Talking about a counterrevolution

Week 1 of the Egyptian counterrevolution closed Sunday night in the same place it started a week ago: at the top of the headlines in the Israeli media. None of the coverage is particularly positive, but at least most papers — barring Israel Hayom — pay attention to the fact that something drastic is happening south of the border.

For the perennial pessimists of Maariv, the top story is that a week into the uprising against deposed president Mohammed Morsi, the bodies are piling up. According to the paper, 46 have died in Egypt in the past week and over 1,000 have been injured. The paper describes violent clashes between Muslim Brotherhood and Morsi supporters and the liberal/secular contingent who pushed for the president’s ouster on Wednesday, but falls short of calling it an all-out civil war. It does contend, however, that “Muslim Brotherhood activists now see the struggle over Morsi’s dismissal as a religious war.”

“The Egyptian military is concerned that the protesters in support of the Muslim Brotherhood are likely to descend swiftly into violence,” the paper writes, reflecting (perhaps too much) its own concerns.

Yedioth Ahronoth is not nearly as cautious as Maariv, and in its headline outright calls the intensifying clashes in Cairo “civil war,” which in Hebrew carries a double meaning (literally translated “a war of brothers”) when referring to the Muslim Brotherhood. Its correspondent, Eldad Beck, reports from “burning Cairo,” according to the dateline.

Beck describes his encounter with Muslim Brotherhood supporters outside Cairo University, how they were armed with clubs and rocks, and how they attempted to attack a military helicopter that flew low over the nearby bridge.

“They were determined to go to battle with the light weapons in their hands,” Beck writes. Before long, he says, they were armed with real weapons: Molotov cocktails and guns. What he describes as a rowdy sit-in ended like a bad day in Damascus.

From Maariv’s concerns of violence flaring up across Egypt, and Yedioth’s description of it, Haaretz comes a bit closer to home. It forebodes the arrival of the violent backlash — the aftershock — of Egypt’s second revolution at Israel’s border with the already lawless and violent Sinai Peninsula.

“Hamas,” it writes, “which at this hour holds the reins [in the Gaza Strip], is apparently waiting for additional developments in Egypt before formulating its response, which in certain circumstances might bring about a rise in tension with Israel.”

As for the Islamist thugs running rampant in the mountainous wilds of the peninsula, as yet unchecked by the Egyptian military: Author Amos Harel writes that top of their agenda is “harming the new government imposed by the army” and not stirring up a hornet’s nest by attacking Israel.

“But if the leaders of the groups in Sinai decide that attacking targets on the Israeli border serves their interests as well, it’s very doubtful whether the Egyptian army can prevent them,” Harel writes.

When it comes to the intrepid journalists at Israel Hayom, ongoing unrest in Cairo and the violence seething just over Israel’s border doesn’t seem to be of much interest. There is no mention of Egypt on the front page, nor within 10 pages of the cover. Only on Page 11 does the tabloid decide to provide its readers with information about the increasingly harrowing domestic issues with our neighbors, to wit: “The drama and chaos in Egypt are not ending.”

In stark contrast to the detail provided by Yedioth and Maariv, Israel Hayom suffices to tell its readers that “in Cairo and other cities across Egypt violent protests and clashes between opponents of deposed president Mohammed Morsi and his supporters continue while the army acts as a buffer between the rival camps.”

In case you were wondering, its top story is a seven-paragraph (and barely more than seven-sentence) article about an F-16I that crashed into the Mediterranean Sea on Sunday. Neither pilot nor navigator was harmed — both were pulled from the water safely. Even IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz got a photo op helping pull some wreckage from the waves.

Maariv also runs a piece about Hezbollah’s involvement in Syria and how it has caused “an unprecedented rift in the history of the organization.” According to the paper, which cites a report in the London Arabic daily A-Sharq Al-Awsat, families of Hezbollah fighters are enraged by Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah’s decision to send soldiers to fight alongside Syrian President Bashar Assad. Family representatives met with Mohammed Yazbek, one of the founders of Hezbollah, and asked him to cease sending their sons to fight on Syrian soil because of the high number of casualties Hezbollah’s suffered.

Yedioth Ahronoth also runs a full-page piece on an explosion outside Latakia, in northern Syria, which has very little meat on it. It bases most of its story on an unconfirmed report from “a website that identifies with the Free Syrian Army,” which claimed that “enemy warplanes” were seen overhead at the time. It quotes Arabic media reports denying that Israel struck the site, and the IDF refusing to comment.