Good and bad police work

It seems as if there are only two stories in Friday’s Hebrew dailies: The questioning and arrest of Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger, and the escape of the state witness in the Bar Noar shooting, push the rest of the news off center stage, although Barbra Streisand does get a little of the spotlight.

Israel Hayom leads with the escape of the informant in the Bar Noar shooting case and the interview he gave Channel 2 while on the run, calling it both a “drama” and “an embarrassment.” The daily writes that what was supposed to be “the solved crime of the decade” is turning into a huge police fiasco.

According to police, the witness — who was last seen at 2 a.m. on Thursday — jumped out of the window of his second-story bedroom and fled the safe house, where he was under the watch of six policemen.

Beside the PR nightmare, the police “know that if the state witness isn’t found in the near future, or if he decides not to show up and testify, they’ll have a big problem,” the paper writes. Even if the informant does show up in court, the incident could hurt his credibility, it notes.

The front page of Maariv chronicles the timeline of the police work on Thursday, placing the questioning and subsequent house arrest of Chief Rabbi Metzger on suspicion of fraud and bribery alongside the Bar Noar informant’s escape.

Metzger was held Thursday after an extensive, covert investigation conducted by the police culminated in a surprise raid on the rabbi’s offices and home, as well as the offices of three other suspects — his personal aide and the heads of two foundations.

According to the report, police believe Metzger was given money by the foundation heads and in return he advanced projects to help them. The three were remanded, for five to six days. (After the papers went to print, the court decided to place Metzger under house arrest.)

“The great disgrace” caused by Metzger’s reign as chief rabbi “could have easily been stopped 15 years ago,” Kalman Liebskind writes in Maariv. In the late 90s, the rabbi presented himself as a candidate for the position of Tel Aviv’s rabbi, bringing about “a flow of embarrassing complaints regarding his behavior in different matters.”

Complaints that Metzger was charging large sums of money for officiating at weddings caused a special Rabbinate committee to declare him unfit to serve as the rabbi of a large city, the columnist writes. Former chief rabbi Eliyahu Bakshi-Doron said it was “a desecration of God’s name” when he heard Metzger planned on being Israel’s chief rabbi, Liebskind continues, before listing some of the reports published about Metzger since he took office a decade ago: illegally charging money for conducting ceremonies, traveling around the world at the expense of Jewish communities, and even a complaint that he asked a French photographer to lie naked in front of him.

“Rabbi Metzger always walked on the edge. Time and again he was nearly handled by the authorities. Time and again he was saved,” Liebskind writes, noting an investigation from eight years ago after which the rabbi was nearly arrested. The blows the Chief Rabbinate suffered because of Metzger — a below-par rabbi who was chosen out of compromise — were harsh. “There were countless opportunities to stop this embarrassment,” he concludes.

Yedioth Ahronoth highlights a new plan introduced by Education Minister Shai Piron (Yesh Atid) on the day the country’s high school students ended their academic year and started summer vacation.

“We educate in the morning, afternoon and evening, in the school year and on vacation,” Piron said as he presented a plan meant to provide school-aged children with educational activities during the summer months. “Education isn’t confined in time or space,” he stated.

The new plan, the paper reports, provides a range of activities — from movies to parties, from volunteer work to museum visits — spread across the two-month vacation, in which schools, community centers and parents are all involved. Orli Batito, a high school principal from Yahud, told the paper she was looking forward to the idea. Just like a family can’t take a vacation from each other, she said, “we don’t take a vacation from our students.”

Haaretz is the only daily to place Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah’s resignation, only two weeks after he replaced Salam Fayyad in office, on its front page.

The reason for Hamdallah’s move, the daily writes, is “differences” between him and others in the Palestinian government regarding his authorities and responsibilities. It wasn’t clear, the paper writes, if PA President Mahmoud Abbas accepted Hamdallah’s resignation, or what the next move would be.

Three of the four papers — Israel Hayom is the exception — give Barbra Streisand a spot on their front page, as they report on her Tel Aviv performance in front of some 16,000 fans.

Israel Hayom writes that by using Hebrew, Jewish humor, the singing talents of her son, and even performing the national anthem, the superstar “captured the Israeli crowd.” Maariv‘s Eyal Levi says that the legendary singer “filled the empty void with captivating magic,” and Yedioth reports that the “love between the singer and the crowd” was obvious.