Northern lights and southern (Judea) fights

Soccer is on the front pages again today for the second time this week, but this time it’s not for someone beating up someone else. All four papers are filled with celebratory pictures of no-longer down-and-out Ironi Kiryat Shmona making history by winning the League Cup for the first time ever. League championship trophies usual warrant small blurbs in the bottom left corner, but for the small-market team to overcome all odds and beat all the perennial powerhouses for the honor is finally a story worth celebrating, in a place where good news is often hard to come by.

Most headlines riff on the fact that Kiryat Shmona is located in the north (way in the north on the border with Lebanon): “Stars of the north,” calls out Yedioth Ahronoth, while Israel Hayom has them as the “Kings of the north.” Meanwhile, Maariv screams “Kiryat Shmona champs,” in huge block letters, while Haaretz goes with the stately, and small, “History in Israeli soccer.”

Israeli commentators fall over themselves to write the most saccharine words about the team-that-could from a town which is usually in the news for budget shortfalls and Katyusha attacks. “Kiryat Shmona is proof that the romance hasn’t disappeared in an age of big money,” writes Avi Ratzon in Maariv. “And also that dreams do come true.”

Yedioth’s sports section is led with a massive picture of celebrations and just the word “History,” and a cliché-filled op-ed from Sharon Davidovich on the inside.

“In another 20 years, when your kid or grandkid asks ‘What happened in 2012?’ All you’ll be able to tell him is: Dear child, if you could have been there, to see the small city from the periphery win the biggest championship. To see from up close the tactical supremacy of [coach] Ran Ben-Shimon, to understand the wonderful management style of philanthropist Izzy Shartziki… Uchh, what a championship it was. What a shame afterward everything went back to how it was before.”

The other story dominating headlines is the Beit Hamechpela house occupied (take that how will you will) by a group of settlers in Hebron. The settlers were told they had until 3 p.m. today to get out of Dodge, but after a phone call from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Defense Minister Ehud Barak, the evacuation may have been put off, depending on who you ask.

“You need to give them time to find a legal process in order to determine who owns the property,” Netanyahu reportedly told Barak, according to Yedioth, which reports on its front-page headline that the order has been canceled, but pulls back from that in the actual story. Haaretz, lover of the A vs. B formulation, frames the fight as Netanyahu vs. Barak and writes that while Netanyahu instructed that the order be pushed off, it seems it will go ahead as planned. Maariv and Israel Hayom follow suit.

Writing in Israel Hayom, Nadav Shragai thanks the settlers for bringing Hebron, which Ben-Gurion called Jerusalem’s sister, back into the conversation. “The commandment to ‘tell your children,’ that will soon be fulfilled at the seder table, is tied to today in that it shouldn’t seem that the story of the Jewish people began with the Zionist movement and the Jewish state. The roots are in the Cave of the Patriarchs, Rachel’s Tomb and the Temple Mount. And the Hebron settlers are owed a big thanks for reminding us of that once in a while.”

Left-wing Likudniks and social hitchhikers

Feeding the poor for Passover is an annual tradition as cherished as stuffing your face with matza and macaroons, and while most years feature feel good/bad stories about all the organizations doing their best to provide the poor with some holiday rub, this year there is a twist. Haaretz goes back to the tried and true A vs. B formulation: “[Social affairs Minister Moshe] Kahlon vs. food distribution nonprofits: [They have] massive salaries at the expense of the poor.”

Why the fuss? Kahlon came out yesterday with a new plan to hand out food to the needy which would bypass the NGOs, which he says are just out for a quick buck and a photo op. “I oppose this method of throwing boxes at people, taking pictures of them, getting them to stand in line, and soliciting donations at the expense of these unfortunate people,” he told Army Radio. His words are indeed backed up by pictures in all the papers of people standing in line, getting food from boxes.

Kahlon instead advocates a system giving the poor pre-loaded “debit cards” for use at the supermarket, which would cut down on embarrassment and hassle of going to the groups for handouts.

Haaretz’s Avirama Golan, normally no fan of any Likudnik, actually likes the cut of Kahlon’s jib: “The minister is espousing a traditional left-wing position, unlike his predecessor, Laborite Isaac Herzog, who championed letting nonprofit activity take the place of state support.”

Yedioth reports that the summer’s tent protests may not be waiting for the summer to return. Quoting the head of the Joint Camp protest movement, who says thousands of people around the country are raring to restart last summer’s protests, the paper reports that the tents will begin popping up in public spaces around the country over Passover.

And as anybody who follows the news knows, the first one to put up a tent will be newly-crowned Kadima leader Shaul Mofaz, who took his place at the head of the opposition Monday. In Israel Hayom, Shaul Mofaz’s welcome plays second fiddle to Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar’s attack on him at the Knesset Finance Committee meeting, which is quoted nearly in full. “You’re a social bandwagon hitchhiker,” Sa’ar yelled out to Mofaz, the former Mr. Defense who has become Mr. Social Protest. “Your social legislation this term has been bupkus. You think they’ll latch onto your slogans now?”

Contracting cousins

In Maariv’s op-ed section, Yehuda Sharoni writes about the epidemic of nepotism in the country, which has taken hold of government companies as well as private firms. “The phenomenon of nepotism encircles most state-run and government companies. The numbers of relatives at government bodies exposes the extent of the plague: 39.7 percent of workers at the Ashdod Port were hired on the merit of a relative; 220 of the workers at Israel Railways, according to a 2005 State Comptroller’s report, making up 13 percent of the workers, got there because of family ties.… 24 senior officials at the Airports Authority work every day with 42 of their relatives.”

In Haaretz, former foreign minister Moshe Arens writes that Mofaz’s victory may mean the beginning of a two-party system in Israeli politics, a welcome development, he says, in that it would end the talk of land for peace: “It was the ‘two-state solution,’ at the forefront of Israeli political discourse for a number of years, that lost. It was the offer of more concessions to the Palestinians, whose most prominent advocate was former Kadima chairwoman, MK Tzipi Livni, that went down in defeat. It is not that the majority of Israelis oppose the two-state solution. On a number of occasions they have indicated that they would accept it — gladly or reluctantly — if it were to bring peace. The problem is that they have been disappointed again and again, leaving them wondering whether there is anybody to make peace with.”