How long till Election Day?
Whether the US elections have been determined is a matter of perspective, depending on which Hebrew paper you read
In what seems to have become a Friday ritual, Israel’s two most widely distributed tabloid papers lead with coverage of the ever-turbulent 2016 US election season, each featuring an article more telling of their respective political leanings rather than of the actual situation on the ground in the land of the free.
Yedioth Ahronoth‘s Orly Azoulay, one of the paper’s US correspondents, paints an extremely favorable image of her experiences covering a political gathering in North Carolina, where First Lady Michelle Obama pumped up the crowd for Democratic presidential nominee and fellow FLOTUS Hillary Clinton. The gathering was the two women’s first joint appearance on the campaign trail, and the event drew some 11,000 people, one of largest crowds of Clinton’s run.
“While Clinton may be the next president of the United States,” Azoulay writes, sticking to Yedioth’s script on the issue, “in this campaign, Michelle Obama is the queen.”
Azoulay describes how Clinton and Obama joined hands in a display of “womanhood power that has never before been seen on the American political stage.” Azoulay — and Yedioth by extension — make sure to repeat and stress that from their perspective, the race for president is already decided, and that Clinton for all intents and purposes has secured her ascent to the White House.
Over on the other side, the Sheldon Adelson-owned Israel Hayom — which in recent months has all but full-out endorsed Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump — exclaims that counter to reports in most American news outlets, a Fox News poll indicates the billionaire businessman still has a fair shot at winning the elections. “The gap is closing, everything is still open,” reads the insistent headline. And while (to its credit) Israel Hayom does acknowledge an AP poll giving Clinton a 14-point lead, reporter Yoni Hersch quickly dismisses that survey, stating that according to the polling aggregate on RealClearPolitics, the chasm has indeed narrowed.
Hersch attributes this apparent shift to “embarrassing” information released by WikiLeaks concerning Hillary Clinton, as well as a hike increase in the price of Obamacare premiums.
Over at Haaretz, the focus is on more local affairs, with the lead article covering the very real possibility that the Palestinian Authority rule in the West Bank will collapse, and Israel will have to deal with new and potentially dangerous scenarios as a result. Military correspondent Amos Harel writes that the IDF has already drafted a detailed plan to deal with any looming crises. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, according to Harel, is increasingly worried about his political and personal rival Mohammed Dahlan seizing control of the West Bank. Dahlan, a leading Fatah activist who is backed by prominent figures within the Egyptian government and elsewhere in the Arab world, fell from favor with Abbas after the Gaza Strip was seized by the Hamas terrorist group in June 2007.
On Thursday, a slew of Palestinian officials accused Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman of sowing strife among Palestinians, while trying to dethrone Abbas by boosting his rivals. Earlier this week, in an interview with Al-Quds (his first-ever attempt to speak directly to the Palestinians), Liberman accused Abbas of corruption and of shying away from the tough decisions necessary to achieve peace. Since August, Abbas has dismissed five leaders from his party over their support for Dahlan. He also recently fired the Fatah spokesperson in Jerusalem, Rafat Alayan, for the same reason.
Haaretz also reports that fact that Ari Shavit, its prominent columnist and author of the bestselling “My Promised Land,” confirmed that he is in fact the prominent Israeli journalist accused of sexually assaulting an American Jewish reporter in 2014. Haaretz, Shavit’s newspaper of choice throughout his career, had previously avoided publishing any details regarding the issue, even as reports began circulating in other Israeli media outlets. On Thursday, Shavit apologized to Danielle Berrin “from the bottom of my heart” but insisted the incident — in which she says he grabbed her — was all down to a “misunderstanding.”
Berrin a senior writer and columnist at the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, published a column last week detailing how an unnamed Israeli journalist, whom she described as a husband and father, assaulted her and tried to persuade her to come up to his hotel room during an interview in 2014. Shavit identified himself and wrote in response that, “I sadly understand that I misconstrued the interaction between us during that meeting.” He stated that: “Until I read the article she published this week, I felt we had had a friendly meeting that included, among other things, elements of courtship. I did not for a moment believe that this was sexual harassment. But what I saw as courtship, Berrin saw as inappropriate behavior and even harassment on my part.”