Guess who’s paying for dinner: 8 things to know for June 22

1. While America is wrapped up in a mini scandal surrounding Melania Trump’s “I REALLY DON’T CARE DO U?” jacket, Israel’s leader’s wife is finding herself in more serious trouble, though her defenders argue it’s just as much a trifle as a $39 Zara item.

• Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit’s decision to indict Sara Netanyahu over expensive potatoes is not small potatoes, and it easily overtakes the winds of war blowing from Gaza as top news in Israeli media.
• (Linking the two, some have even raised — half-jokingly — the fearful prospect of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launching a war to distract attention from his wife’s and his own legal woes.)
• “The Netanyahu family has pointedly termed the suspicions the ‘takeout affair,’ but the indictment reveals the level of fraud that Netanyahu pulled from the public coffers: hundreds of thousands of shekels, systematically at the public’s expense,” notes Yedioth Ahronoth, which has made no bones about its opposition to the prime minister and his family and is easily the most gung-ho of Israel’s major media outlets over the indictment.
• The paper has in the past run other sordid tales speaking to Sara Netanyahu’s place in the public imagination as an unhinged Lady Macbeth and columnist Sima Kadmon writes that the indictment gives those stories currency.
• “For instance, her screaming at [Naftali] Bennett and [Ayelet] Shaked for getting salaries from Netanyahu without her knowing, since they were stealing from the plates of [Netanyahu sons] Yair and Avner. Not to mention all the expenses that never happened, memorial candles and patio furniture that the public was forced to pay for. And despite us knowing the stories this is the first time we have gotten an official legal document determining that the first lady is simply a liar,” she writes.

2. Just as strident, but pro-Netanyahu, is fellow tabloid Israel Hayom, which can’t simply ignore the story but plays up the concurrent indictment for Netanyahu family consigliere Ezra Saidoff alongside Sara’s own charge sheet.

• The Netanyahus have attempted to shunt blame onto Saidoff, who managed expenses at the residence, portraying him as some sort of Potemkin who misled the family. The other line of defense is that charging someone over takeout food is a joke.
• Columnist Haim Shine writes that Netanyahu was within her rights to secretly order expensive meals at the Prime Minister’s Residence on top of employing a personal chef, since the food was for guests anyway, or at least should be.
• “It’s clear to me that when respected guests come to the home of the prime minister, it’s reasonable and fair to host them with a higher level of food than the house cook. If Israeli citizens knew how many chefs, sous-chefs, pastry chefs and other cup-bearers were in the kitchen at the White House, the Palais Elysee and 10 Downing, they would understand that the prime minister is among the most modest in the world,” Shine writes.
• For anyone wondering if the comparison is apt, the GDP of the US, UK and France is $18.5 trillion, $2.6 trillion and $2.45 trillion respectively. Israel is a relatively piddly $318.7 billion.

3. Israel’s Hadashot news reports that Mandelblit’s office sent signals to Netanyahu’s people Thursday alongside the indictment that they want to reach a plea deal and keep this out of court, quoting sources who say Mandelblit and State Prosecutor Shai Nitzan “would be happy” to end the case in this way.

• The channel also reports that the attorney general isn’t treating the affair as a “flagship case” but rather as ancillary, with the prime minister himself likely facing much more serious legal troubles.
• In Yedioth, legal columnist Tova Tzimuki writes that there’s a high probability the case will end in with a plea bargain. “Nobody in the upper levels of the judicial system wants to see Sara Netanyahu taking the stand,” she writes.

4. Haaretz’s Gidi Weitz reports that Mandelblit, who would have rather avoided bringing the charges in the first place, has pointed to having the prime minister’s wife admit to psychological issues as an easy defense that could have ended the whole affair.

• “Why don’t they bring a letter from a doctor?” Weitz says Mandelblit once asked his staff.
• “As a rule, it’s not easy to avoid criminal proceedings by claiming psychological problems. But in Sara Netanyahu’s case, this defense would be accepted gladly and lead to either the closure of the case or a lenient plea bargain,” he writes.

5. The choice of opposition head Isaac Herzog as the next head of the Jewish Agency is also seen as a loss for Netanyahu, who had tried to push Minister Yuval Steinitz as an alternative. The rejection is seen as a sign of Diaspora Jewry, which controls part of the semi-state agency, pushing back at Netanyahu as revenge for his reneging on the Western Wall pluralistic plaza deal.

• A source tells The Times of Israel that it was never really a contest. “Herzog gave a very convincing presentation. Steinitz didn’t even respond to the committee’s invitation to appear before it until Netanyahu forced the committee to meet him today.”
• Yedioth reports that Netanyahu’s Likud party is still fighting, saying that under a coalition agreement, the agency is supposed to be headed by a Likud candidate. As reparations, they are now demanding the helm of the JNF-KKL, which is typically headed by a Labor person.
• Haaretz reports that with Herzog’s departure, Tzipi Livni is now expected to become opposition leader.

6. Israelis may not have anyone to root for in the World Cup, but they know who they are rooting against, after Argentina canceled a planned practice match against Israel at the last minute because of political pressure.

• After Argentina fell 3-0 to Croatia, putting the team on the cusp of elimination, displays of schadenfreude are everywhere, despite the country’s normal love for everything Argentina.

https://twitter.com/telavivrangers/status/1010091627686318080

• A popular meme going around photoshops forlorn Argentina star Leo Messi into some phylacteries and praying at the Western Wall in one frame, and on the losing pitch in the next. “Had he done this, he wouldn’t be doing this,” the Hebrew reads.
• “Messi, Messi, Messi, why, why, didn’t you come to Jerusalem, let your team not come to Jerusalem, this is the price,” tweets powerful media fixer Ron Rahav.

מסי ,מסי,מסי,למה,למה, לא באת לירושלים,איך נתת לנבחרת לא לבוא לירושלים ,זה המחיר! pic.twitter.com/C2hSsbTqgq

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— ran rahav (@RahavRan) June 21, 2018

• Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, who alleged that Argentina’s 1-1 draw with Iceland was because the team had not come to Israel to practice, stays silent this time around, but many more are now pointing to the team’s disorganization, partially stemming from the fact that it had only one warm-up game after canceling on Israel, as the reason behind the collapse.
• Call it Jerusalem syndrome, or the curse of canceling on Israel, but it’s clear the problems are much deeper,” writes Israel Hayom’s Aviad Pohorils.

7. With tensions remaining high in the south, ToI’s Avi Issacharoff reports that both Israel and Hamas have indicated they want ceasefire, but just can’t agree on what a ceasefire will look like.

• “The problem, as always, is the security question. Hamas is willing to discuss a freeze on attacks against Israel, but not dismantling its military infrastructures in Gaza. It won’t destroy its rocket arsenals and it won’t stop building tunnels, including passages that reach across the border into Israeli territory and under Israeli towns,” he writes.
• “To this Hamas insistence Israel has said it views Hamas’s military infrastructure as a standing threat and will not discuss any long-term ceasefire without the group’s disarmament,” he adds.
• Issacharoff also reports that Hamas is stealing aid shipments to help itself, which is increasing the Strip’s humanitarian woes, which is fueling the violence as it seeks to pressure the world into easing its humanitarian woes.
• “Far from the eyes of the international media, where Hamas has moaned ceaselessly about the Israeli blockade, the organization has been confiscating the diesel fuel shipments for its own purposes, including selling them on Gaza’s black market for easy cash,” he writes.
• “Hamas is thus on both sides of the problem. Its organizational needs must be served, even at the cost of further draining Gaza’s economy and sending desperate Gazans into ever deeper distress, while it works hard to pressure Gaza’s neighbors – Israel, the PA and Egypt – to ease their economic pressure in exchange for quiet.”