One down, one to go

In the win and loss column of Israel’s battle against terror, Sunday can be chalked up as a wash, with an apparent terrorist still on the loose, possibly in or near Tel Aviv, but a group of alleged Jewish terrorists finally behind bars and facing punishment for a series of attacks on Arabs, including the murder of three members of a Palestinian family in July.

These two stories are the anchors with which the Hebrew print press weathers the stormy seas of news Monday morning, sloshing from the so-far unsuccessful hunt for Nashat Milhem, who police say killed two in a Tel Aviv shooting attack Friday and another man as he got away, to the finally successful leveling of charges against Amiram ben Uliel for the murder of the Dawabsha family in a firebombing in the Palestinian village of Duma all the way back in July.

Belying their worldviews, lefty Haaretz leads off with the Duma case, righty Israel Hayom with the Tel Aviv manhunt, and populist Yedioth splits the difference by plastering both across its front page with the headlines “Failure” and “Breakthrough.”

The papers reports on the yeoman’s work by thousands of police chasing down Milhem — believed to possibly still be in tony northern Tel Aviv where he worked as a greengrocer delivery man and is familiar with the area — making much of the strange dissonance of the famously laid-back metropolis suddenly gripped with fear.

“The level of nervousness in the area, and in Tel Aviv as a whole, continues to remain high,” reports Yedioth. “Many citizens of the ‘city that doesn’t stop’ preferred to stay at home. The streets were quiet and relatively empty, and residents were depressed over the fact that the attacker is still going around armed and carrying a threat.”

Israel Hayom reports that police believe he’s holed up somewhere, but will need to show his face eventually.

“Because of the cold and the rain, the police believe it will be hard for the terrorist to survive a long time on the run,” the paper reports. “It’s possible he found himself a hiding place and now we can only hope he makes a mistake and maybe even comes out from hiding – assuming he is in the Tel Aviv area.”

Haaretz leads its coverage off with a different police scenario, that Milhem is/was planning another attack on Tel Aviv.

“According to police and Shin Bet investigators, Milhem wasn’t planning to return alive from the killing spree. Police are investigating the possibility that Milhem wasn’t acting alone, and may have had an accomplice who knew of his plans in advance,” the paper writes. “Due to concerns of another attack, large police forces were back on the streets of Tel Aviv on Sunday, and the public was asked to stay alert.”

Jittery Tel Avivians aren’t the only ones with emotions running in overdrive. The breakthrough in the Duma case, with an indictment finally served, also sets passions aflutter, with commentators and analysts weighing in on the affair and where the Shin Bet, and the country, goes from here.

In Yedioth, Alex Fishman links the two alleged killers, dismissing claims that both were outliers with nothing to do with their communities. Readers are merely challenged to look past his maze of mixed metaphors to get his larger point in the column.

“The killer from Dizengoff, Nishet Milhem, and Amiram Ben-Uliel and his associates suspected in the Duma murders are two sides of the same coin, not weeds, or mentally ill, not lone attackers and definitely not confused youths and adventurers,” he writes. “They are infected fingers, connected to the hands and body that hold them, spur them on and protect them. These infected fingers the Shin Bet is supposed to amputate; both the hands and the body – the ground from which they grew – need to be taken care of by both societies, Jewish and Arab, like a spreading plague.”

Haaretz’s Amos Harel uses his 20/20 hindsight to ask whether the Shin Bet, which seemed to know exactly where to look for the alleged Duma killer, should have done more to crack down on Jewish terror before the attack, and wonders if there will now be a sea change in the way the agency handles Jewish terror.

“It seems that comparing the methods and means used before the attack, which made it clear that the group was not averse to taking Arab lives, and the moves made after, provides a clear answer. Taking a tougher stance against these young right-wing extremists while implementing an appropriate systematic approach to dealing with the phenomenon could have stopped the gang before they advanced from vandalizing empty Palestinian homes to burning people to death in their sleep,” he writes.

With dozens more indictments served against others for other anti-Arab attacks, Harel and Israel Hayom’s Yoav Limor both note that Sunday was only the beginning of the crackdown.

“In practice, it’s not even the end of the start,” Limor writes. “Not only because before the trial there will be deliberations over how evidence was gathered, but because – despite the testimony and confessions, despite the wedding film – these terror operatives are still getting significant support from wide elements of the public: from citizens to those who are trying to identify the names and addresses of Shin Bet people and prosecutors to threaten them to the few rabbis and politicians who speak ambiguously and dangerously.”

One person unambiguous in her lack of support for the killings, like the rest of the country, is Sarah Rosenfeld, whose son Malachy was killed in a terror attack that Ben Uliel said he was avenging by attacking the Palestinians.

Rosenfeld pens a column in Yedioth saying clearly that she strongly denounces his actions, though she doesn’t exactly let the Palestinians off either.

“It’s true that there’s much frustration, and it’s true that they are killing us nearly daily, and the horizon for better days does not seem close. And it’s true that sometimes from great frustration an outlying person sometimes turns to extremist actions, but in no way is there any justification for killing the innocent,” she writes. “I am sure that everyone around me and my family and town and those in my more distant surroundings, the society of which I am proud, there is nobody who would give a stamp of approval to a terrible act like this.”