The Holocaust, gunwhip backlash, and sex on the beach

Three stories prevailed in Israel’s morning papers: Holocaust Remembrance Day, the suspected gang rape of a woman on a Tel Aviv beach, and the continuing saga of the officer who struck a protester.

Never again

Holocaust Remembrance Day dominates the Israeli tabloids. Yedioth Ahronoth, Maariv, and Israel Hayom dedicate several pages to black and white photographs of a bygone Europe and Holocaust survival stories. They also provide information about memorial services around the country, starting with Wednesday night’s national memorial ceremony at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.

Haaretz limits its Holocaust coverage to Page 14 and to only a few stories. It leads with the Education Ministry’s cancellation of a controversial civics textbook. Haaretz says the official reason for the pulling of the book was that errors were discovered after publication. Educators claim the decision was politically motivated.

Yedioth Ahronoth and Israel Hayom both run “Never again” as their front-page headline, and follow it with an assortment of stories for Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Israel Hayom publishes a story about Menachem Frankel, a 76-year-old Holocaust survivor who has volunteered with the Israel Police for 11 years and will be marching with their color guard tomorrow in Auschwitz. “I’ve already been back to Poland,” he said, “but this year it’s different. I came back in a police uniform. To visit to the gas chambers and know that my father was killed here is very powerful and emotional.”

In Yedioth Ahronoth, one article relates the return of three American soldiers who liberated concentration camps in WWII to Poland for memorial ceremonies. Another article encourages Israelis to donate Holocaust relics — photos, letters, artwork — to Yad Vashem through the story behind a picture donated by a survivor’s children.

Maariv’s front page is equally somber, but it quotes Tel Aviv Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau saying “We are all [Holocaust] survivors,” not just those whose “body and soul passed through the departments of hell and whose flesh experienced the pain and dread.” He cites passages from the Passover Haggada while telling a personal story of Holocaust survival, reminding readers that the death and heroism of those who went through the Holocaust go hand in hand.

The lieutenant colonel strikes back, again

Lt. Col. Shalom Eisner spoke to the press for the first time since Saturday’s incident in which he struck a Danish protester in the face with his M-16. Haaretz’s headline reads, “The hitting lieutenant colonel attacks [Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny] Gantz: ‘There was no ethical failure.'”  Yedioth Ahronoth quotes the embattled officer in its headline saying, “What’s more important: sticking to the mission or looking good?” Maariv writes that he defended his actions by saying he neither killed anyone nor endangered anyone’s life and that the force he used was necessary in order to break up the protest.

Nonetheless, GOC Central Command Maj. Gen. Nitzan Alon told Eisner during a meeting on Tuesday that he had demonstrated “an ethical failure.” Gantz began reviewing the army’s investigation into Eisner’s conduct.

Daniel Bettini writes in Yedioth Ahronoth that the limited international outrage over the incident was a result of the IDF’s immediate suspension of Eisner and investigation of his actions. The response was so speedy, he says, that the global media never had the chance to write “Israeli officer strikes protester,” because the story was already “Israeli officer suspended for striking protester.”

Amira Hass writes in Haaretz the Eisner incident taught IDF officers to neutralize the cameras before beating up protesters. “How oiled is the machinery that denies and represses Israeli violence,” which is a regular occurrence against Palestinians and left-wing activists, she claims. “Don’t worry,” she says. “The establishment will rid itself of Eisner and continue to fulfill its mission without slip-ups: keeping the Jordan Valley free of Palestinians.”

Haaretz commented on both the Eisner incident and Palestinian Prime Minister’s Salam Fayyad’s no-show to a meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday in an editorial cartoon. The Palestinian delegation led by Saeb Erekat gave Netanyahu a letter from President Mahmoud Abbas.

Outrage over sex on the beach

Haaretz reports that police launched an investigation into reports by bystanders that a 35-year-old woman was gang-raped on a Tel Aviv beach two weeks ago. Dozens of eyewitnesses saw a woman with no pants engaging in sexual activity with multiple men in public.

Several different aspects of the incident are under scrutiny: the woman’s behavior, the police’s failure to investigate the incident at the time, and the fact that most eyewitnesses to the hour-long spectacle didn’t call the police (Haaretz says only one woman called the police while Maariv claims two did).

Maariv says police arrived on the scene, saw nothing suspicious, and pursued pickpockets instead. Haaretz also reports that people who know the woman claim that this wasn’t the first time that she was exploited in this manner and that she had previously undergone psychiatric treatment.

Yedioth Ahronoth’s disgust seems to be focused on the fact that few people reported the incident, as its headline shows: “Peeped and kept silent.” Haaretz seems more outraged at the exploitation of the woman by the men with her. They make note of the fact that she is a mother who frequented the beach of late under the influence of alcohol, and its headline mentions “gang rape,” a term the other papers avoid. Maariv emphasizes police misconduct: that they came, they saw nothing, and they left.

Israel Hayom devotes a short article on Page 21 to the incident, and its headline dismisses it as “not the first time.”