Of big fish and West Bank bus-blunders

It’s an unfortunate truth that pictures and reports of bombing scenes and bombers are not a rare sight on the pages of Israel’s newspapers of record. But the orange-clad suspected bomber gracing the A1s on Wednesday morning is set apart by the fact that this time, for Israelis, the bomber is not a Palestinian terrorist or some other regional foe, but rather a Jewish underworld crime boss.

News reports on the breaking open of the 12-year-old case, in which three bystanders were killed in a Tel Aviv assassination attempt gone awry, is at the top of the news agenda, though political and diplomatic affairs also compete for attention – including a blockbuster report by Haaretz on the introduction of segregated buses for Palestinians and Israelis in the West Bank (since reversed).

With the underworld raid that broke the story wide open already having been reported in Tuesday’s papers, Wednesday are only able to bring the story forward by naming names, after a gag order on the case was lifted.

Among those names is Israel’s own John Gotti, Yitzhak Abergil, who finds himself in shackles and on the front page of all three major dailies after police took him on the obligatory perpwalk for his arraignment.

Yedioth reports that much of the case is built upon the testimony of at least two state’s witnesses, including one who took part in the bombing.

As for Abergil’s claims of innocence as expressed by his lawyer at a remand hearing Tuesday, the paper gives it all of three words, buried at the bottom of the article.

But why presume innocence when guilt seems to fit so much better? The tabloid reports that nearly all the members of the Lod-based Abergil family — which includes Yitzhak’s brother Meir, who was arrested and extradited from the US to Israel in 2011 – are involved in a life (or death) of crime.

“The brother Yaakov, a property thief jailed for trying to smuggle heroin, was killed in 2002 at point blank range in a criminal assassination,” the paper writes. “The brothers Yaish and Avraham (Abie) were convicted of defrauding an elderly person and afterward Yaish was found dead in his prison cell; his family says he was killed but the police say a bag of drugs in his stomach exploded. Yet the two stars of the family, who earned many negative headlines over the years, are Meir and Yitzhak, who have been in and out of prison in the US and Israel.”

While Yedioth places the Abergil arrest in a lineup of other big fish caught by the police in recent years, in Israel Hayom, former police commissioner Yossi Sadbon writes that the sheer size of this case, with dozens of suspects rolled up, sets it apart from other major underworld busts, and this may be only the start.

“I don’t remember in the police a mega-case like this, which required a massive effort by hundreds of investigators and detectives and technological tools, which produced a wave of over 40 arrests over local and international affairs. From my knowledge of investigations of this type, we can expect it to continue with probes into more people involved,” he writes.

Yet the paper also contrasts its coverage of the police’s big win with another major case that’s enthralled the press over recent weeks and is casting the police in a less benign light.

Israel Hayom reports that the impossibly complicated case, in which former district attorney Ruth David is suspected of leaking information to attorney Ronel Fisher, who is being investigated over bribery allegations along with former police official Eran Malka, has been broken open. The tabloid writes that Malka is offering his testimony, which the paper terms “Pandora’s Box,” in a plea deal, and that it includes allegations of corruption among the 5-0.

Commentator Dan Margalit compares the affair to other watershed events that caused other Israeli institutions to do serious soul searching and introduce reforms, and says the police must now take the same steps.

“At this stage it seems those in blue are thunderstruck and confused. They also feel that something is rotten in their own ranks. But various organizations have experienced mudslides in their management like this for many years — the army’s intelligence apparatus from [the] Yom Kippur [War] and the Shin Bet in the Bus 300 affair. And also the police will see the light if they busy themselves now without mercy on themselves in taking care of this root canal,” he writes, echoing words used by police chief Yohanan Danino when he addressed a different sordid affair in the police earlier this year (but who can keep track).

While the police and mafiosi are acting like blunderbusses, Haaretz reports Defense Minister Moshe (Bogie) Ya’alon is turning the high art of transportation planning into a diplomatic hash job, de facto segregating Israeli settlers and Palestinian laborers on buses traveling between Israel and the West Bank . The paper reports that Palestinians who enter Israel via four crossing points will now have to return via the same crossing points, and not any way they please, which is how it has been for years, as part of a pilot program to last three months.

According to the report, the new rules could lengthen the commute of certain Palestinians by some two hours, but was sought by some settlers who felt uncomfortable traveling together with their swarthier cousins. Despite that rock solid reasoning for impinging on others’ freedom of movement, people are still somehow crying foul, Haaretz reports (albeit with less sarcasm).

“If the Defense Ministry has in fact begun to implement a separation plan on buses to the West Bank, beyond the fact that the plan was implemented clandestinely out of fears that we might take steps to prevent it, this is a shameful and racist measure that causes Israel to deteriorate to a low moral point,” the paper quotes lefty lawyer Michael Sfard saying. “We will fight this step with all legal means available.” (Indeed by Wednesday afternoon, Netanyahu had called it off.)

The paper also adds its latest installment to a series on ministers we love to hate, devoting its main editorial to new culture minister Miri Regev, who is seen by many as a right-wing demagogue whose idea of culture is not unlike Archie Bunker’s.

The broadsheet quotes Regev at length, concluding from her remarks that she is “someone with a simplistic view of reality who lacks a comprehension of basic concepts in the areas for which she is responsible.”

“Upon taking office, Regev said, ‘If it is necessary to censor, I will censor.’ A culture minister who believes ‘it is necessary to censor’ and is willing to do so is a fearful thing to contemplate, and the worry is that she could do great damage to her domain,” the paper writes.