Hebrew media review

Gearing up for Trump

Speculation abounds as the US president is reported to be planning a trip to Israel at the end of May

Ilan Ben Zion is an AFP reporter and a former news editor at The Times of Israel.

US President Donald Trump attends a meeting about healthcare in the Roosevelt Room at the White House in Washington, DC, on March 13, 2017. (AFP Photo/Nicholas Kamm)
US President Donald Trump attends a meeting about healthcare in the Roosevelt Room at the White House in Washington, DC, on March 13, 2017. (AFP Photo/Nicholas Kamm)

One man dominates the headlines in the Hebrew tabloids: US President Donald Trump, who is reported to be preparing a visit to Israel at the end of May or beginning of June. That man is ousted from the top headline in the Haaretz broadsheet, however, by a mastodon that’s been dead for 130,000 years.

As all the papers note, an American team is expected to arrive in Israel on Thursday to start hammering out the particulars of the upcoming presidential trip. They are certain to note that Jerusalem Day, which marks 50 years of the unification of the city in 1967, takes place during the possible window of time for Trump’s arrival, and the presidential order barring the transfer of the United States Embassy to Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem expires on June 1. Both dates are crucial to the calculus of Trump’s trip.

Yedioth Ahronoth reports that most of the details about the American president’s first visit to Israel are still up in the air, and the exact date of the visit isn’t concrete yet. It speculates that Trump will time the trip to coincide with the NATO summit in Brussels, Belgium, on May 25, and that it will last a couple days. The big announcement when he’s here, the paper reports, is that Trump will announce a shift in US policy vis-a-vis Israel and will recognize a united Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and declare support for the formation of a Palestinian state. At the same time, he isn’t expected to move the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem as previously promised, the paper says.

Israel Hayom reports that First Lady Melania Trump, the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner are all expected to join the president on the visit to Israel (though Yedioth Ahronoth says Trump’s wife isn’t planning to join). The paper reports that the Prime Minister’s Office hopes Trump will commit to moving the embassy, as he promised on the campaign trail, and points out that all Trump has to do is let the presidential order expire on June 1.

While Haaretz also runs an article about the possibility of an upcoming presidential trip to Israel, the paper hedges the speculation in favor of stating the limited facts known. The article itself runs on Page 4, keeping the enthusiasm levels to a minimum. Although Yedioth Ahronoth says Trump will visit the Palestinian Authority headquarters in Ramallah, Haaretz says it’s still not clear whether the president will go to the West Bank.

Since they’re already on the issue of Donald Trump, Yedioth Ahronoth runs an article about the new administration’s proposed tax reforms, with an op-ed writer calling the changes announced on Tuesday a “revolution in taxation” that will affect the tax system in Israel. “In a nutshell, Israel won’t be able to keep its income tax and corporate taxes much higher than those of the Americans, and also the manner of taxation customary in Israel when the Trump administration converts to the territorial method,” Sever Plotzker writes.

For Americans living in Israel, this is a big deal, he points out. The United States used to chase after its citizens for taxes on income earned abroad. “The planned change will eliminate the pursuit by American tax authorities after American citizens’ income from abroad.”

Israel Hayom is already gearing up for Memorial Day, even though it doesn’t start until Sunday. That doesn’t stop the free daily newspaper from pushing two pages’ worth of coverage about upcoming ceremonies and dedications to the fallen. Also noteworthy is the paper’s decision to run an advertisement for tobacco. Perhaps they’re trying to get that money in their coffers while they can before a proposed bill to cut down on tobacco advertisements is passed.

But neither death nor taxes nor the American president coming to Israel distracts Haaretz from its big stories that focus on human history and archaeology. The paper reports on a new study that suggests that humans arrived in North America 130,000 years ago, much earlier than most theories posit. The controversial claim published in Nature on Wednesday pushes back the arrival of humanoids in the New World tenfold. Conventionally held theories place the arrival of humans in North America at around 15,000 years before present. Some mastodon bones found in California in 1992 were broken and smashed by humans, the paper’s authors say.

The paper also reports on the restoration and preservation work being carried out at Caesarea that has turned up a number of new finds from the ancient Roman port.

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