The march of the refugees

Tens of thousands of refugees marched and rode from Hungary not only to Germany and Austria over the weekend, but also onto the front pages of all three Israeli dailies, where the drama happening to the north trumps any sort of news going on in Israel’s own relatively placid shores.

All three papers run different versions of the same picture of refugees marching along a highway toward Germany, Austria and freedom, but their headlines and coverage do not all follow the same line.

Israel Hayom’s front page and inside coverage are mostly celebratory of the long journey by the refugees and migrants that is finally bringing them some sort of happiness, after months of misery.

“For thousands of refugees who were stuck the last few days in Hungary and for the tens of thousands on their way there, the weekend was apparently the closest thing to the start of their redemption,” the paper’s Ronen Dorfman reports from the scene, borrowing a term familiar in Jewish liturgy for immigration to Zion. “’We’re starting the walk, it’s filling me with energy,’ says Khaled, a Syrian from Aleppo, who marched alongside his wife and three kids. One who walked the majority of Turkey in the heat of the summer will walk with relative ease in the Hungarian fall, even if it is drizzling.”

Haaretz’s coverage, in contrast, is more staid, and there’s a certain sense of exhaustion and recognition that the battle is not over that seeps through, especially in the headline “No dam will stop the tide of refugees west.”

The paper’s Anshel Pfeffer, in Budapest, reports that the refugees are being worked over first by smugglers and then by the Hungarian government, which has no idea what do with them as they make their way west.

“The Hungarian government seems unable to formulate a policy regarding the refugees. At one point, police look the other way, in another, they are welcoming and give out food collected by volunteers. But in many cases, they beat the refugees with their batons and use pepper spray to force them into registration camps. When the refugees who agree to go to the camps arrive there, they find installations too small to accommodate them and the police give no information as to what to expect,” he reports.

Yedioth Ahronoth, which only two days ago was the only major Israeli paper to run the most horrific picture of drowned Syrian child Aylan Kurdi, this time moves to the other extreme, snagging an interview with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who tells the paper why he and his country want nothing to do with the sea of human migration making its way from Asia.

“We need to defend our borders. A country that can’t defend its borders isn’t worthy to be called a country,” he tells correspondent Shimon Shiffer, who interviews him from a loge box during half time at a soccer game. “We don’t want to change our demographic composition. We want to stay how we are without new additions to our population. Hungary for Hungarians. That’s my message for Israelis.”

It’s a message that may well resonate with certain parts of the population.

For all the years that Syria has been imploding in one of the largest human tragedies in a generation, few have been willing to brook the suggestion that Israel take in any Syrian refugees, but the crisis in Europe seems to have shifted that line of thinking, spurred by Israeli opposition leader Isaac Herzog calling for it publicly for the first time over the weekend.

Haaretz quotes Herzog saying that “Jews cannot be indifferent while hundreds of thousands of refugees are looking for safe haven,” and reports that he was joined by other opposition politicians, as well as Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, who called for the West Bank to absorb its fair share of refugees from the conflict next door.

“In Abbas’s office they said that they will request the UN and EU to put pressure on Israel to allow the refugees passage to the PA to ‘prevent the death and suffering of thousands,’” the paper reports. However, not everybody is aboard the plan to let dying refugees into Israel’s little villa in the jungle. In Israel Hayom, commentator Dan Margalit calls Herzog’s statement “a dangerous trap.”

“Every nation has the right of self-definition. Israel wants to be Jewish and democratic, and any suggestion like [Herzog’s] undermines the foundations of its existence,” he writes. “Syria is defined as an enemy state according to the traditional Arab-Jewish conflict. What country is absorbing the citizens of an enemy at the height of war? There are in Syria’s neighborhood sister countries like Iraq, Turkey and Jordan, and also nearby Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, so why have those who are trying to get away from the inferno come to Israel of all places?”

Truly, why would anybody want to come to Israel? It’s a question not a few journalists were asking late last week after the Knesset passed a law placing restrictions on the state broadcaster expressing opinions. After seeing the outcry, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised to scrap it, leaving his newly minted minister Ofir Akunis, who had supported the measure, flapping in the wind.

“What happened between Wednesday afternoon and Friday afternoon did not bring honor to Netanyahu or his coalition,” the paper’s Nahum Barnea writes, recounting the journey of the clause from its birth in MK Israel Eichler’s mind to its death at the hands of the prime minister. “By Thursday, Akunis realized that he had erred. On Friday at 8 a.m. he said the clause was too broad and was inviting misunderstandings. It needs to be written anew. At 11:30, Netanyahu sent out a statement that the clause would be struck. It was a unilateral statement: He didn’t speak with Akunis. Someone from his bureau took the time to let Akunis know before the announcement. The humiliation was heavier than it had to be.”