Split the difference: 7 things to know for August 5

1. Estimates for the size of the Druze-led rally against the national bill in Tel Aviv Saturday ranged anywhere from a few tens of thousands to a quarter of a million people, but no matter the number, it’s hard to escape the impressive image of Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square filled with those who want to scrap, amend or add on to the law.

• Though the Druze demands were originally embraced across the political spectrum, there is increasing evidence, at least through the lens of the media, that their protest has entered the classic right-left political weather system, with those in favor of the government and the law increasingly dismissing their demands and seeing them as the enemy, or at least downplaying the protest.
• Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went so far as accusing them of being in the pocket of “leftists” over the weekend, despite the protest being embraced by groups as mainstream and pro-Israel as the Jewish Federations of North America and the International Fellowship of Jews and Christians, neither exactly hothouses of pro-Palestinian neo-Marxist thought.
• Government mouthpiece Israel Hayom continues the attack for Netanyahu, focusing on a social justice NGO called Anu, which it says organizes protests outside Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit’s house and it says is behind the Tel Aviv rally. (Anu says it merely supports it.)
• The paper also dismisses the Tel Aviv protest as the work of just some troublemakers, downplaying the rally and playing up those within the Druze community who have no beef with the nation-state law.
• “I support the nation-state law and understand it is not meant to hurt the Druze community or any other minority. But what can we do, our kids don’t listen to their elders,” the paper quotes a Druze man in northern Israel as saying.
• Other right-wing sites also play down the protest. Channel 20, often called Israel’s Fox News, lowballs the attendance figure at 20,000 and runs an interview with former Gen. Imad Fare, who says community leaders should take the deal for a new piece of legislation giving them special status too.
• “Sometimes you need to know when to stop pulling the rope. We don’t want to tear the connection, we want to strengthen it,” he says.

2. Papers on the other side of the political spectrum are just as baldly in favor of the protest.

• Yedioth Ahronoth fills the whole of its front page with an aerial shot of the crowd and the headline “Cry of our brothers.”
• “I’ve never seen a protest like this,” gushes columnist Nahum Barnea, who says he’s covered almost every rally at Rabin Square. It’s not just the size, he says, but the breadth of people supporting the cause. “It’s not every day that one rally has both those who support Ehud Olmert and Moshe Lador, who put him in jail, dozens of generals and colonels, politicians and senior officials.”
• A column from Haaretz’s Gideon Levy shows why even some who think the Druze too right-wing and their protest as failing to address the wider ills of the law, have glommed onto their tailwind.
• “It’s true that most of the Druze participants were demonstrating for their own interests, for the equality they believe is their due in return for their military service, without trying to serve as a bridgehead for a campaign championing equality for all, including Palestinians,” he writes. “But we can’t ignore their contribution to the growing protest. Largely due to them the nation-state law has become possibly the most exciting civics lesson in Israel in recent years. Questions that were never asked are being raised, maybe only for a short time – yet this is really a shake-up. Maybe in response to the most ultra-nationalist government, a little opposition will finally make an appearance.”
• In the same paper, Anshel Pfeffer gives an excellent rundown of all the political calculations and miscalculations by Netanyahu, the opposition and the Druze to bring the country to this point. The bottom line: If this was Netanyahu’s opening gambit of his latest political campaign, he’s left himself open to having it backfire, if the Druze and center-left play their cards right.
• “If the organizers, and the center-left parties, succeed in leveraging the support for the Druze community, into articulating a powerful, patriotic message against the nation-state law, they will have gone some way to pushing back Netanyahu’s divisive narrative,” he writes.

3. It’s not just in Israel that the rally is making news, but all around the world, including places that see it as a way to highlight opposition to Israel as a whole.

• Iran’s Press TV covers the protest, writing that “protesters accuse the Tel Aviv regime of racism and discrimination against other ethnicities.”
• Interestingly, the semi-official channel writes that “Arabs in the occupied territories form about 20 percent of the population,” which is true if you only count Israel proper as occupied and not Gaza or the West Bank (which, added to the mix, would bring the Arab population closer to half).
• Al Jazeera quotes a Druze man in northern Israel whose two sons were killed in military service.
• “If this law doesn’t change, I will get your bodies exhumed from this military cemetery and bury you in your grandfathers’ land,” he is quoted saying.

4. Haaretz also looks at a meeting between Druze leaders and Netanyahu that blew up late Thursday, amid dueling narratives of whether the prime minister walked out to protest a participant accusing him of turning Israel into an apartheid state, or him getting mad over a week-old Facebook post in which the Druze leader warned that it could happen.

• The paper says that after speaking with several people present, it seems clear that the meeting was a “planned explosion… meant to portray the Druze as enemies of the people.”
• The report, which dissects the meeting in minute detail, notes that Amal As’ad had been given an okay to attend the meeting, though the prime minister’s people said otherwise. According to participants, at some point during a photo op round, they realized that Netanyahu planned to announce they had reached a deal without them even discussing it, and some told him they would not do that, including As’ad.
• Netanyahu’s men claimed that As’ad spoke to the prime minister and Sheikh Muafak Tarif, who is leading the talks, in a disrespectful way, though both As’ad and Tarif disputed the account, and Netanyahu marched out saying that he would not be lectured to by someone who accuses him of apartheid, though As’ad says he didn’t use the word.
• “I think he planned that we would come, he would say we are starting to work on a law for the Druze, we’ll say thanks and kiss him. He planned it. And when it didn’t happen, he looked for an excuse to blow it up,” one participant tells the paper.
• Initial reports on the meeting ending reported that As’ad had accused Netanyahu of apartheid, though that may have been false. If so, it wouldn’t be the only fake news to come out over the issue: Over the weekend, the Labor party accused Likud of fabricating a conversation in which made-up party officials reportedly offered the Druze money and other goodies in exchange for protesting.

5. Apparently not fake is a quote from someone close to the prime minister reported by Hadashot TV news Friday, which garnered a fair bit of shock:

• “Once we are on our way we can’t change a single word of the nation-state law. Whoever doesn’t like it, there’s a big Druze community in Syria. They are welcome to create a Druzistan.”
• While Hadashot protected its source, Ynet reports the quote came from Natan Eshel, a former Netanyahu aide kicked out because of his propensity for taking pictures up women’s skirts, but who seems to have found his way back into the inner circle.
• Even before Ynet’s report, there was some speculation on Twitter that it had come from Eshel, who likes to send messages like this to like-minded journalists.
• “C’mon, everyone knows it came from the WhatsApp of Natan Eshel, who sends messages to Riklins and Bardugos,” writes one media consultant on Twitter, referring to two right-wing journalists and responding to IBA ombudsman Dedy Markovich commenting on the quote.

6. Israeli leaders will meet today to discuss Gaza and reports are rampant that a peace deal brokered with Egypt is on the table.

• Speaking to Army Radio, though, Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon denies the claims.
• “[A deal] still has not been presented and it’s hard to believe the discussion will take place today. Even if there is a deal, it will have to include returning our missing.”

7. Most Israeli news sites are leading Sunday morning with the apparent assassination of a Syrian scientist who headed a Syrian Scientific Research and Studies Center thought to have been involved with making chemical arms and missiles with Iran.

• Israel’s Channel 10 quotes a news agency claiming that “Israel is thought to have been possibly involved,” but offering few more details, except for how close Aziz Azbar was to both Syrian President Bashar Assad and the Iranian regime.
• The Walla news site reports that a local opposition group claimed the killing, but also quotes a pro-regime journalist who says Azbar was a “‘national scientific figure’ and it seems his assassination was the work of international agencies.”