Playing with the big kids

Israeli successes at the 2012 London Games have been slow in coming, so when they arrive, as they did yesterday with formidable appearances in the pool and on the tennis court, the Hebrew press goes all out gushing.

Though no medals were handed out, the mere glimpse of them over the horizon seem to have left editors near speechless, resulting in single-word headlines leading the three largest papers.

“Respect,” “Hope,” and “Pride,” read the top headlines in Yedioth Ahronoth, Maariv and Israel Hayom, respectively, all appearing over pictures of swimmer Yakov Toumarkin, who made it to the finals of the 200 meter backstroke, and tennis duo Andy Ram and Jonathan Erlich, who beat out Beijing gold medalists Roger Federer and Stanislas Wawrinka to reach the quarterfinals.

What’s left of the front pages is for the most part dedicated to yesterday’s visit by US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. Panetta met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and President Shimon Peres, hearing from them all of the urgent need for increased US action to halt Iran’s nuclear program and trying in turn to reassure them of his country’s unyielding commitment to Israel’s security.

The insistence on more action instead of words, expressed starkly by Netanyahu and Barak and slightly more subtly by Peres, may have crossed a line yesterday. Maariv reports that in inside talks, US officials are calling Israel’s leaders’ incessant demands from them “piggish” and “ungrateful.”

Haaretz leads the paper today with initial results from a new political poll. “Voter satisfaction of Netanyahu has dropped to an all-time low,” reads the headline. The Haaretz survey finds that Netanyahu’s approval ratings have plummeted to 31 percent in the last few weeks. The prime minister’s fall is attributed to his handling of the ultra-Orthodox conscription issue and the political fallout with Kadima that accompanied it.

According to the poll, Netanyahu is not alone in his unpopularity. Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz has even lower numbers, with a mere 19% approval rating.

Under the headline “Bullies in blue,” Maariv reports on Page 4 on the release of a video showing police officers using substantial force while making an arrest in Tel Aviv last month. The violent incident has raised criticism by rights groups and the Public Defender’s Office and sparked demands for closer supervision of police action. Maariv provides readers with a sidebar detailing other recent instances of police using excessive force against suspects and protesters, including a link to downloadable videos capturing the cops’ violence.

Across the top of Yedioth’s Pages 4 and 5 readers will find a number, 1,059,988,790 to be exact. This number in shekels, according to the National Bureau of Statistics, represents the special budget allocated to Israel’s West Bank settlements in 2011. Yedioth reports that despite Netanyahu’s claims that the funds given to the settlements are “negligible,” more than a billion shekels a year go toward infrastructure construction, subsidies to regional councils, tax benefits, mortgage subsidies and other grants to settlers. The article notes that the special budget does not include defense costs for protecting the settlements.

In honor of Tu B’Av, the Jewish calendar’s Valentine’s Day, Israel Hayom published statistics about Israeli’s love life. The numbers, provided by the National Bureau of Statistics reveal, among other things, that married people report greater satisfaction in life than bachelors or divorcees, that Tel Aviv is the city with the highest rate of single people, that the average marriage age is rising and that the average age when Israelis divorce is 38.

Delicate diplomacy

Boaz Bismuth writes in Israel Hayom’s opinion page on the curious case of the Egyptian president’s letter to Peres and subsequent denial thereof. Bismuth, a former ambassador to Egypt, writes that while the letter, in which Muhammed Morsi expresses hope for a resumption of peace efforts in the region, is genuine, it was never meant to be made public. “Morsi’s letter was sent to Jerusalem, but was addressed to Washington, who I suspect penned it. Jerusalem chose to publish it for one of two likely reasons: either because we like to ‘kiss and tell,’ or because we want to force Morsi ‘out of the closet’ and present his stance on the peace agreement in the clearest fashion,” writes Bismuth.

In Haaretz, Ari Shavit writes that the key to preventing an Israeli strike on Iran is not in the IDF chief of staff’s hands but in the hands of US President Barack Obama. Shavit urges Obama to give an “Iran Speech” in which he pledges that in 2013 the US will cripple the Iranian centrifuges come what may, and in this way, prevent a dangerous Israeli attack, send a clear message to Tehran and establish himself as a true world leader.