Publish and perish? 7 things to know for April 22

1. A Hamas drone engineer was killed on the streets of Kuala Lumpur on Saturday and Israel’s very long arm is being blamed for the assassination.

• Yet Israel’s jingoistic tabloid press’s desire to crow about the Mossad’s ability to take down people anywhere in the world is necessarily balanced by official Israel’s need to keep mum about its involvement in the hit job.
• “Ten bullets, two assassins, one target and a lot of questions,” reads a too-cute-by-half lede in Yedioth.
• Israel Hayom also tries to play coy, asking in its lede “if the long arm of the State of Israel got to the other side of the world,” but columnist Yoav Limor notes that both the target and the method hint at Israeli involvement.

2. Hamas, which claimed Gaza-born scientist Fadi Mohammad al-Batsh as a commander in its armed wing, initially stopped short of blaming Israel directly, instead pointing a finger at “the hand of treachery.”

• Haaretz reports that Hamas politburo chief Ismail Haniyeh later accused Israel of “assassinating scientists to destroy the development and progress of our nation.”
• Haniyeh also said “the Palestinian people have an open account with Israel that shifts the war abroad,” according to the report.
• Speaking from a Gaza mourning tent, Haniyeh tells the Associated Press that “Mossad is not away from this disgraceful, terrible crime. We cannot give up on the blood of our sons, youths and scholars.”
• Batsh’s family, meanwhile also does not pussyfoot around, directly blaming Israel for the assassination, while Malaysia itself has only pointed to the possibility of the involvement of “foreign agents.”

3. Who was Batsh? Most reports note that he had been living in Malaysia for about a decade as a lecturer at a Malaysian university, the same country where he received a PhD in electrical engineering. He was also an imam at a local mosque.
According to Israeli reports, though, Batsh was an expert on rocket and drone accuracy. He had reportedly published material recently on drone development, and on transmitters for controlling drones.

• An unnamed Palestinian source close to Batsh tells Yedioth that he had played a central role in Hamas’s drone program. “His importance to the group’s military wing is no less than the importance of Muhammad Zouari,” the source is quoted saying, referring to a Hamas drone engineer killed in Tunisia in 2016.
• Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, while saying that maybe Batsh was killed in an internal dispute, tells Israel Radio on Sunday morning there’s no reason to cry over his death: “He was no saint,” he says.
• Meanwhile, Malaysian police are denying Batsh had anything to do with drones or rockets.
• “The allegations claiming that Dr Fadi was a rocket and drone-making expert is also untrue because as far as I know he was involved in electronic engineering,” police official Mohamad Fuzi Harun says, according to the Free Malaysia Today news site. 

4. As for what Batsh was doing in Malaysia, Israel Hayom notes that the country in recent years has a become a “Garden of Eden for Hamas, which has invested great efforts in recruiting students there.”

• “Throughout Kuala Lumpur and elsewhere (including the International Islamic University in Gombak), there are activities by Hamas activists and visits from Hamas leaders. Even the son of Osama Hamdan, who is responsible for Hamas’s foreign relations, lives in Malaysia,” Avi Issacharoff writes in The Times of Israel.

5. Israeli papers may be of one mind over who Batsh was and who probably killed him, but they can’t seem to agree on how far from Israel Kuala Lumpur is. Yedioth lists the distance as 7,600 kilometers, but Israel Hayom puts it at a measly 5,100 km.

• Google Maps puts the exact distance between Ben-Gurion Airport and Kuala Lumpur’s airport at 7,669 kilometers. Perhaps Israel Hayom knows a shortcut?

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6. No matter the distance, in Yedioth, columnist Yossi Yehoshua writes that the assassination is yet another example of Israel (or someone) trying to thwart every Hamas attempt to develop new ways of attacking Israel, which has recently been concentrated on drone development: “Here as well, as in other fields, Hamas is learning from Hezbollah and Iran.”

7. Is actress Natalie Portman learning from the BDS movement? Her decision to boycott a Genesis Prize ceremony continues to have Israelis up in arms Sunday.

• Portman defended the decision as not wanting to endorse Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but minister Yuval Steinitz took to the airwaves Sunday morning to denounce her decision as “bordering on anti-Semitism.”
• Haaretz’s lead editorial calls the attack on her as a pawn of BDS “an intentional misreading of Portman’s protest” and says “her choice not to attend is an important political statement.”
• In Yedioth, though, cultural critic Raz Shechnik writes that it’s Portman who flubbed.
• “Her presence would not necessarily mean that she loves Netanyahu or his rule,” he writes. “Instead of taking a drastic step like boycott, Portman could have come to the nonpolitical event, spoken and made clear exactly what she thinks is wrong with Israel’s leadership, which problems it is stuck in and what solutions she can suggest. Instead, she took the easy way out: not coming at all, not protesting, just dropping a bomb and running away.”