Not quite the whole megillah: 7 things to know for March 21

1. Putting the graft in GrafTech: State prosecutors are mulling opening a criminal investigation into Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s business connections to the submarine scandal, according to reports carried by both of Israel’s major commercial news channels.

• Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit made clear that Netanyahu was not a suspect in the submarine bribery case, known as Case 3000, but the Blue and White party has been trying to hammer his many and sundry connections to the case, and somebody has been leaking information about the fact he supposedly hid his financial interest in Seadrift Coke/GrafTech, which is a major supplier to Thyssenkrupp, the German shipbuilder at the center of the scandal.
• According to Channel 13, the shift comes after prosecutors recently received “dramatic” new information.
• Haaretz reports that questions are being raised about the fact that Netanyahu sold his shares in the company to his cousin Nathan Milikowsky for four times what he paid four years earlier.
• “The questions grow larger once it is taken into account that Seadrift was in financial crisis around the time Netanyahu sold his shares, and went from profitability to loss in the year 2009. The year that Netanyahu sold his shares, SeaDrift’s economic performance was worse by tens of percentage points compared to the year when he bought his shares,” Gur Megiddo writes.
• Perhaps Milikowsky is just on a poor streak with the company? In 2015 he sold GrafTech (which merged with Seadrift) for a pittance of $695 million. Four years later, it’s worth over $4 billion, even after its IPO fell flat.

2. Miki drop: The news comes a day after it looked like part of the prosecution’s existing case against a bunch of Netanyahu confidants and others could fall apart thanks to state’s witness Miki Ganor changing his mind about testifying.

• The Yedioth Ahronoth daily reports that Ganor told associates that he made the decision to retract his testimony because he had falsely testified, and had been coerced by the police to do so.
• “They would brief me on what to say, before every confrontation (with suspects) they would pull me aside. Every time I said I didn’t agree to something, they would threaten me,” he is quoted telling associates. “I won’t testify falsely on the stand and won’t accuse others of taking bribes.”
• He also says he knows his decision could result in him spending a long time in jail.
• Prosecutor say they still have enough to move ahead with the case without Ganor, but in Israel Hayom, columnist Haim Shine asks why they gave him such a sweetheart cooperation deal in that case.
• “It seems the whole point of signing a deal with Ganor was to take down the prime minister, without having to do too much work. An effort that failed big time,” he writes.

3. Too drunk to know the difference: Meanwhile, incitement against Mandelblit is seemingly back in vogue among some.

• Bentzi Gopstein, the head of racist group Lehava and a member of the Otzma Yehudit party, is spotted at a yearly event marking the death of Jewish terrorist Baruch Goldstein wearing a T-shirt reading “Haman-delblit,” with a picture of the attorney general.
• Haman is of course the hapless Persian villain who attempts genocide of the Jews in the Purim story, so comparing a public official to him is… hilarious?

4. Happy Puruz: Thursday actually marks the rare confluence of Purim, which goes by the lunar calendar, and the Persian holiday of Nowruz, which is on the spring equinox, a confluence of Thanksgivukkah proportions for Persian/Kurdish/Afghani Jews.

• Normally, the two holidays means celebrants have “a chance to first feel gratitude for our people’s survival (Purim), and then stuff our faces with various Persian pastries and welcome the spring with Nowruz,” writes Iranian-American fashion blogger Elaine Daneshrad in the Jewish Journal, addressing the identity crisis that results from having both holidays on the same day.
• In actual Iran, foreign minister Mohammed Javad Zarif puts out a video saying that Iran celebrated the holiday 3,000 times and will celebrate many more before the country surrenders to “outside diktats.”
• The comment may be a reference to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who recently threatened Iran that it wouldn’t be celebrating any more Quds Days if it didn’t watch itself.
• Unlike Quds Day, though, the Israeli military actually seems pretty into Nowruz.

Honoring traditions is a beautiful thing! Watch as these IDF soldiers of Persian descent celebrate Nowruz. May the people of Iran reach true freedom in the coming year. How do you celebrate yours? #Nowruz Mubarak pic.twitter.com/wp3EJdCAuU

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— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) March 21, 2019

5. Getting the Golan: Iran was at the top of the agenda for US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo when he met with Netanyahu Wednesday.

• But Netanyahu had other things on his mind, notably US support for Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights, asking Pompeo to recognize the move.
• Pompeo doesn’t answer Netanyahu in public — and speaking to the Kuwaitis beforehand he would only offer that Foggy Bottom’s stance had not changed — but Netanyahu may not have to worry.
• US officials tell The Associated Press that they expect an announcement on US recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights as early as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Washington next week.
• That dovetails with widespread speculation over the past week that US President Donald Trump has been saving the announcement to help Netanyahu win some last minute votes.

6. Looking at the Arab vote: A survey published by US-based academic Shibley Telhami finds that Arab turnout in the April 9 election may be higher than in 2015, despite the dissolution of the Joint List.

• The survey is the first comprehensive one to look at how the Arab public, about a fifth of the country, will vote, which is a pretty big gap to leave.
• Telhami reports that 73.5 percent of Arab respondents say they intend to vote. In 2015, 67-68 percent said they would and 63.5 percent actually did.
• As for who they vote for, the “poll shows that broken-up Arab parties would receive fewer votes together than the Joint List received in the last election: 63 percent compared with about 82 percent in 2015. Most of the rest of the votes would go to centrist and left-leaning Zionist parties,” he writes in the Washington Post.
• And even though Blue and White has said it won’t form a government with the Arab parties, “many Arabs seem to think this is a pre-election posture,” he notes, with 54.1 percent saying there is an opportunity to join together and 73.1 percent backing such a move.

7. Thanks, but no thanks: Telhami tells the New York Times that it seems Netanyahu’s attempts to race-bait the Arabs is helping drive them to the polls.

• “We need to tell Netanyahu, ‘Thank you for your incitement, now go home,’” Afif Abu Much, a political activist from Baqa al Gharbiyye, tells the paper.
• Meanwhile, Yair Katan writes for the Ynet news site that he won’t be going to the polls this year, for the first time, because of his distaste for all the candidates.
• “None of you represent me … All that remains are scandal-mongers who are looking for gossip on their opponents, and PR-driven, inexperienced candidates who tear the country apart with hatred,” he writes. “I have the right to demand a party, a candidate, a name I can vote for wholeheartedly.”