigative committee find?”

He says that leaks from an upcoming state comptroller’s report point to mistakes that did in fact cause the deaths and injuries of many Israeli soldiers and civilians.

In an entirely different form of war, the headlines surrounding the arrest of around 50 members of a soccer gang — including the detention of at least six for allegedly attempting to “whack” the fan of a rival team and the discovery of a horde of arms in their possession — do sound more like something out of Brazil than Israel.

The story of the Beitar Jerusalem hooligans from “La Familia” gets the attention of the Israeli papers in the wake of a massive police sting, to the extent that even Haaretz, which often covers international stories more prominently than the Israeli tabloids, gives it precedence over the murder of a French priest by a suspected Islamist. Surprisingly, Yedioth Ahronoth doesn’t assign much significance to the story.

Among the charges listed against them in Haaretz are acts of violence, sale of weapons and smuggling illegal pyrotechnics into stadiums. Among those arrested is a number of minors, but the most egregious part is the arrest of an IDF officer, as the papers see it. A total of nine soldiers in uniform were among the 51 people arrested in the nationwide sting. Yedioth Ahronoth accuses the group of “turning the soccer stadiums into a hell of violence, racism and hatred in recent years.”