Monetary monkey business

With special green headlines in celebration of Shavuot, the Jewish harvest holiday, the Israeli dailies lead with the lengthy, into-the-night debates over the national budget, contrasting the massive austerity plans and budget cuts with the news of the Prime Minister’s residency nearly doubling its spending over the past four years.

The ultra-Orthodox were once again saved from budget cuts, reads the first of Yedioth Ahronoth‘s headlines, as it reports that Finance Minister Yair Lapid “backed down from one of his main election promises” and agreed to continue funding schools which don’t teach core subjects such as maths and English.

A similar headline dominates Israel Hayom‘s front page. While funds to the schools won’t be halted now, Education Minister Shai Piron told the paper, within six months a new law forcing schools to teach a minimal curriculum will be legislated. “A legal problem which surfaced” prevented the cuts from happening now, Piron said, adding it provides the ultra-Orthodox schools time to prepare for the planned overhaul.

Maariv‘s headline leads with the massive hike in expenses at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s residence, but the story, like that of all the papers, focuses on the budget.

“Everyone was bluffing,” writes Maariv’s veteran columnist Amir Rapaport, claiming the end game was known and no real changes were made to the budget. “The Treasury didn’t really expect to cut NIS 4 billion from the Defense Ministry, and the Defense Ministry didn’t really have 3 billion taken,” he explains.

So what happened? Rapaport says there was lots of talk and minor changes. The rest of the money will be transferred to the security establishment in two or three years, “so all they have to do is write post-dated checks and not change much.”

A similar headline leads Haaretz, stating the “compensation” for the budget cuts to the Defense Ministry will start in 2015. Netanyahu’s promise to transfer more and more funds to the IDF starting in a couple of years, the paper reports, noting that by 2019 the defense budget will be some NIS 59 billion — the highest in a very long time.

“Cuts? Not for Netanyahu” reads Yedioth’s second headline, juxtaposing the massive spending in the prime minister’s homes with a picture of former premier Menachem Begin sleeping on a plane, sprawled out on two seats — in clear contrast to recent reports about Netanyahu’s demand to have a specially designed, $127,000 bed on his trip to London.

“I’m angered that something’s been lost in this country,” David Rubinger writes in Yedioth. The columnist claims the notion of “setting a personal example — it doesn’t exist anymore,” and describes former legislators and ministers who would return from a hard week of work to a modest home, or even to their kibbutz were they’d take a turn on kitchen duty. “Everyone’s talking about modesty, modesty, modesty. I say: personal example.”

The Bank of Israel’s announcement that it was lowering the national interest rate by 0.25% and purchasing some 2.1 billion dollars by the end of the year was featured on Haaretz’s front page, but Israel Hayom dedicated almost an entire page to the move, which it called “the commissioner’s dramatic move.”

The trial of former prime minister Ehud Olmert is back in the papers too, though only Haaretz featured it on the front page. “A politician who secretly receives cash — is the heart of corruption,” states the appeal filed Monday by the state prosecutor to the Supreme Court.

Olmert was acquitted of two of three charges in July. He was convicted of the less serious breach of trust, but cleared of larger crimes such as double billing and illegally receiving funds. In the appeal, the prosecution wrote said there was a large gap between the “normative statements by the district court” and the punishment which “is nearly nonexistent.”

The unusual story of a four-year-old Syrian girl secretly brought to Israel for a complex, life-saving heart surgery can be found on Yedioth’s inner pages. Six months ago the girl’s parents took her and fled to Jordan, in the hope of treating her special condition, the article says.

After a Christian organization contacted the Israeli-based “Save A Child’s Heart,” Interior Minister Gideon Sa’ar approved a special pass to treat the girl, who recently underwent the surgical procedure. There was some fear of traveling to Israel, the girl’s mother told Yedioth. “But once I arrived I felt comfortable. The doctors treated my girl and myself nicely.”

Besides monetary issues, the holiday of Shavuot, starting Tuesday evening, was visible on all the paper’s covers — including the headlines printed in green by all the dailies except Yedioth.

Haaretz focuses on the practice of eating dairy products and provides readers with a glimpse into a special cheese ravioli made in Tiberias. Israel Hayom, Yedioth and Maariv all show pictures of children on kibbutzim, dressed in white with crowns made of flowers on their head, in tribute to the agricultural traditions of the festival.