Hooked by scandals, Netanyahu questioned for risking his skin over fishwrap

If you want to keep a secret secret, don’t tell it to a journalist. After days of doing the bare minimum to keep the identities of four people arrested in a graft probe surrounding telecom giant Bezeq under wraps, the press on Tuesday morning reveals the identities, to the surprise of nobody.

The press, though, is very rarely surprising, especially in Israel where ideological lines are nearly sacrosanct. That fact leaves some pundits wondering why Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would endanger his political life to meddle in the fourth estate, marking a theme in Tuesday’s papers.

While the papers play up the “exposition” of the names of the main suspects arrested in the case — Communications Ministry director Shlomo Filber, former Netanyahu spokesman Nir Hefetz, Bezeq owner Shaul Elovitch, and Bezeq CEO Stella Hendler — the real news is that the papers can now talk openly about the case, the suspicions and the suspected links to the prime minister.

Haaretz specifically plays up the arrests of Filber and Hefetz as they both worked for Netanyahu, thus strongly linking him to the case, in which Elovitch is accused of forcing the Walla news site he also owned to give positive coverage to the premier and his wife Sara in return for business favors.

Yedioth also plays up the link to Netanyahu with a headline “Associates arrested,” going on to spell out that they are associates of Netanyahu. That effort includes a chart trying to pin down the tangle of actors and interests that would make “Homeland” agent Carrie Mathison proud, with bureaucrats and bean counters seen as just patsies in a game played by the premier and his Bezeq-owning buddy.

“The revelation of the names of those arrested in Case 4000 and the suspicions surrounding them makes it possible to track the way connections between the Netanyahus and the Elovitches allegedly turned into a quid pro quo, and how they dragged in a series of associates of the prime minister and and Bezeq executives in a whirlwind of suspicions of bribery, fraud and breach of trust, obstruction of trust and receiving favors illicitly,” the paper writes.

Despite normally being protective of Netanyahu, Israel Hayom doesn’t shy away from either the suspicions or the link to Netanyahu. What is noteworthy in the paper, though, is the absence of harsh words for Netanyahu, which the others do not lack.

In Haaretz, columnist Yossi Verter blames Netanyahu’s “sick” obsession with the press for leading him into trouble, and sees his chances for surviving this and his other legal messes as slim to none.

“There’s no way to know how he will act; any speculation is valid. As an act of despair he could call new elections as a way to advance the filing of charges. His opportunity to offer the attorney general a deal – to close the cases and hand down a mild punishment in return for his resignation and abandoning political life – has been squandered. He also missed his chance to advance elections before the cloud hovering above him darkened and turned into a storm,” he writes. “Anything Netanyahu does now will look like a transparent effort to escape the wrath of the law. In any event, his chances of winning an election decreased this week. And even if he should win, who would rush to join a prime minister on borrowed time?”

In Yedioth, columnist Yoaz Hendel, a former Netanyahu aide, also wonders why Netanyahu risked everything for a few nice headlines, before proceeding to answer his own question.

“I have trouble understanding what caused Netanyahu to endanger himself, to cross lines, or to fell himself in matters of media coverage. The media has never managed to influence his voting public to cast ballots differently, if anything the opposite. That’s how it was when it was homogeneous, and I and others voted for Netanyahu, and that’s how it is now with a more varied press, where right-wingers are also media stars,” he writes. “So why did Netanyahu endanger himself? The answer is the pages of history. Netanyahu takes the long view. He understands that the ones who write history are not the Likud’s parliamentarians, Miri Regev, David Amsalem or Miki Zohar, but historians like his late father — the elites on the right and left. That’s what’s pushing him to try and convince them of the greatness of his tenure.”

Despite its straightforward coverage of the affair, Netanyahu can at least always rely on Israel Hayom for a friendly headline or column. In Tuesday’s edition, he is praised for a major gas deal with Egypt, thus proving naysayers wrong.

“As he has so often done in the past, Netanyahu has proved once again that he is a chess player under attack by checkers players who are unwilling to give him credit for what his policies have achieved for Israelis in every aspect of life,” columnist Haim Shine drools.

Papers don’t only spill ink on threats to Netanyahu and the mess he’s gotten himself into, but also that which threatens the whole country, namely Iran.

Haaretz’s lead editorial links the two, warning that Netanyahu’s decision to directly threaten Iran is reckless and could hurt Israel in the long run.

“Does Israel seriously intend to go to war in Syria to prevent an Iranian presence there, or only to carry out focused, limited operations? Does it think such a confrontation might lead to a confrontation with Russia? Does Israel have the American backing that would guarantee it an active military partnership in the Syrian theater? How is Iran expected to respond? Will Iranian missiles fall on Israeli population centers? And above all, is violent conflict the only option Israel has? Netanyahu, who portrays himself as being concerned with ‘life itself,’ has a duty to answer these questions before he embroils Israel in an unnecessary war,” the editorial reads.

In Israel Hayom, the one who needs to answer questions about Israel’s threats on its northern border is the UN, with an item in the paper calling the peacekeepers along the Blue Line transparent observers. The paper accuses the blue helmets of “doing as little as possible in order not to anger Hezbollah head Hassan Nasrallah.”

Columnist Oded Granot writes, meanwhile, that the terror chief has to answer some questions himself in deciding whether war with Israel on behalf of Iran is worth it.

“He knows that involving Hezbollah in any future conflict between Iran and Israel will have devastating results not only for his organization but for Lebanon as well,” Granot writes in Israel Hayom. “Sitting on the fence will serve him best, but that is not really an option for him. Nasrallah’s religious loyalty to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran supersedes any loyalty to Lebanon, no matter how heavy the price it exacts.”