Like a throwing stone

Large wars abroad and smaller wars at home are the order of the day in the Hebrew press Monday, as papers preview Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s trip to Russia to discuss Syrian fighting, as well as grapple with a stone attack on a mother and her baby that somehow ended with no injuries.

(In the interest of full disclosure I will quickly mention that the victims are friends of this writer’s.)

That attack, on a road between the West Bank settlement of Tekoa and Jerusalem Sunday morning, plays on the front pages of both tabloids Yedioth Ahronoth and Israel Hayom, as the press tries to put a human face on the rock throwing phenomenon that has dominated much of the media agenda for a week.

Avi Gams tells Yedioth Ahronoth he was in a car following his wife and baby who were taking a new vehicle to get rock-proof windows, ironically enough, in Jerusalem when they were attacked.

“When we got close to the [Palestinian] village suddenly some 15 masked people jumped out and threw huge boulders,” he is quoted saying. “One stone made it into the car and barely missed the baby seat. Thank God it was a miracle nobody was hurt.”

Israel Hayom also recounts several other rock throwing attacks around Jerusalem throughout the day Sunday, giving commentator Emily Amrousi a chance to wax poetic on the use of the stone as a lethal weapon.

“You don’t need a permit, doctor’s note or training for the deadly weapon aiming to kill me. It’s lying on the mountains and hills that I drive through. You just need a hand, a simple aim – and the murder of a mother and baby is easy and accessible in a way that redefines the word ‘handy.’ Just duck,” she writes. “I don’t know when historians will say the Third Intifada began, but for us, residents of Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, it’s been around us at least since Operation Pillar of Defense three years ago.”

Haaretz dispenses with the sappy stuff and goes straight to the legal battle brewing over what the government and police want to do to crack down on rock throwers and other violent types — namely, shooting at them with live fire and throwing them in jail for longer — and what the attorney general says is actually legal to do.

The paper leads off by reporting that police are planning to begin using sniper fire against Bedouin stone throwers during bouts of unrest in the northern Negev, after Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein okayed their use in life-threatening situations in Jerusalem.

However, the paper also reports that Weinstein is against increasing minimum sentencing rules for stone throwers, and only gave the okay to put those in place for a year as a trial measure to see if they actually work as a deterrent.

In the paper’s op-ed page, Oudeh Basharat comes out solidly against raising punishments for stone throwers, saying making slinging rocks and shooting guns the same offense will end up laying the groundwork for a serious rise in violence and not a calming of the situation.

“If the law for a stone is the same as for a bullet, a stone thrower will say — I might as well go for the bullet. If I get 10 years in prison for throwing a stone, I’ll fire a bullet, and end up with almost the same. And if the soldiers decide to shoot at a stone thrower the way they do at a person firing live bullets, stone throwers will prefer to use a firearm — and that’s how they will deal with the government’s new decision,” he writes.

It doesn’t take a long roll down a slippery slope to get from rocks to bullets to fighter jets armed with laser-guided missiles, and those are the weapons that will be on Netanyahu’s mind as he heads to Russia Monday along with some security brass for a three-hour trip to speak with President Vladimir Putin about the fighting in Syria.

Item number one on the agenda will be making sure that Israeli incursions into Syria to stop Assad from transferring advanced weapons to Hezbollah and other terror activities don’t end up tangling with Russia’s military buildup in the war-torn country, as the last thing Israel wants is to disturb Misha the not-so slumbering bear.

“The Russians are interested in this and Israel even more so. Standing against Russian soldiers and pilots, Israel will act according to Moshe Dayan’s rule: Put your ear to the ground and listen closely. Caution is paramount,” writes Dan Margalit in Israel Hayom. “Yet Israel cannot simply give up on its red lines, even if we’re talking about the Russian army, which isn’t Islamic State or Hezbollah or the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. It’s possible that against Putin’s men Israel has a different set of red lines, but the battlefield won’t remain a clean slate.”

In Haaretz, Amos Harel counsels taking a longer view of the trip and sees Netanyahu’s bid to curry favor with Moscow in the context of faltering ties with Washington.

“Although Netanyahu only last week said ‘commentators’ were wrong when they warned of a collapse of ties between Israel and the United States in light of the Iran nuclear deal, Netanyahu’s current visit to Moscow could be seen as an Israeli jab at Washington. The visit seems to reflect Netanyahu’s lack of faith in the ability or the intent of the United States to protect Israel’s security interests,” he writes. “The visit cannot be considered good news in Washington, which led a campaign of condemnation and sanctions against Moscow over its involvement in the war in Ukraine last summer. Israel did not take a position on that conflict and was duly rewarded by Russia, which issued a moderate response to Israel’s actions in the war on Gaza shortly thereafter.”