On the fast train to troubletown

A massacre occurred near Israel’s doorstep Friday, with over 305 people killed while at prayers in a Sinai mosque, but Sunday’s Hebrew papers are focused mostly on the bloodless loss of one man, Health Minister and United Torah Judaism head Yaakov Litzman, slated to resign his ministerial post Sunday in protest over a different kind of desecration of God (in his eyes): railway work done on Shabbat.

While the carnage in Egypt also makes front pages, Liztman’s expected departure leads all three major papers Sunday morning, with enough puns and references to both trains and Litzman’s ultra-Orthodox-ness to give even this pun-loving writer pause.

But even as the papers play up Litzman leaving the coalition, they also temper their reports with the idea that he may not be gone long, thanks to efforts to woo him back.

Both Haaretz and Israel Hayom note in their top headlines that Litzman quitting will be accompanied by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushing forward with laws meant to minimize the amount of work allowed to be done on the Jewish day of rest “in order to prevent the coalition crisis around the issue of Shabbat from worsening,” in Haaretz’s words.

And that’s not all.

“The UTJ faction will stay for now in the coalition. One of the scenarios is that Litzman will hand in his resignation, but Netanyahu won’t appoint a replacement. In the meantime, Litzman’s staff in the Health Ministry is staying put in the hopes that in the near future, once Shabbat laws are passed and the train work is finished, Litzman will be able to return to his post.”

As a sign of the government’s willingness to play ball on the issue, Israel Hayom, seen as a mouthpiece for Netanyahu, runs a column by Mati Tuchfeld defending the demand to keep the Sabbath day holy, even at the expense of democracy.

“If the State of Israel is to be defined, impossibly, as Jewish and democratic, with each side trying to enlarge their side and minimize the other, then of course it’s on the prime minister to try and expand the ‘Jewish’ side as much as he can. Whoever attacks Netanyahu for doing it and sees it as him giving to Haredi pressure, would do so anyway on any issue that at its essence is relevant to the other camp,” he writes, confusingly.

Not surprisingly, pundits in the other papers do not agree that Netanyahu is not caving to ultra-Orthodox pressure, and predict big trouble for both the Haredi community and the government.

Yedioth Ahronoth leads off its paper with a caricature of the ultra-Orthodox Litzman and a column by Nahum Barnea titled with a play on an Aramaic saying for “heaven forfend.” Barnea reckons Litzman’s ‘I’m going, but not going shtick’ is about the dumbest thing since Black Friday in a country that doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving (or have a tradition of Hanukkah presents — my own take, by the way).

Barnea calls the crisis “idiotic, the caprice of a rabbi who missed the train of time, a small gadfly in a disconnected Hasidic court,” and says the Litzman is asking for too much and the whole government is going to have a major mess on its hands.

“Now he wants both sectoral benefits for the Haredi community and also to influence the non-Haredi sphere. A pass from the IDF and halting train work and closing markets on Shabbat. The fact that the [current] government has given the ultra-Orthodox more than any other government just increases the appetite,” he writes. “It’s overdue for an explosion, since non-Haredim also have interests and an agenda and a vote. If they don’t do the rail work on Shabbat, they will stop the trains on Sunday, and the soldiers’ protests will reach all the way to their parents’ votes.”

Haaretz’s Yossi Verter also thinks the crisis is real, and may be spectacularly bad for Netanyahu and his government.

“On Sunday, Litzman will submit his resignation from the cabinet, having been forced to do so by [his spiritual leader]. He knows this is liable to be the first fallen brick that ultimately brings down the wall of the coalition for which he thanks God daily,” Verter writes. “If some solution enabling him to return to the Health Ministry isn’t found in the next few weeks, his resignation is liable to herald the beginning of the end of the fourth Netanyahu coalition.”

In the same paper, though, Anshel Pfeffer reads the crisis and the fact that not even the Haredi world is united over it as a sign of a “deeper malaise” on the ultra-Orthodox street.

“The Haredi community is comprised largely of hundreds of thousands of young men and women, trying to build their new families while being cut off from the opportunities the Israeli economy affords bright and eager people like them,” he writes. “Despite the rabbis’ edicts against using the internet, many of these young Haredim are fully exposed to the world outside and yearn to have some connection with it, especially through their workplaces. Secular Israelis may be angry at Haredi attempts to impose religious strictures on public life, but the real rage is the one that is building up among young Haredim at their leaders, rabbis seventy years older than them, who have no comprehension of the obstacles facing them.”

Netanyahu and his ultra-Orthodox partners aren’t the only helpless ones in the face of fanatics (not to compare the ultra-Orthodox to Islamic State terrorists). As the papers look at Egypt and the massacre there, they see a leadership in Cairo unable to do anything to stop the bloodshed, describing it in almost pathetic terms.

In one column, Yedioth’s Smadar Shefi says while only some 17-25 attacks have been reported since President Abdel-Fatah el-Sissi’s predecessor Mohamed Morsi took power in 2013, the real number across Egypt is 1,165. (Her assertion on the first number is plainly incorrect. Hundreds of attacks have been reported on since 2013.)

Relatives of the victims of the bomb and gun assault on the North Sinai Rawda mosque wait outside the Suez Canal University hospital in the eastern port city of Ismailia on November 25, 2017, where they were taken to receive treatment following the deadly attack the day before. (AFP PHOTO / MOHAMED EL-SHAHED)

“The black Friday is a painful turn for Sissi, who is planning on running for a second term. Sinai’s wound is open and bleeding. The street is in shock, and the president has no magic solutions,” she writes. “Israel is sending intelligence aid, according to foreign reports, and Sissi is promising sweeping revenge.”

In Israel Hayom, Oded Granot also notes that while the Islamic State group is on its heels in Syria and Iraq, it’s making gains in the Sinai, despite Israel trying to help out, including — according to foreign reports — carrying out airstrikes in the peninsula.

“But Israel can’t do all the work of the Egyptian army, which will need to shift from airstrikes, which mostly hurt innocents, to surgical operations that are more focused and sustainable,” he writes.

Amos Harel in Haaretz also notes that Jerusalem can’t quite believe how ineffective Egypt is at fighting terror, and predicts Egypt’s lack of skill may end up hurting Israel, via Gaza.

“The Sinai attack will delay the opening of the Rafah crossing, which Gazans have been waiting for impatiently following the reconciliation agreement between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. But the status of the reconciliation talks is worse than the parties are willing to admit. For the moment, it seems high hopes will be dashed: completing the process by December 1, launching the joint government’s operations and putting the Rafah crossing into continual operation,” he writes.

“And so there’s a double danger. One is the Palestinian people’s loss of hope in light of the talks’ failure, which could help reheat the border between Israel and Gaza. The second is the possibility that Islamic Jihad will request a chance to settle accounts after Israel blew up a tunnel on the Gaza border last month, killing 12 Islamic Jihad militants and one Hamas man.”