Out of the interrogation room, into the Knesset?

The five-year probe of a former IDF chief came to a close on Wednesday, and by Thursday morning, voices in the Hebrew press were already predicting Gabi Ashkenazi’s political debut.

The case leads all three national dailies, with all papers pointing out that Ashkenazi’s behavior was “unbefitting of an IDF officer.”

In Israel, “the voters are quick to forgive,” writes veteran columnist Nahum Barnea in Yedioth Ahronoth.

“In a dream country, white as snow, the combination of the two reports — the state comptroller’s two years ago, and the attorney general’s yesterday — would keep Ashkenazi away from all public service. Whoever’s behavior is ‘not befitting of an IDF officer,’ as stated in the attorney general’s report, should not serve as a minister in the government. But Israel doesn’t live in a dream. It lives from affair to affair, from investigation to investigation,” he writes.

“The fact the heads of two parties, Herzog and his party and Lapid and his party, were quick to congratulate Ashkenazi after the report was published shows that they believe the voters want him. He’s sympathetic, wanted, respected, but not as number 1, but as number 2. It’s possible the two parties will compete over him.”

Over in Israel Hayom, the daily comes down on Ashkenazi for his moral, rather than criminal, failings.

“Revealed secret information,” its headline reads, referring to the ex-IDF chief’s loose lips.

“The criminal case is closed, but the moral criticism is fierce,” it writes. “Attorney General Weinstein determined that there was no ‘putsch’ and no plans to use businessmen and politicians to back Ashkenazi. However, Ashkenazi played a ‘not passive’ role in his office’s campaign against then-defense minister Ehud Barak. Ashkenazi won’t be tried, but if he was in active service, he would have likely been hit with an indictment for the military infraction of ‘behavior that is unbefitting of an officer.”

Over in Haaretz, in an somewhat unusual twist for the left-wing daily, its editorial and op-ed praise the two settler women stabbed this week, one fatally, and its editorial brands comments by opposition leader Isaac Herzog “racist.”

“A day after she was stabbed by a Palestinian in the West Bank settlement of Tekoa, Michal Froman managed to maintain her humanity, without resorting to generalizations or racist comments… In contrast, opposition leader Isaac Herzog could only express a desire ‘to separate from as many Palestinians as possible, as quickly as possible,’ as he declared at a conference held at the Institute for National Security Studies while presenting his new diplomatic plan,” it writes.

“The style embraced by the Zionist Union leader suits the spirit of Benjamin Netanyahu’s rule. His words do not bode well for anyone counting on Herzog to represent an opposition to the present government and the evil spirit emanating from it. This is not how someone seeking peace expresses himself.

“Anyone who manages to overcome the revulsion Herzog’s racist words evoke, in an effort to focus on the content of his message, is in for disappointment,” it continues. “His proposal is no more than a collection of clichés that seem to have been assembled from the talking points of Netanyahu in the best case and by the Facebook posts of Yair Lapid in the worst case.”

Columnist Sefi Rachlevsky, meanwhile, praises terror victim Dafna Meir, who was stabbed to death in her home in the West Bank on Sunday, as “a trailblazer in Orthodox Judaism in areas such as fertility, sexuality and female awareness,” who was “feminist, nonjudgmental and open.”

“The way Meir dispensed advice to the women who read her blogs is thrilling. She knowledgeably and generously described the Orthodox approach, and presented her egalitarian and feminist position without being coercive or judgmental,” he writes.

In a convoluted manner, Rachlevsky proceeds to slam Israel for embracing death, selectively.

“Societies, like individuals, are not aware of the changes they undergo. Unlike most aspects of Judaism and Zionism, which elevate life and choose life, Israel under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu bows down before a cult of death. Just as the Holocaust trips to Poland and Germany in high school focus on the Nazi death camps and not on the lives of Einstein, Freud or Kafka, so it is with everything. Thus our cabinet ministers, beginning with Netanyahu, embraced the Meir family but ignored Ilana Cohen of Holon, who was murdered by her ex-husband the same day that Meir was stabbed to death. They try to appropriate death for themselves.”