Gagged and confused: 9 things to know for January 6

1. Breaking laws of man and God: After a week of keeping the case under a gag order, the Shin Bet has allowed the press to report that five Jewish teens arrested recently are suspected of throwing the stones that killed Palestinian mother Aisha Rabi in late October.

• The five are minors and thus are still not being named in the press or court documents. According to the Shin Bet, they are suspected of “terror offenses, including murder.”
• In what may truly be an only in Israel thing, the security service also alleges that the day after the Friday attack, residents of the religious settlement of Yitzhar drove over to the West Bank religious school where the five study to coach them on how to withstand interrogations, the implication being that the conspirators broke the laws of Shabbat as well as the laws of man. Assumedly, the religious coaches justified their behavior by saying it was a case of life and death (which can be surprisingly broad in rabbinic literature).
• Still, the Israeli press plays up the Shabbat desecration, likely as a not-so-subtle jab at the hypocrisy of zealots.

"Among the right activists who desecrated Shabbat + travelled to brief the suspects was Meir Ettinger, the grandson of Rabbi Meir Kahana"…
report by @carmeldangor https://t.co/oAddOirWd4

— Marian Houk (@Marianhouk) January 6, 2019

2. Terror is terror (to a point): Most mainstream Israelis support treating Jewish terrorists the same as Palestinian terrorists (except when it comes to collective punishment like house demolitions), and even right-wing sites like Israel National News and Israel Hayom play the story pretty straight.

• Nonetheless, Hebrew press reports are filled with carefully considered words like “suspected” and “alleged,” words that Palestinian terror suspects are normally not afforded.
• “I call on the government to not destroy the homes of the suspected Jewish terrorists, not to exile their families and not to put a cordon on their settlement,” MK Mossi Raz of the left-wing Meretz party tweets wryly.

3. Uptick in violence: The press has known for some time that the arrests were over the murder case (as has most of the public, via social media), and thus there have been a number of stories recently about the case.

• That includes a recent interview in Walla News with Yakoub Rabi, the husband of Aisha, who was driving the car when they were hit with the stones. While much of the interview was published several days, seemingly apropo nothing, now the news site is able to publish the rest.
• “What can I say? What will it help me? What will it give me? I want them not to do anything else, not to hurt anyone else. This will not return my wife and the mother of my children,” Yakoub tells the news site.
• Hours before the Shin Bet lifted the gag, Haaretz published figures showing that Jewish terror incidents tripled in 2018. Writer Amos Harel notes that the two previous years saw a decline following the shock of the deadly Duma firebombing and the unflinching response of some settler leaders against violence.
• “But in recent months a decline in the strength of settlement figures described as ‘statesmanlike’ can be seen. More extreme individuals who won seats on some of the local councils in the municipal elections in November have sometimes responded to violence against Palestinians ambiguously and leniently,” he writes.

4. The wait continues: The widely reported assessment that the US peace plan would be delayed with Israeli elections on the horizon has been confirmed by Ambassador David Friedman, who tells the press that it won’t be released for “several months.”

• Friedman says the contents are “pretty much completed,” but there is additional “wordsmithing and smoothing” to be done, and admits Israeli elections are a factor, but not the only factor.

5. Discombobulated: Friedman made the comments to US press traveling with National Security Adviser John Bolton, but the bigger news for many is Bolton saying US troops won’t pull out of Syria until the Islamic State is defeated and the US has assurances that Turkey won’t slaughter the Kurds.

• Given that US President Donald Trump said IS was already defeated and a pullout seemed a done deal, there is no small amount of confusion about whether Bolton, Trump or both of them are just shooting from the hip, or whose policy is the real one.
• A day earlier, a US official said some troops could also remain in southern Syria to help stymie Iran in the region.
• “There have been so many variations and contradictions in the Administration’s statements on US troops in Syria that it is impossible to know what to believe,” former US ambassador Dan Shapiro writes on Twitter.
• Yedioth columnist Orly Azulay advises Israelis not to trust American claims of a strong bond with Israel, comparing Trump to a “political snake … who will end up biting himself and his allies.”
• In Israel Hayom, though, analyst Oded Granot writes that the troop pullout is just Trump recognizing that America’s influence in the Syrian arena was limited in any case.
• “The Arab world, the Kurds, Turkey, Iran and everyone else understands now that the US never intended to act against the Assad regime, and from here is the conclusion that almost everyone involved has reached: You need to get in line with the winner, Assad, and speak to Vladimir Putin, who is the real boss here,” he writes.

6. In Syria, Turkey carves you: Putin may be the boss, but Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan is sitting pretty as well, Haaretz’s Zvi Bar’el writes. He notes, though, that both Putin and Erdogan will also be affected by the fact that the US is no longer backing Israel’s efforts to get Iran out of Syria.

• “ Until now, they could largely rely on the fact that America would work with Israel to get Iran out, sparing them the need to confront it directly. Now, they’ll have to vie with Iran over the map of Syria by themselves,” he writes.
• A Wall Street Journal report on the US dealing with Turkey to support Ankara taking over as the lead actor in the fight against Islamic State includes a reference to a map being drawn up that’s meant to avoid Turkey getting involved in fighting the Kurds.
• The document is compared to another map prepared by foreign forces carving up the Middle East a century ago, with one trippy difference: “One former U.S. official described the map as ‘Sykes-Picot on acid,’” the paper reports, which might also be a good way to describe the Middle East as a whole these days.

7. Saw you in Sinai: CBS news is set to air an interview with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi in which he admits for the first time that Israeli forces are aiding the battle in the Sinai against Islamic State and other jihadists.

• Walla news reports that Israel is just being a good friend, but also preventing Hamas from arming itself via the peninsula.
• The site’s Amir Bohbot notes that Israeli forces destroyed some 15,000 missiles headed for Gaza, sourcing the info to “foreign reports” (a formulation forced upon some journalists by the military censor).

8. Give him a hand: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is seemingly stepping up his attack against the attorney general, releasing a video over the weekend in which he uses a joke about an Arab thief whose arm is cut off and can’t be sewn back on to show how once a recommendation to indict him is published, the damage can’t be undone even if he is innocent.

• The image is gruesome and one wonders why he didn’t use the analogy of putting toothpaste back in the tube, or even a genie being put back in the bottle if he wanted to continue with the Middle East theme.
• But it’s the content that leaves him open for attack: “The prime minister thinks we’re in Saudi Arabia. Can someone give us back our sanity? If a person is indicted, they cannot run in the elections,” Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid quips in response.
• Despite the great analogy, Haaretz reports that Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit plans on releasing his indictment decision — pending a hearing — sometime in February.

9. The Benny file: It’s not just Mandelblit. Yedioth Ahronoth reports that Netanyahu’s campaign team is preparing a oppo file on former IDF chief Benny Gantz, seen as his biggest challenger.

• Many are not bothering to wait for proof to paint Gantz as a left-winger in the media, using his silence against him instead.
• “If Benny Gantz had right-wing views, like [supporting] the complete Land of Israel [i.e., annexation of the West Bank] or opposition to a Palestinian state, he would tell you he’s stridently opposed to withdrawal to the June 4, 1967, lines and the division of Jerusalem. And he would tell you he supports free-market economics,” minister Ofer Akunis tells Army Radio.
• A rumor is also spreading that Gantz’s wife was an activist with the left-wing Machsom Watch group, which monitors checkpoints for human rights violations.
• Israel Radio reporter Carmela Menashe says anyone spreading the rumor is “lying through their teeth.”
• On Twitter, though, activist Daniel Seidemann compares it to John McCain defending Barack Obama when someone called him a Muslim. The real hero, he says, was Colin Powell, who pointed out that even if he was a Muslim, it would not be a problem.
• “There’s is nothing disqualifying about Machsom Watch,” he writes. “To the contrary.”