How could Notre Dame be falling? 8 things to know for April 16

1. History up in flames: Israeli media gives prominent above-the-fold coverage of the tragic fire at France’s Notre Dame Cathedral, with the same “history up in flames” headline in both of the country’s two main dailies, Yedioth Ahronoth and Israel Hayom.

• Israel Hayom editor-in-chief Boaz Bismuth, who grew up in Paris, weeps over the destruction of the 850-year-old Gothic masterpiece.
• “When I was a child and my parents took me to the site, I always feared the monster figurines known as ‘gargoyles’ that surrounded the structure. For the first time, I felt sorry for those same gargoyles. Who would have believed that I would pray for the safety of those who had been the nightmare of my childhood?”
• In The Atlantic, Rachel Donadio pens a story while watching the Notre Dame’s iconic spire collapse.
• “How could Notre-Dame be burning? How could Notre-Dame, which had survived for eight centuries—survived plague and wars of religion, survived the French Revolution, survived the Nazis—be falling?”
• “I looked around at the faces with me in the crowd. Written on them was sadness, and pain. But also curiosity. A few giggles, as if the enormity of the loss had not yet quite settled,” she adds.
• While some wrote, others sang. Footage on Twitter shows bystanders of all ages singing the haunting song Ave Maria as the cathedral burns in the backdrop.

A group of people outside the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris were recorded singing "Ave Maria" as firefighters worked to try to stop the fire.
MORE >>> https://t.co/4mg77wdRe7 pic.twitter.com/l6OVzXZejB

— Eyewitness News (@WEHTWTVWlocal) April 15, 2019

2. “Tragic, but” trolls: Not all were comfortable joining in the chorus of mourning over the 12th century church, with some in Israel seemingly admonishing those who shed a tear.

• Union of Right-Wing Parties MK Bezalel Smotrich tweets a screenshot of post from Kvutzat Yavne community rabbi Ilay Ofran, adding, “Every word.”
• “This was not the first fire at Notre Dame,” begins Ofran’s post, in which he recalls how nearly 800 years ago Catholic officials gathered at the massive courtyard to burn 12,000 Talmud manuscripts not long before Jews would be expelled from Paris.
• Ofran acknowledges the “regrettable” fire, but chides Jews who chose to mourn “the loss of a place that was a landmark for anti-Semitism.”
• Responding to an art history professor who refers to the fire as a “universal tragedy,” Haaretz’s Chaim Levinson pushes back on Twitter, asserting that the incident was nothing more than the burning of a “religious monument.”
• “Over the last one thousand years, thousands and tens of thousands of buildings have been burned and destroyed, and human civilization has not come to an end. On the contrary. It has regenerated. The fact that one structure has remained since that point in history when humanity went into a documentation frenzy and began to preserving and documenting buildings as if there was some mystical importance in the stones…come on.”
• For what it’s worth, though, much of the building appears to have survived the fire:

https://twitter.com/jameskmcauley/status/1118071550266281985

3. Heartbr…fixing!: The other main headline across all Israeli papers that even earned some coverage outside the Jewish state was the unveiling by scientists at Tel Aviv University of a 3D printed heart that advances possibilities for transplants.

• Yedioth grabs one of the scientists responsible for what was deemed as a “major medical breakthrough” and asks a series of basic questions that some of us might’ve been too shy to ask.
• Tal Dvir explains that all the components of the printed heart were from a real patient’s body. The fat tissues extracted in a biopsy became the ink with which the heart was printed. No ingredient was artificial.
• While Dvir refrains from putting an exact number on it, the professor says these hearts could last for “many years” and even have the capacity of lasting the lifespan of the typical human heart.
• Asked if the breakthrough will prevent people from dying as a result of heart problems, Dvir says “theoretically, but it’s still to early to determine.”
• The scientist predicts that doctors will begin performing 3D heart transplants in the next year or two, starting off on rabbits and rats before moving on to humans in what he hopes will be ten years.

BREAKING: In a #3D #printing process, Israeli #scientists at Tel Aviv University have created a real, live #HEART with cells taken from a human patient. pic.twitter.com/wx7ed4aOUh

— NoCamels – Israeli Tech and Innovation News (@NoCamels) April 15, 2019

4. Annexation nation: ToI’s Raphael Ahren speaks to several ex-diplomats and Israel-policy gurus who in light of the US secretary of state’s shrugging off of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s pre-election West Bank annexation vow, are more convinced than ever that Washington’s effort peace efforts are doomed to fail.

• “The plan seems designed to perpetuate isolated areas of limited Palestinian autonomy under overall Israeli control, including annexed settlements,” former US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro says, adding that the Palestinians and Arab states will immediately reject it.
• Even Washington Institute for Near East Policy executive director Robert Satloff, who is rarely found publicly criticizing Israeli policy, agreed that it’s difficult to reconcile unilateral Israeli annexation of West Bank territory with a negotiated peace accord.
• “In terms of (the Trump administration’s) model of peacemaking… there seems to be a strong component of ‘quality of life’ enhancements (for Palestinians) in the US plan, which is important and useful but should, in my view, have constituted the preparatory work of a peace proposal, not the proposal itself,” Satloff argues.

5. On the table: Apparently keen on competing with colleague Ilhan Omar for who can better anger the American Jewish establishment, freshman Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tells a Yahoo News radio program that cutting US aid to Israel should be a policy consideration on Capitol Hill following Netanyahu’s reelection.

• “I think these are part of conversations we are having in our caucus, but I think what we are really seeing is an ascent of authoritarianism across the world. I think that Netanyahu is a Trump-like figure,” Ocasio-Cortez says.
• “I hope to play a facilitating role in this conversation and a supportive role in this conversation,” she adds.
• The rising political star says there were “many ways” to respond to Netanyahu’s pre-election annexation pledge and protect Palestinian rights, including through supporting a bill that would force the US secretary of state to certify that US taxpayer funds were not being used on the Israeli detention of Palestinian children in the West Bank.
• The Jewish Democratic Council of America criticized her for floating the idea of reducing aid to Israel, telling her to speak with Jewish Democratic House members with a leadership position.
• Some, such as J Street President Jeremy Ben Ami, take the opportunity to laud the remarks.

Nuanced position from @AOC in wake of Netanyahu annexation pledge: open up discussion of US-Israel relations. J Street view: US can assure Israeli security w/o funding activities that run counter to US values, interests such as annexation, demolitions. https://t.co/TiaKIutdvT

— Jeremy Ben-Ami (@JeremyBenAmi) April 15, 2019

6. My Beytenu is your Beytenu: Avigdor Liberman has officially put to bed swirling (yet largely unfounded) speculation that he would, at the very least, prevent the formation of a Netanyahu-led government, telling President Reuven Rivlin that his five-member party will recommend the Likud leader be tasked with forming the next government. And yet, he still plans on putting up a fight in coalition negotiations, in which the secular right-winger will surely spar with the ultra-Orthodox parties.

• “If we’re forced to choose between giving up on the [ultra-Orthodox] draft law to remain in the coalition, or sitting in the opposition, we will go to new elections,” Liberman threatens hours before meeting with Rivlin.
• “We’re trying to support common sense and logic on issues of religion and state. Those who aren’t willing [to do the same] will be responsible for the failure to establish the [next] government,” he says. Though, to be clear, the Haredi party leaders have made the same remarks in reference to Liberman.
• Channel 13 reports though that the Yisrael Beytenu chairman is actually in talks with Likud officials to absorb his faction within the ruling party as has been done in the past. The assessment is that Netanyahu would be more willing to heed to Liberman’s demands after having neutralized him as a political threat.

7. Peace is so yesterday’s news: In his latest Haaretz analysis, Anshel Pfeffer argues that with the near total collapse of the Israeli left, the opposition led by the centrist Blue and White party will lead battles with the coalition over issues pertaining to democracy, not diplomacy.

• “The only issue really setting Blue and White apart from the right wing is its support for the legal system, in the face of the governing coalition’s campaign to curtail the power of the Supreme Court and shield Netanyahu himself from the criminal indictments he faces,” Pfeffer argues.
• The party faces an uphill battle given the fact that most people voted for it simply as a means to oust Netanyahu. However, an opposition built on such a thin principle will be unlikely to survive unless it builds a broader “political and ideological narrative,” he says.

8. Coexistence security threat: A US activist was subjected to a severe and “humiliating” security check at Ben Gurion Airport and prevented from boarding her plane to leave the country with any of her personal belongings due to her work in a Jewish-Arab coexistence group, her organization says.

• The Abraham Fund’s Laura Mandel recalls security officials asking her why “an American Jew should care about Jewish-Arab relations” after she told them about the purpose of her visit.
• This Israel Airports Authority responds saying it “regrets” the passenger’s feelings that she had been mistreated and said its security procedures are directed by the government and are in accordance with the law.