In a sorry state

The Ninth of Av, the saddest day on the Jewish calendar, has transformed from a day focused on mourning and remembrance of the Jewish people’s’ greatest tragedies to one with an aspect of “tikkun,” or fixing society’s ills. One need only glance at the title of the blogs on The Times of Israel, or Jewish writing in any modern publication, to see how a concerted effort is underway to reverse the baseless hatred that the sages say led to the destruction of the Second Temple some 2,000 years ago.

Of course fixing something wrong requires admitting you screwed up in the first place, and a mea culpa, or lack thereof, takes center stage in coverage of whether convicted soldier Elor Azaria will admit he was wrong to kill a wounded Palestinian attacker — a prerequisite if he is to seek clemency from the army.

Both Yedioth Ahronoth and Haaretz focus on the fact that Azaria seems to be waiting for the army to offer a deal before he will consider admitting wrongdoing, instead of saying sorry and then hoping for clemency as is normally done — and both papers are extremely critical of the maneuver.

Yedioth’s front page headline, “IDF: There will be no deal,” quickly shuts the door on the possibility that the army is about to negotiate anything with the convicted killer.

“Even if it’s still not clear what direction the Azaria family will choose to go in, after a military court rejected his appeal and upheld his manslaughter conviction, one thing is sure: Something has gotten mixed up along the way if he thinks he can set conditions for the IDF,” the paper’s Yossi Yehoshua writes. “After he was found guilty a second time for manslaughter by eight judges total — two of whom even wondered why it wasn’t a murder conviction — Azaria is really in no position to demand anything from anyone, except maybe himself.”

On Haaretz’s front page, Amos Harel calls the Azaria family “deaf” in their attempts to get the army to give them a deal, and wonders what legal strategy Azaria lawyer Yoram Sheftel was trying out in deciding to call IDF chief Gadi Eisenkot — the man who will be the first to decide on clemency — “fat.”

“Sheftel seems to have achieved the opposite of what’s good for his client, and not for the first time. After his verbal onslaught, sources in the army announced that there would be no negotiations with Sheftel or the Azaria family, and that to start the clemency process, Azaria would have to take the first steps — waive further appeals, enter prison and submit a request to Eisenkot,” he writes. “Nevertheless, it’s reasonable to wonder whether the army will really stand by its word and refrain from all negotiations.”

The army is likely feeling pressure to grant a pardon, with calls for one coming from scads of politicians, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The lead editorial in Haaretz takes the prime minister to task, writing that he is undermining Eisenkot and the chain of command while pandering to his right-wing voters.

“The judges left no room for doubt, saying Azaria had blatantly violated the IDF’s rules of engagement. Yet this did not stop the prime minister from proposing a pardon for a person who undermined the ethos of the army that defends the country Netanyahu leads,” the editorial reads. “One by one, Netanyahu is sawing off the governmental branches on which both a democratic state and his own government rest.”

If one reads Israel Hayom, one might think there’s a good shot of the army caving. The paper quotes Sheftel, who says he will appeal to the Supreme Court but is leaving the door open to going to Eisenkot or President Reuven Rivlin for clemency if he thinks “there is a good chance they will come toward him.” The paper leaves out the army saying it ain’t gonna happen, but does quote heavily from Azaria’s father Charlie, who continues to defend his son and says “if there were justice in the court he would have been cleared.”

As for the possibility of an apology, he says it would not be because his son did anything wrong, but over “the final result and in order to preserve the unity of the country and minimize the damage it caused to the state and army.”

The paper’s lead story, though, deals with what it calls the “Iranian connection” to unrest over the Temple Mount last week — in the form of food packages for protesters sent by a group with ties to an Iranian youth group. The paper reports that the Palestinian Authority is fuming over the Iranian interference, and columnist Eyal Zisser writes that Tehran’s influence, coupled with similar Turkish meddling, should have Arabs worried.

Zisser calls the countries’ moves “a cynical attempt to fuel the fires on the Temple Mount so as to garner support for megalomaniac desires to gain influence and control over the Arab sphere stretching east of Iran and south of Turkey.”

In Yedioth, religious comedian/columnist Hanoch Daum also has the Temple Mount on his mind, but not because of Arab meddling– rather over tears in Jewish unity, par for the course on the Ninth of Av.

Daum notes that like most Israelis, he is cool not having a Holy Temple or bringing sacrifices, but the day of mourning still hits him.

“Despite the fact that I don’t miss the Holy Temple, the baseless hatred that preceded its destruction I feel every day, and it’s growing, deepening its hold on our conversations, and every side in Israeli society is equally guilty,” he writes.

While the Ninth of Av is known as a bad day for Jews throughout the centuries, its the woes of the non-Jews running the White House that catch the attention of the press in Israel, after the firing of communication director Anthony Scaramucci after only 10 days.

Echoing the US media, Yedioth compares the Washington drama to a reality show and asks “Who will be the last survivor” in its headline.

Columnist Alon Pinkas writes that he has little faith in Trump’s attempts to deflect claims of chaos in the White House.

“The chaos in the White House isn’t only unprecedented since presidents and their surroundings started to be documented in great detail, it also broadcasts a picture of a White House that is totally dysfunctional. The whole world stands and marvels as it loses faith in the power of the US,” he writes. “Scaramucci, it must be admitted, was entertaining, amusing and might have even been good at his job. But you don’t help yourself when you are more entertaining and amusing and get more coverage than the president. Especially this president. Scaramucci’s problem wasn’t his foul, crude, blunt and curse-filled language, but the fact that he transgressed the biggest sin of all: He stole the media spotlight from Trump. Trump won’t stand for a bigger story or ego than his in his ecosystem. Mooch was not the story. He put a spotlight on the story and the story is chaos.”