Scare porn

Halloween isn’t traditionally observed in Israel, but that hasn’t stopped the Hebrew papers from filling their pages with terrifying headlines and spooky tales. Scariest of them all is the neck-and-neck US presidential race going into the final stretch, after Hillary Clinton’s email scandal woes have brought Donald Trump within striking distance.

But what scares journalists almost as much as a the latest poll findings is the Ministerial Committee for Legislation’s proposed law that would block pornographic websites in Israel, unless customers request their internet service provider lift the restriction. While the reportage focuses on the ban on smut, both Haaretz and Israel Hayom note in their coverage that, if passed, the law would also permit censoring “sites deemed harmful.”

The bill would empower the communications minister — currently Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — to pick which sites are off-limits, Israel Hayom notes. Jewish Home party MK Shuli Moalem contends that it’s easier for a kid to get his hands on hardcore porn “than to buy a popsicle at a neighborhood shop.”

Moalem, a mother to seven, lives in the West Bank settlement of Neve Daniel, south of Jerusalem, where apparently popsicles are kept under lock and key.

Opponents of the bill point out that such internet censorship would put Israel in an unenviable clique of countries that restrict web access to their citizens, including China, Iran, Turkey and other autocratic states.

While Yedioth Ahronoth doesn’t bother putting the issue on its front page (opting instead to take aim at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “paranoia” and what it calls his attempt to clamp down on press freedom), the paper notes that the average Israeli spends 3:30 minutes on porn websites per visit — a whopping 14 seconds more than the global average.

A completely unscientific survey conducted on the Yedioth Ahronoth website found 60% of participants were opposed to the bill.

Haaretz reports that the law would also effectively create a database of people who have asked their internet service provider to unblock porn.

The paper also notes that this fifth piece of legislation seeking to ban porn put forward in recent years is expected to pass by a wide margin. Now that’s scary.

But it’s the terrifying one percent margin separating Clinton and Trump that is freaking out the press most — or at least most of the press. Israel Hayom can barely restrain its glee: it’s like Halloween came a day early with heaps of electoral candy.

Readers can tell how excited Israel Hayom is by its half-page headline on Page 2: “A gap of 1%,” it screams.

Channeling the (American) holiday spirit, Yedioth Ahronoth says that “in Clinton’s worst nightmares she didn’t imagine she’d find herself in a situation like this, just before the election.” The first reliable poll published after the FBI announced it was reopening its investigation into her emails showed that Clinton was just a point ahead of Trump.

The FBI probe into Clinton’s emails did the trick to knock the Democrat down a peg, but Israel Hayom reports that Wikileaks plans to try and put the nail in the coffin by releasing other material about the former secretary of state later this week.

Trump fanboy Boaz Bismuth creates a juxtaposition of terms never before encountered, like (to keep with the Halloween theme) sexy cadaver or delicious candy corn. “Trump’s renaissance” is what he calls the Republican’s resurgence in the polls, but he hedges his bets and says that Clinton is still in the lead and surveys point to her winning the election. Nonetheless, “one thing is certain, the renaissance of the investigation is also the renaissance of Trump,” Bismuth writes, ruining the word renaissance for the rest of humankind.

Haaretz’s Chemi Shalev is on the trail in Florida, where two teens he met in a parking lot who voiced apathy about the election are his barometer for Clinton’s drop in the polls. In this swing state, where Clinton tried to muster young Latinos to vote, older whites will hit the polls in greater numbers than the Democratic candidate’s target audience, Haaretz reports.

Clinton may be down (in the polls), but not out, Haaretz insists. Shalev’s conclusion demonstrates how Haaretz’s reportage is about as impartial in favor of the Democrat as Israel Hayom’s is in support of Trump. “Clinton’s fate now hands on two principal matters. The first, which there have been rumors about for weeks already, is that her staff will indeed expose a new scandal in the coming days that will shift the focus back onto Trump and perhaps even bury him once and for all,” he writes. “The second: that on November 8 it will become clear that contrary to the commotion made by the press, the American public will put [FBI chief James] Comey’s non-disclosure in appropriate proportions and prefer to place its trust in the balanced Clinton, despite her shortcomings, over a crazy gamble on the inexperienced and ruthless Trump.”