Hey Joe, whaddya know: What the press is saying on November 8

1. Rally round the winner: Like many news outlets in the US and around the world, Israel’s press wasted little time in declaring Joe Biden the president-elect of the United States after US networks made the call in quick succession on Saturday evening (Israel time).

• These Israeli outlets include tabloid Israel Hayom, Israel’s version of the New York Post, owned by a woman who once said that Donald Trump should have a book in the Bible for him, a newspaper that has consistently and unabashedly campaigned for Trump, including abetting his envoys in their own questionable campaigning.
• On Sunday morning, though, the paper features a massive picture of Joe Biden and only Joe Biden, along with the words “Biden President” (It doesn’t sound much better in Hebrew).
• The sea change by the paper includes a story quoting an unnamed “senior minister” saying that “Biden sees himself as committed to Israel’s security and acted accordingly when he was head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He cares about Israel, and not just in the context of American interests.” The comment is pretty milquetoast, but given the paper’s past portrayal of Biden as the spawn of Ali Khamenei, or worse, Barack Obama, it is still a notable change.
• In fact, a column by Avraham Ben Tzvi drives home the point that Biden will be “like Clinton, not Obama.”
• Even editor Boaz Bismuth gets into the spirit of things, including a picture of himself and Biden (from February) and reporting from Delaware, where he writes that one neighbor of Biden’s wanted to assure Israelis that “he’s supported Israel since he was a senator, he’ll never abandon it. It would be against everything he believes. Please, Israelis, believe me, he won’t disappoint you.”
• It is still Israel Hayom, though, so Bismuth includes quotes from others who are not overly excited about Biden.
• On the front page, in slightly smaller type than the “Biden president,” is “Trump: It’s not over yet.”
• A column in the paper, headlined “Not so fast Biden,” goes through all the ways that Trump can still claim the presidency, like if the Electoral College electors go rogue. Great idea!
• Elsewhere, it refers to the last four years with Trump as a “honeymoon” for Israel.

2. Where have you been all night? That tension between hailing the new chief while the old chief (whom you like better) is still in the first stage of grief (denial) is further reflected in the belated reactions from Israel’s leadership, which is very noticed by the press both in Israel and abroad.

• While Benny Gantz and Gabi Ashkenazi eventually broke their silences overnight, it took until 7 a.m. Israel time for Netanyahu to finally join them (with President Reuven Rivlin quickly following suit).
• ToI’s Raphael Ahren calls the 12 hours between when Biden was declared winner and when Netanyahu tweeted his congratulations a “conspicuously long hiatus.”
• Ynet notes that at the time of the tweet (and as of this writing) Netanyahu’s Twitter profile picture was still him and Trump during happier times.
• Both Kan and Walla news report that Netanyahu had been waiting for final results, according to sources around him. No reason is given for the change of heart.
• Former New York consul Dani Dayan remarks to Army Radio that Netanyahu needed to tread carefully, since Trump is still president for 75 days until the inauguration and isn’t known for taking slights lightly.
• “He was worried about Israel’s interests. In the White House there is now and for the next two months a president who has not recognized his defeat and whims are part of how he makes decisions. The price for those 12 hours could be another normalization deal.” (Never mind the dissonance of calling someone who would purportedly torpedo Arab-Israeli normalization over a tweet he doesn’t like “pro-Israel.”)
• But former ambassador to the US Michael Oren, who was in office when Obama and Biden were in the White House, tells Kan radio that it may not only be a Trump thing: “When I was ambassador, there was a mass shooting at a school in the US. The attack happened at night in Israel and messages of condolences only came after five hours. The next day I was censured by the Americans over it. In the US, they don’t forget things like this.”
• Former prime minister Ehud Barak tells Kan that “I don’t think Netanyahu is on Biden’s agenda. … What’s happened now to Trump is a harsh blow to Netanyahu.”
• Abroad, a number of journalists see Netanyahu’s comments as a blow to Trump.

This must be a gut punch to Trump https://t.co/3TJcUAcchm

— Borzou Daragahi ???????? (@borzou) November 8, 2020

This one’s going to leave a mark https://t.co/hHqMmaw4dh

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— Jake Tapper ???? (@jaketapper) November 8, 2020

• But some in Israel note that Trump’s congratulations to Biden don’t have quite the same gusto as his words four years ago, when Trump won.

As @RaoulWootliff points out — see difference between Bibi’s warm congrats to Trump in 2016 and his dry congrats to Biden pic.twitter.com/ZUpo4KTVHC

— Jacob N. Kornbluh (@jacobkornbluh) November 8, 2020

Netanyahu's two tweet solution pic.twitter.com/LgHfQ3V3Ve

— Amichai Stein (@AmichaiStein1) November 8, 2020

3. The thrill of victory, the agony of defeat: Despite the supposed view of Israel as widely supportive of Trump, many in the press unabashedly let their Biden flags — or anti-Trump flags — fly.

• “His victory is our victory,” crows Nahum Barnea in Yedioth Ahronoth.
• “Will Trumpism, nationalist populism, contempt for human rights and for norms in international ties continue to be the beacon that Israel is navigating toward, or will we return to old policies, those personified by previous American administrations,” he asks.
• Elsewhere in the paper, columnist Sever Plotzker hails Biden’s win as a “win for all sane and fair people.”
• In Haaretz, a headline on a column from Chemi Shalev yelps that “Biden’s win saves the world from great suffering.”
• And the paper’s Anshel Pfeffer writes that Netanyahu could see his fortunes falling as well: “It’s hard to see how he avoids being damaged. Not only has he just lost his open door to the Oval Office, his stature has been diminished overnight both on the international stage and at home. It’s impossible to exaggerate how much street-cred he accrued over four years by being known as the foreign leader with the closest ties to the president of the United States.”
• Channel 12’s Yona Leibzon calls Biden’s victory speech, in which he focused on unity, a “refreshing change in the conversation,” harking back to an imaginary time when “the election of a US president would unify the nation.”
• On the other side, some in Israel (and not just in Israel Hayom) are both unexcited and not yet ready to give up the ghost.
• Right-wing pundit Yinon Magal writes on Twitter that any time someone mentions that Kamala Harris has a Jewish husband “I am reminded that this is an assimilated Jew who married a goy.”
• “The electoral system was flawed. In Pennsylvania, the most important state, they got hundreds of thousands of illegal ballots which came after election day,” Republicans Abroad in Israel head Mark Zell tells Army Radio. “If the Supreme Court hears our appeal, it could flip the state.”
• And Israel Hayom tried to figure out why all the soothsayers and oracles it consulted got their predictions wrong (really.)
• “Jaffa-based mystic Sana Kuma, who reads coffee grounds, was convinced that while the polls gave Biden an advantage, the results would surprise us all.
  ‘Trump will be re-elected, but it won’t be a knockout win, it will be by electoral votes,’ she said. ‘In effect, it will be very good news for the Americans, because Trump will strengthen the American economy and it will flourish in the next few years.’”

4. What Biden will bide: Elsewhere, the press is trying to augur what a Biden/Harris administration will mean for Israel, especially regarding the Palestinians.

• Former US ambassador Dan Shapiro tells Kan that Biden will return Palestinian statehood to the US’s agenda.
• Another former envoy, Dan Kurtzer, tells Army Radio that the Biden administration will attempt to return to the nuclear deal, but will speak to Israel first.
• In ToI, Raphael Ahren writes about a meeting between Biden and Menachem Begin in 1981, during which, according to Begin, he threatened to push for cutting economic aid to Israel and was angrily rebuffed.
• “Maybe it was Begin’s forceful reaction that caused Biden to forever abandon the idea of threatening to cut assistance to the Jewish state. He has since been one of Washington’s most outspoken advocates for US aid to Israel,” he writes. “During the 2020 campaign, Biden was one of the few Democratic candidates who said that they would not use American aid to Israel as a means of pressuring Israel for concessions. (Another one was his eventual running mate, California Senator Kamala Harris).”
• “But over the years, as his exchange with Begin had shown, Biden’s warm feelings and staunch support for the Jewish state didn’t mean he was not at times bitterly critical of some of its policies, especially on the Palestinian question,” he adds.
• Haaretz’s Noa Landau writes that Biden should be expected to take a middle of the road approach to the Palestinians: “Biden and Harris will support the two-state solution, exactly the way that the Trump administration realized in the end that there was no other one; the only question was how much would each side receive. It’s hard to believe that it was actually this administration that would force the two sides to decide. In comparison, the Palestinians will have precious breathing room, which will enable the resumption of security coordination with Israel. The embassy in Jerusalem will not be closed either, as Biden has already announced, but a consulate for the Palestinians and the Palestinian mission in Washington will reopen – another step that could reduce the accumulated tension.”
• As for Harris, in ToI, Jacob Magid writes that she may actually be more hawkish than Biden on Israel.
• “While being an ardent supporter of the two-state solution, Harris has also adopted a favorite talking point of Netanyahu on the matter, telling the Jewish News of California in 2016 that lasting peace requires the Palestinians to recognize Israel as a ‘Jewish state,’” he writes.

5. Oh lord: While far from the coverage garnered by the US election, or even the coronavirus crisis and the opening of stores, many in the Israeli press do cover the untimely passing of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, a former chief rabbi of the UK.

• Kan calls him “an intellectual and a leading Jewish thinker.”
• “Sacks was among the world’s leading exponents of Orthodox Judaism for a global audience. In his 22 years as chief rabbi, he emerged as the most visible Jewish leader in the United Kingdom and one of the European continent’s leading Jewish voices, offering Jewish wisdom to the masses through a regular segment he produced for the BBC,” writes JTA.
• Haaretz writes that Sacks “was known during his career as the ‘Teflon Rabbi,’ overcoming criticism to develop into a popular, media-savvy figure that was able to punch above his relatively small community’s weight. He also faced criticism, not least from fellow Jews, with some referring to him as the ‘rabbi of the goyim,’ in reference to his visible comfort in the company of royalty, prime ministers and journalists and what they saw as his lack of relevancy to Jewish communal life.”
• On Twitter, commentator Tomer Persico writes that Sacks was “a man who managed to do it all. A practicing Jew and a world-class intellectual; a Jew completely rooted to his and his peoples’ traditions and a citizen of the world who managed to connect and build bridges between religions and peoples.”
• Tzur Ehrlich, who translated his many tomes into Hebrew, tells Army Radio that “people heard in his voice the voice of Judaism. Every year he would come out with a new book, and his writings would cover nearly every relevant subject.”