Of censors and sensors

Israeli papers went to bed Sunday night with editors knowing there was major news that would emerge sometime in the next few hours, that they were not allowed to report — the stabbing attack at the Israeli Embassy compound in Jordan.

The incident was being talked about among Israelis in the know from the late afternoon, and it had hit the international media by nightfall, making it the latest incident to highlight the opaque and antiquated rules of Israel’s military censor.

By now, Israelis have gotten creative at finding ways to skirt the censor’s rules, and Sunday was chockablock with news in any case, between continuing tensions over the Temple Mount, the burial of three victims of the Halamish stabbing attack, and the death of Israeli pop star Amir Fryszer Guttman, that allowed them to get away with a little loosey-goosey.

Hinting at the incident in Jordan, the top headlines of both Yedioth Ahronoth and Israel Hayom note things going less than swimmingly with Amman, while refraining from saying exactly what is happening. “Ties put to the test,” reads the headline on Israel Hayom. “Tensions with Jordan,” reads Yedioth’s. But the jig is up once someone tries to find out more. Israel Hayom’s series of stories supposedly about tensions with Jordan don’t even mention the other country. Yedioth Ahronoth does a bit better, writing that Israel’s security cabinet was discussing Jordan’s role in the Temple Mount tensions.

“Jerusalem accuses Jordan, which has a formal role at the Temple Mount as part of the peace treaty with Israel, of acting like a populist in coming out against the metal detectors, which they themselves signed off on,” the paper reports.

Haaretz does away with the silly hinting games and gets straight to the point with a lead headline reporting, “The cabinet discusses the escalation; Abbas: The security cooperation will also be cut,” with the reader left to fill in the blank on what is being escalated (likely not stairs at a mall) and what else Abbas cut off.

The fine print answers those questions, leading off with clashes and Abbas’s total freeze of contacts with Israel.

“A senior Palestinian official explained to Haaretz that Abbas is disappointed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s conduct since the two of them spoke following the shooting of the Israeli policemen at the Temple Mount. As he tells it, Netanyahu promised him that there would be no change in the status quo, and the next day metal detectors were installed and the Israelis didn’t agree even to take them down before Friday prayers last weekend,” the paper writes.

Columnist Amos Harel notes in the paper that Israeli officials are trying to find their way out the morass, as fears of a holy war mount.

“The Shin Bet security service and Military Intelligence say the scope of the incitement and its seriousness are both markedly greater than what was seen in 2015,” he writes. “This is also the reason Israel is now considering a way out of the crisis that will include removing the metal detectors from the Temple Mount, despite the tough public declarations. Between the lines, in off-the-record conversations, even some of the ministers admit this. There is nothing holy about metal detectors, one of them said. The security cabinet, which convened Sunday, heard a report about the contacts being held, with the aid of several Arab countries and the limited involvement of the United States. Calming things down will require an agreement with the Waqf that the Israeli government can present as a reasonable compromise which doesn’t involve humiliating capitulation.”

The idea of saving face seems silly when putting freshly slain bodies in the ground, which is possibly why the tabloids don’t accompany their reports from the funerals of the Halamish victims with talk of political maneuvering (though they did a day earlier). Instead, the reports from the Modiin cemetery and the families homes are filled with sadness and pathos.

“One after another, the mourning family members told of the grandfather Yosef who was always smiling with a good heart, of the quick-thinking of daughter Chaya, who escaped from the home and whose screams alerted the neighbors so they could neutralize the terrorist, and of the bravery of Elad, who fought the terrorist so he would not ascend to the second floor to massacre his wife and five children hiding in one of the rooms,” both papers report.

Israel Hayom gathers together a couple of people who lost family members in similar attacks — Haim Fogel and Rina Ariel, to pen their own thoughts on the tragedy.

“Less than a year ago, a 17-year-old kid murdered my daughter Hallel in her bed, and on Friday a 19-year-old youth killed three people in their home,” Rina Ariel writes. “Tomorrow, another bored kid hearing [this incitement] will wonder ‘why not’ and go out to kill. We need to make sure it does not pay so something like this does not happen again. The pain and mourning isn’t enough, we need to take a public stand that terror needs to come with a heavy financial price so nobody will want to do this.”

Meanwhile, as happens any time there is a terrible attack like this, pundits weigh the pros and cons of instituting a death penalty. On the no-side, Haim Shine points out that the terrorists want to die and it will therefore not have a deterrent effect.

“The worse punishment is to leave them sitting in jail,” he writes, “cut off from the virgins waiting for them above.”