Hugs instead of drugs

Subtlety is so overrated.

As the Oren Hazan saga faded into so much background noise, the signal was still pulsing loud and clear in the newsroom of tabloid Yedioth Ahronoth, which does little to hide its disgust for the allegedly debauchery-loving lawmaker, even as other major dailies switch gears to matters maybe a little more pressing than a freshman Knesset member’s pimping and meth habit.

You know, little stuff like spying on allies and a war crimes case.

What has Yedioth up in arms on Thursday morning isn’t Hazan’s past, which is more checkered than Gene Rayburn’s wardrobe, but the warm welcome the MK received at a Likud central committee meeting Wednesday night.

“Drugs, casino, whores? Not everyone is bothered: Deputy Knesset speaker Oren Hazan was received with hugs and cheers at the Likud central committee meeting yesterday,” reads the front page of Yedioth, which dubs him “King of the central committee.”

The epithet is not totally unwarranted, given the paper’s description of his celebrity-esque entrance into the hall.

“An hour later, when it seemed like the meeting would close out with a whimper, a sound was suddenly heard from outside the hall,” the paper reports. “The sound became a loud din and MK Oren Hazan – number 30 on the list and last in the Knesset faction, but number 1 in media interest he has aroused – arrived at the head of a large entourage of supporters, accompanied by journalists and photographers, and returned color to the cheeks of the Likud members.”

But the paper reports not everybody was happy to see the bad boy of the month showing his face. “Most central committee members and most Likud members are embarrassed that he is our representative in the Knesset,” one person at the meeting is quoted saying. “He’s nothing more than a media junkie.”

Yedioth isn’t the only one still holding onto the Hazan scandal. A picture of the lawmaker holding an “I love you” balloon and looking forlorn graces the front page of Haaretz. The broadsheet also tries to one-up Yedioth in the hit you over the head with a hammer department on its op-ed page, which features a cartoon of Hazan doing a line of crystal meth off a casino table, while a busty young lass looks on, and a play on an old Israeli ad campaign that’s honestly not funny enough to bother explaining.

The paper’s lead story also won’t have many in Israel ho, ho, ho-ing. Haaretz reports that the International Criminal Court in The Hague is sending envoys to the region on June 27 to probe war crimes claims made by Palestinians against Israel.

Undermining the paper’s front-and-center placement of the story, though, the report notes that sources in both the ICC and Israel say the delegation is nothing to get one’s panties in a twist about.

“A senior Israeli official who is dealing with the matter said such a visit is a routine part of conducting such preliminary examinations. ‘Nothing about it testifies to the progress of the examination or its pace,’” the paper reports.

In Israel Hayom, allegations that Israel spied on the Iranian nuclear talks via a virus infecting computers at hotels where negotiations took place takes top billing. Dubbing the affair “Agent Virus,” the paper offers no new reporting beyond what was in the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere the day before.

But commentator Boaz Bismuth, while noting that he really doesn’t know malware from Montana about who was behind the virus, asks if anyone can really blame Israel if it indeed was trying to gather data about the negotiations, as everyone else is doing.

“There are a lot of ways to gather data and nobody is naïve enough to think that in talks started in 2003 and restarted in 2009, the sides aren’t trying to gather info on each other,” he writes. “Even among the powers, all the participants want to know what the Chinese, or Russians or French, and definitely, definitely the Americans, plan to do in the future. Everyone, of course, wants to know what the Iranians are doing, and the Israelis already taught the world more than once about how to obtain information.”

Viruses may work for nuclear talks, but as Persico taught us, cleaning up a dirty police force takes good old fashioned wiretaps, stool pigeons and Whatsapp records, and Israel’s men in blue are in need of more than a little scrubbing.

The conviction of former top police official Eren Malka for taking bribes allows Yedioth to blow the lid off rampant corruption in the police force.

The paper publishes a full page of transcripts between Malka, top police official Bruno Stein, also being investigated, hot shot lawyer Ronel Fisher, also being investigated, and an unnamed state’s witness, revealing a tale of corruption and woe the likes of which this country has never seen.

Or so the paper makes it seem. In reality, the transcripts are about as exciting as records of conversations of people making dinner plans, like this exciting exchange between the unnamed witness, working on behalf of Fisher, and Stein to plan a suspected trip for bribe taking purposes. Pass the popcorn and get ready for a wild ride!

“Witness: Good morning: do you have dates you want to travel?

Stein: Good evening. I thought you would give me the dates that he’s available and I would coordinate. How are you?

Witness: Everything is good. How are you?

Unnamed party: Do you want to travel over the weekend? For how many days is the trip?

Witness: Good morning commander, I just wanted you to know your daughter didn’t call. Have a nice day.”