Suspending MKs, suspending disbelief

After two days in which newspapers were on the same page but politicians were not, the situation seems to have flipped Wednesday, with papers finally ending the frankly embarrassing practice of running the same headlines on their respective front pages.

At the same time, what does seem to have the attention of at least two of Israel’s three major dailies is the coalition coalescing around the controversial MK suspension bill, under the biblically outstretched arm of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reaching all the way from the eternal capital for Israeli hipsters — Berlin.

Haaretz reports that not only is the whole coalition expected to back the bill, after some murmurs of disapproval were quelled by Netanyahu, but opposition-within-the-opposition Yisrael Beytenu is expected to sign on as well. The paper notes, though, that officially the six-man faction has yet to decide and party czar Avigdor Liberman is on record calling the measure “a smokescreen used by Netanyahu to hide his capitulation to terror and Arab MKs.”

While the reporting is straight-shooting and pretty much free of opinions, the paper’s lead editorial makes clear that it is stridently against the bill in its various forms, all of which would allow 90 MKs to essentially kick out a fellow lawmaker.

“With this bill, the Knesset seeks to create a track that bypasses the attorney general, the police, criminal prosecution and the courts – the bodies tasked with determining whether the crime of support for terror has been committed (which is not covered by parliamentary immunity). And in any case, a conviction with moral turpitude for such a crime would trigger a ban from the Knesset,” the editorial reads. “Even though such an amendment were difficult to apply, and 90 lawmakers hard to muster, passing it would add fuel to the fire of conflict between Israel’s Jews and Arabs. Thus MKs could accuse Arab MKs of treason and collusion with terror, repeatedly launching disqualification proceedings that would lead to a permanent witch hunt.”

As one would expect, Bibi-backing Israel Hayom is as much for the bill as Haaretz is against it. The paper leads off its coverage with a front-page quote from Netanyahu that “democracy needs to defend itself,” which is nonsensical as far as news headlines go, and just seems to prove that the tabloid has no interest in pretending to not be a mouthpiece for Netanyahu anymore.

The paper reports that Netanyahu told MK Nissan Slomiansky from Berlin that all of Likud would support the measure, and also that he hoped “not just the coalition but also the opposition” will back it.

If the opposition is still skeptical for some reason, they can read two commentaries in the paper from Dan Margalit and Haim Shine explaining why the measure is so great and not at all anti-Democratic, as President Benedict Arnold Reuven Rivlin charged on Monday.

In fact, writes Shine, if there’s any problem with the bill, it’s that it makes it too hard to show the door to lawmakers Netanyahu doesn’t like. “The prime minister’s initiative to amend the law to deal with cases where Knesset members work against the basic values of Israeli democracy is praiseworthy and time-sensitive. It’s just unfortunate that you need 90 MKs to kick out a troublemaker lawmaker. It’s hard to believe that in the Israeli political reality it will be possible to muster a majority like that. In other great democracies, the requirement is significantly smaller,” he writes.

One can only guess what other great democracies Shine is talking about, but from the sounds of it, Iran might be a contender. We may not have the thriving Majlis in Israel, but the country came one step closer to resembling its Persian brother from another mother Tuesday with the arrest of some Washington Post reporters, in this case, bureau chief William Booth and West Bank correspondent Sufian Taha.

Unlike Iran, though, Israel didn’t stick the reporters in a musty cell for a few years waiting for a swap with the US, but released them after half an hour, and the government came down hard on the police for the incident, Yedioth notes.

“A few hours after cops at the Damascus Gate stopped and questioned Washington Post Israel bureau chief William Booth, the Foreign Ministry understood the explosive potential of the incident,” the paper reports.

Columnist Ben-Dror Yemini also decries the arrest, not for the actual incident, but because it can give journalists who already don’t give Israel a fair shake more ammo. He praises the Post itself for its balanced coverage of the incident, but then goes on to accuse pretty much every foreign journalist of being in cahoots with the Palestinians, who he says keep a tight lid on them.

“On the Israeli side, though, journalists are allowed to report on whatever they want,” he claims. “They have total freedom. And that’s good. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t mistakes. That’s how it was yesterday. We need to be careful. We need to keep situations like this from happening, even if Israel has justified claims about biased coverage.”

Arresting journalists is a risk Israel can’t afford, but hitting on a soft 16 may be one it soon affords its whales, cardsharks and other gamblers, after the Tourism Ministry recommended allowing up to four casinos to open in the southern resort city of Eilat.

The plan has yet to be approved and Haaretz reports that there are still a number of hurdles, such as police opposition to creating crime havens and bureaucrats hashing out whether to charge up to 40% of profits for licensing, or force operators to develop other tourist attractions in the city.

There also remains the question of whether Israeli citizens will be allowed to gamble, reports Yedioth, which notes that Netanyahu is for making the casinos foreigners-only, despite the fact that Israelis can find plenty of ways to gamble easily elsewhere.

The paper spitballs a number of compromise ideas that may be considered during a discussion on the matter Wednesday.

“In order to decrease crime and descent into gambling by citizens, one can impose a series of regulations,” the paper reports, clearly eager to get itself in front of a one-armed bandit. “For instance, they can charge an admission fee for citizens, limit entry hours for citizens and limit the amount of money citizens can gamble. Some countries have raised the age for gambling for citizens as opposed to tourists. Via these and other measures, one can keep watch over citizens’ gambling and reduce addiction among them.”