I’m fine, but you could use some introspection

Before last Yom Kippur, I used this space to publish a vidui, or traditional confession, for journalists, which ranged from coming clean on mundane style issues to more serious flaws in how journalism is done.

A year later, not much has changed. The old liturgy is still relevant, even after a year of “fake news,” of getting half of America wrong, of politicians attacking the media with unprecedented gusto and vice versa. The Hebrew newspapers on the eve of Yom Kippur — when soul-searching is the bon-ton — show that while plenty of accounting is going on, it’s almost all accounting the sins of others.

(And yes, I understand the irony of pointing out someone else’s flaws in pointing out others’ flaws. And I recognize that journalists are supposed to hold those in power to account. I am guilty. I have indeed sinned, against both you, dear reader, and those I criticize in this column, and it is something I will be thinking about.)

Aside from this very column, one of the most blatant examples of telling someone else to introspect, in this case, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is a column featured on Yedioth Ahronoth’s front page by Sima Kadmon, titled “Netanyahu’s account-taking.”

“Do other thoughts ever penetrate the wall of cynicism and constantly working to survive? Like regret… embarrassment, a desire to ask forgiveness,” she writes. “Does he think about repenting? Not in a religious way but ethically? Does it ever happen that the prime minister looks at himself and what happened to him, to the man he used to be?”

Kadmon is far from the only one doing soul-searching ahead of Yom Kippur. Haaretz’s opinion page has two examples, going off the holiday theme. In one, token right-wing columnist Israel Harel says that the left-wing needs to take a hard look at itself, citing an example of former peacenik foreign minister Shlomo Ben Ami who wrote over the Rosh Hashanah holiday that the left can’t bring peace and negotiations with the Palestinians are doomed to fail.

A 180 from that is the paper’s lead editorial, which uses the imagery of the end of Yom Kippur, when the liturgy references gates of mercy closing and locking, to say the same thing is happening to the chances of a two-state solution.

“From the beginning, the central goal of the settlement enterprise, which celebrated its 50th anniversary on Wednesday, was to frustrate the possibility of establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel and destroy any hope of reaching a peace agreement with the Palestinian people. This destructive objective could be within reach. Only the urgent and vigorous mobilization of all forces in Israel and the international community that want a strong and free Israel alongside an independent Palestinian state could avert the evil decree and rescue the most logical, just and feasible solution for ending the occupation and obtaining peace,” the editorial reads, riffing off the Yom Kippur prayers meant to avert other evil decrees. “A moment before the gates close, this is our wake-up call. What is not obtained soon will never be obtained.”

Not all the soul-searching is aimed at other people. Israel Hayom is strangely depoliticized, focusing on the day that has become both a time for introspection and a time to look back at the Yom Kippur War of 1973.

Columnist Haim Shine, who is usually a vociferous critic of the non-Netanyahu-backing corners of the media, uses the occasion not to tell reporters they have soul searching to do (which he has done before), but rather to urge a process of looking inward both for individuals and on a national level. And while he might not do much soul-searching of his own in his column (his biggest takeaway is that the Yom Kippur War proves Israel should never be complacent), he does at least make a case for introspection, though he finds a way to put down other people’s way of searching their souls while he’s at it.

“For thousands of years, Yom Kippur has been a day of taking account. A day in which Jews throughout the generations stood before God and before themselves to look at their actions, to take responsibility and to change their ways for the better. There’s no other nation in the world whose sons and daughters stop their crazy routines for one day, dive deep into themselves and consider the fundamental questions of life,” he writes. “Western culture, under the flag of postmodernism, political correctness, the supremacy of the id, which worships the golden calf, has confounded its ability to navigate the labyrinth of life’s confusions. The simple, natural ability to choose the right values, with basic humanity, is going away. Yom Kippur gives a brief chance to everyone to return to the fundamental truths.”

In Yedioth a column by President Reuven Rivlin also contains a mix of self-retrospection and an urging for others to atone for their sins, which in this case, is a lack of tolerance and coexistence among Israel’s myriad communities.

“True, it’s hard here sometimes. Very hard. But that’s no excuse for the sins we all commit with our lips, with our words. Against whole communities and groups. Against people who don’t think like us. Against people who don’t look like us. Against people who don’t speak like us,” he writes. “On a national level, each one of us needs to ask forgiveness for what we have said and done against our friends. Our national conversation this year veered several times outside the bounds of good taste, of integrity, from what is right and correct.”

As for actual news in the papers, there isn’t an abundance of it. Haaretz’s lead story reports that an ultra-Orthodox group may be contracted by the Education Ministry to train secular teachers and parents on how to interact with their kids.

“In addition to questions about increased religious activity in secular education, which has been hotly debated this past year, there are questions about the contract process. The ministry did not respond to questions,” the paper reports.

Yedioth and Israel Hayom, meanwhile, both play up an attack by a bunch of toughs on hospital medical staff caught on tape, both of them using versions of a “merciless” pun in the headline to go along with the Yom Kippur theme.

In Israel Hayom, nurse Ruti Gilon Elias says that impatient patients are indeed a problem, but they won’t scare her off.

“The daily violence is abhorrent — but the work in the ER is enthralling and interesting. Despite the violence, I have no thoughts of switching units. The main thing in my work was and remains to help and take care of all those who need assistance,” she writes.

Yedioth meanwhile links the incident with another case of a girl on a bus who took a video of herself making fun of black people and put it online, writing that “these are the Israelis that need to do chest-beating,” referencing a Jewish tradition symbolizing repentance ahead of the day of atonement.

“The problem is firstly in education,” a black man identified only as Steven writes in the paper. “When kids are playing on the playground or in the sandbox they don’t see skin color, but if their parents at home tell them not to play with some kid because he’s black, that’s how he’ll grow up. Our situation is much better than it was, but there is still a long way to go.”