Netanyahu’s spat in Germany’s face

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s diplomatic dust-up with the German foreign minister is all the rage in Wednesday morning’s papers. Netanyahu issued an ultimatum, saying he wouldn’t meet with Sigmar Gabriel if he sat down with members of Breaking the Silence, a group critical of Israel’s actions in the West Bank, and on Tuesday he followed through.

Israel Hayom runs statements by Netanyahu touting his foreign policy chops as its headline, trumpeting the premier’s admonition of the German diplomat as a victory for Israel. It’s the prime minister’s remark after the cancellation was announced, delivered at a Bible trivia contest, that’s deemed headline-worthy by the free daily tabloid. “Foreign relations are expanding — and not on account of submissiveness,” the prime minister-cum-foreign minister is quoted in the headline saying.

Israel Hayom reports that right-wing groups are “outraged” because they asked to meet with Gabriel as well, but were turned down. “Germany only funds those that severely criticize Israel,” one right-wing organization official charges.

Yedioth Ahronoth downplays the spat in favor of yet another look at the shortage of emergency room beds in Israeli hospitals, and how some facilities are putting ER patients in regular wards under the label “increased treatment.” The paper nonetheless calls the incident a “diplomatic fracture” and a “crisis with Germany.”

Needless to say, strained ties with a key European ally — particularly with Germany just a day after Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel — gives the pundits plenty to opine about.

Haaretz doesn’t hold back in criticizing Netanyahu in its daily editorial, saying that the prime minister is harming Israeli interests and has “brought the legacy of Netanyahu governments to an ugly apogee.” His four terms in office are typified, the paper writes, by “governmental incitement, branding as traitors critics of the administration whomever they may be, and critics of the occupation in particular.” Haaretz praises Gabriel for not submitting to Netanyahu’s demand and for meeting with Breaking the Silence, calling it a “basic lesson in democracy for the government of Israel.”

The paper issues a proclamation of its own: “Zionism isn’t the government of rude horrors of [Culture and Sports Minister] Miri Regev and [coalition chairman] David Bitan, the regime of silencing of [Defense Minister] Avigdor Liberman and [Tourism Minister] Yariv Levin, or the colonialist fantasy of [Agriculture Minister] Uri Ariel and [Jewish Home MK] Bezalel Smotrich. Zionism means the guarantee of a Jewish and democratic state, through the end of the occupation.” Breaking the Silence and B’Tselem, it says, exemplify that ideal.

Whereas Haaretz deals with high-flying ideals, Israel Hayom’s Dror Eydar delves into the dirty business of bringing the Holocaust into the diplomatic row with Germany.

“Of all the crises of the world and the region, the foreign minister of more than 80 million Germans decided to meet with an organization of Israeli informants who spout libel about our evil soldiers to the world. He found an appropriate time, between Holocaust Remembrance Day and Memorial Day,” he writes, and turns the diplomatic faux pas on its head. “Does he not have advisers?”

He cites NGO Monitor statistics about how Germany funds left-wing groups like Breaking the Silence and B’Tselem and Palestinian organizations, “some of them anti-Semitic, that embrace Arab terrorism against us.” He also draws a moral equivalency between Israeli groups whose opinions he disagrees with and Palestinian groups that encourage violence, stopping just short of branding Breaking the Silence as an anti-Semitic group that encourages Palestinian terrorism.

He says European aid to such groups is intended “to force Israel to enact policies that run counter to its interests and historic justice.” Eydar says Israel needs to put an end to “this disgrace of European intervention in Israeli politics, as if we were a third-world country.”

In Yedioth Ahronoth, Nahum Barnea says President Reuven Rivlin was right to meet with the German foreign minister and not join the “stupid boycott” instigated by Netanyahu. Breaking the Silence and B’Tselem operate according to the law, he points out, and while you can appreciate or criticize or boycott them, “you can’t prevent foreign visitors from meeting with them.”

“Netanyahu committed the same sin that leftist groups committed: He moved an internal Israeli matter to the province of foreigners,” Barnea says. The crusade against these groups is a manifestation of Netanyahu’s “paranoia,” he says. The prime minister is looking for enemies where they don’t exist, and his cry of “wolf” will cause other governments not to take Israel seriously, “and therein lies an actual danger.”