Riding out the storm

Days after a deadly blizzard claimed the lives of 43 people on the Annapurna circuit in Nepal, the hikers’ harrowing first-person accounts continue to receive top billing in Sunday’s Hebrew press, as injured Israelis trickle back into Israel for medical treatment.

Meanwhile, US Secretary of State John Kerry, the man some politicians and some in the Israeli press love to hate, is back in the limelight for making remarks over the weekend in which he linked the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with the Islamic State and regional turmoil.

Yedioth Ahronoth features the last photograph of Nadav Shoham and Tamar Ariel, two of the three Israeli hikers killed in the Nepal storm, and the testimony of fellow trekker Shani, 30, who was part of their group. Shani is spotlighted in the paper for encouraging the group to plunge on through the snow, despite having lost her shoes and suffering from acute frostbite, as the hikers gradually lost hope and started saying their last goodbyes.

“At a certain point, Tamar collapsed,” Shani recalled of Ariel, who was an Israel Air Force combat navigator. “I yelled out to her: ‘Tamar, get up! Imagine you’re flying, and you’re fighting the enemy. You’re in the plane, and you aren’t giving up, so get up.” In response, Tamar got up briefly, and asked her: “Are we going to survive?”

“I answered: You and I will fight, and God will help.”

“When Nadav Shoham fell, Shani went back to hug him, and to try to help him continue,” the paper reports.

“We lost good people on the way,” Shani told the paper, “beautiful, wonderful people, the salt of the earth.” The group watched over the bodies of their friends overnight, while huddling together to keep warm, until the Nepalese rescue crew arrived.

“Those who did not survive through the night asked us to ask forgiveness from their parents and relatives, and tell them that they love them,” she said.

In Israel Hayom, Shoham’s uncle recalls Nadav’s last moments, as told to him by a hiker.

“Nadav has another very important quality: he doesn’t leave anyone behind. He carried Tamar, the navigator, he also helped others, until he lost his strength and froze to death. He stubbornly stayed behind to help a friend who was left behind and couldn’t walk. He wouldn’t leave him until he found him a comfortable spot without wind. Afterwards, the friend recovered a bit and descended. He saw people coming toward him with flashlights and was sure Nadav was among them. He thought Nadav was coming to save him, but they told him Nadav had frozen to death.”

Yedioth and Israel Hayom also focus on the missing Israeli hiker Michal Cherkasky, 36.

Yedioth reports that 13 years ago, a good friend of Cherkasky’s, Noam Hablin, had been killed on the same trek. Before embarking on the hike, Cherkasky told Chani Lipshitz, the woman in charge of the Chabad house where she was staying: “Now I’m here for him.” Cherkasky said the hike would “come full circle” for her.

Israel Hayom quotes Cherkasky’s brother, who says that the last they heard, Michal had been caught in the storm some 5,000 meters up, and the porter accompanying her took her backpack and left her there.

Meanwhile, Kerry is back in the hot seat, as the papers emphasize the public spat between Israeli right-wing ministers and the US secretary of state. Kerry made comments last week purportedly linking the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict with radicalization of the Middle East and the rise of the Islamic State.

“The tensions and differences of opinion between Israel and the US on the frozen negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians led to yet another argument between both sides at the end of last week,” Haaretz reports.

“This time, as in several cases in the past year, what sparked the verbal sparring was a comment by US Secretary of State John Kerry, which was greeted with raised eyebrows in Jerusalem, and received a bitter response from the right-wing ministers.”

The paper reports that whereas US President Barack Obama rejected the Israeli-IS link explicitly in past weeks, arguing that the narrative merely served to deflect attention away from internal issues in the Middle Eastern Arab countries and Islamic extremism, Kerry seems to have adopted the position without question.

Moreover, while the Prime Minister’s Office has offered no formal response to the remarks, Haaretz asserts that with regard to Communications Minister Gilad Erdan, who said Kerry had outdone himself in showing a lack of understanding of the Middle East, “it’s not clear if Erdan’s remarks came at the request of Netanyahu’s office.”

Yedioth calls Kerry’s statements and the subsequent Israeli outcry “another deterioration in US-Israeli relations,” as columnist Ben Dror Yemini fiercely criticizes the secretary.

“It’s interesting that he [Kerry] didn’t mention that the astounding Saudi and Qatari assets invested in mosques around the world, including Europe, leads to radicalization. He didn’t come out against Qatar, which has become the primary funder of jihadi organizations. He doesn’t blame the institutionalized anti-Semitic incitement, which is growing in Muslim world, including by Al-Jazeera. He certainly doesn’t blame the US itself, whose actions in Afghanistan and Iraq have led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, most of whom are innocent. This man repeatedly recites unfounded statements which serve the radical propaganda, which is generally anti-Western as well. What the hell is happening to him?

“The US was and continues to be an irreplaceable friend to Israel. But the series of remarks by Kerry shows that the man is captive to the post-colonialist conception which blames Israel for all the troubles in the world… John Kerry should be saluted for his stubbornness in pursuing a two-state solution agreement. It’s just unfortunate that he is hostage to this conception which is the greatest enemy to such a deal.”