Goodbye to a great

After the death of a legend, what else could be the top story Wednesday but the passing of Israeli musician Arik Einstein. In fact, all other news stopped and his face adorns every front page. Pressing his lyrics into service as headlines, the papers mourn the loss of one of the country’s musical greats. “Death of a giant,” reads Israel Hayom‘s front page, “Fly fledgling,” writes Yedioth Ahronoth, quoting one of his most famous songs. Maariv opts for “You and I,” another Einstein classic. Haaretz features a front page eulogy from Ben Shalev, who wrote a book about/with Einstein.

“Einstein was the Israeli singer, with the definite article. He earned this top rank, which has not been given to any other singer, first and foremost because he was a great singer,” Shalev writes.

Aviad Pohoryles recounts in Maariv how he met Einstein on Tuesday to collaborate on an article and bizarrely calls him “Israel’s Salinger,” referring to the reclusive American author of “Catcher in the Rye” who died in 2010, and “the most amazing present absentee born in the land of Israel.”

“He breathed his deep breaths, letting the air out through the hollow of his lips. Nothing new that I didn’t know of him. I ask him how he was. He said his back hurt. He lay on the couch while I continued to read to him. Suddenly he got up and lay on his stomach. It hurt him. We finished. I told him to rest and that we’d speak afterwards. On the way to the door he called to me, ‘Thanks, my dear,’ and I left,” Pohoryles writes. Not many hours thereafter, Einstein was gone.

Israel Hayom writes that “it seems that his voice and songs accompany us once and forever, from the days when the State of Israel was young and naive, through difficult wars. In good and bad he was always there with unforgettable verses like “You and I will change the world,” filling our lives with unending creativity and songs that became classics.”

Shlomo Artzi, another musical great who collaborated recently with Einstein, writes in Yedioth Ahronoth: “Yesterday, at the concert, I notified the crowd that he died. We all knew that it was impossible to continue to the final song.” (Artzi was in mid-show, in Tel Aviv.)

“Suddenly they began to sing [Artzi’s] song ‘This man.’ I joined them,” he said.

Yedioth devotes its first 17-and-a-half pages to Einstein’s memory. If you dig deep enough in the papers, you might find some news that has nothing to do with the loss of Israel’s classic rock legend.

Haaretz reports that Israel and the European Union reached a compromise over the latter’s refusal to fund scientific research projects over the Green Line as part of its Horizons 2020 initiative. The compromise was essentially an “agree to disagree” clause inserted into the agreement. Israeli academics had earlier petitioned the government not to let EU funding slip away from Israel over the former’s opposition to funding projects in the occupied territories.

They called on Jerusalem to “mend the rift to enable the signing of the pact” and ensure that Israel receive hundreds of millions of euros in research funds. “The president of the National Israeli Academy of Science met with Liberman and Livni and pressed them ‘to do the utmost’ for the pact to be signed,” Haaretz reports.

Turning north, Maariv reports that municipal leaders and industry experts warn of the collapse of Israel’s manufacturing sector after Plasan Industries laid off 130 of its workers.

Plasan, located in the Upper Galilee’s Kibbutz Sasa, manufactures military-grade armor plating for vehicles and personnel.

“This is a terrible period for Israeli industry, which is ejecting more and more unemployed into the difficult job market,” the paper writes. “In the case of Plasan, circumstances were created that didn’t allow the factory to continue to work at the pace that made members of Kibbutz Sasa wealthy.”

The company’s fortunes went into decline a few years ago when orders dropped along with the US’s withdrawal from Iraq and cutbacks to defense budgets in the West, the paper writes.

Yedioth, despite its overwhelming reportage on Einstein, devotes a few brief graphs to the IDF’s killing of three wanted men near Hebron. According to the paper, the men “belonged to the Salafist jihadist network which planned to carry out an attack in Israel or the territories in the near future.” Authorities reportedly found explosive devices and two pistols in the car in which two of the suspects were shot. The third man opened fire from a nearby apartment and was shot by Israeli troops. 

After days of Iran being on the front page, Israel Hayom buries Tehran’s dismissal of the White House’s version of the deal reached over the weekend on Page 13. It calls Tehran’s rejection of the White House’s summary “cracks in the idyll” that began for the two countries earlier this week.