The minister doth protest too much: 9 things to know for June 7

1. Argentina’s decision to cancel its World Cup warm-up in Israel is continuing to lead the conversation, taking the form of criticism of Culture and Sports Minister Miri Regev and fears that Eurovision could be next on the chopping block.

• The cancellation, now official, is being treated in the Israeli press as a major loss, with the hand-wringing reaching levels normally only seen after some massive security failure in which people die — which is appropriate, since Regev is practically treating it as a terror attack.
• “This is a new-old form of terrorism which scares, deters and terrorizes athletes. This is the terrorism that causes the Munich attack,” Culture Minister Miri Regev said Wednesday, saying the game was canceled over the threats against players.
• “In Argentina, which suffered the trauma of Iranian terror in the heart of Buenos Aires, there is apparently ongoing sympathy for terror,” writes Amnon Lord in Israel Hayom, one of the few to glom onto Regev’s thinking. “That’s not a good thing for Messi, that people can carry out ideological terror and get away with it.”

2. Yet despite Regev’s assertion, there seems to be widespread recognition that it was not threats of terror but rather a boycott Israel campaign that managed to get the game canceled (though some in Israel have gotten used to calling BDS a form of terror).

• And many believe that is was moving the game from Haifa to Jerusalem for nationalist reasons gave the boycott movement extra firepower.
• A letter obtained by Haaretz from Palestinian soccer chief Jibril Rajoub to his Argentine counterpart requesting the cancellation notes: “The original field of the match was Haifa. However and after political pressure took place from the Israeli government, as it was openly said by Israel’s Minister of Culture and Sports Miri Regev, the match was moved to Jerusalem. This is a decision that, given the current context, the Palestine Football Association utterly rejects and condemns.”
• The paper’s lead editorial notes that the letter “makes it clear that the basis of the request [to cancel] was the obstinacy about holding the game in Jerusalem.”
• Yedioth Ahronoth reports that almost no Likud lawmakers, let alone from other parties, backed Regev’s assertion that the game was canceled because of terror. Even Israel Hayom, the paper seen as a Likud mouthpiece, calls it an “excuse.”
• Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recognized as much Wednesday when he said the Argentina match being scrapped could portend future cancellations — which many have taken to be a reference to the Eurovision song contest (more on that below).
• In Haaretz, though, Anshel Pfeffer notes that the victory for the BDS movement also exposes the movement’s general failure to effectively isolate Israel: “Sure, this is unquestionably a victory for the BDS movement. But it also highlights how rare these victories are and how ineffectual BDS actually is – despite all the hype around it In the 13 years since the campaign was launched, Israel’s global trade has skyrocketed. Despite being for most of that time under a hard-line, right-wing government that has refused to make any concessions to the Palestinians, it is also enjoying unprecedented relations with more countries around the world than ever before.”

3. The biggest loser in all this, besides Israeli fans, is seen as Regev herself and she is roundly criticized not only for trying to blame the cancellation on terror, but for possibly precipitating the cancellation by making the match into a national — and nationalist — event.

• “The attempt by Regev … to turn the game into a national-political show did not go over well in Europe and South America,” Aviad Pohorils writes in Israel Hayom.
• The move to Jerusalem and marking the game as part of Israel’s 70th-birthday celebrations gave legitimization to Israel’s opponents. They didn’t score a single goal but Regev did – an own goal, perhaps the most spectacular one in Israeli soccer history,” writes Haaretz’s Uzi Dann.
• “If you wanted to rank the mistakes made by the culture and sports minister since she was appointed, this would rank at the top,” chides Yedioth’s Sima Kadmon.
• Remarking on Regev’s attempt to blame the cancellation on terror, Haaretz’s Yossi Verter writes that her press conference “broke the record for being ridiculous and pathetic. When it comes to Regev, who has a respectable CV in this area, that’s no small thing. We have not heard from her any apology, penance or acceptance of responsibility. Suddenly she had nothing to do with it.”

4. Ariel Rever, dispatched to Barcelona by Israeli production company Comtecgroup, which had been organizing the game, to make a last-second bid to save the match, says between blaming threats, BDS or Regev’s politicization, the answer is all of the above.

• “Yesterday the protests started, but they got spooked a lot earlier, and the fact that Israeli politicians moved the game onto the political field just boosted the pressure on the Argentinians,” he tells Walla. “But it wasn’t just letters. They got real terror threats.”
• Yedioth reports that Rever went as far as showing Messi a video of disappointed Israeli kids to try and convince him to reverse course and put the match back on, to no avail. An offer to return the game to Haifa was also turned down, according to the paper.

5. Argentina’s Jews (one of the largest communities outside Israel and the English-speaking world) are apparently toeing the official reasoning of it being because of the threats.

• Several Hebrew media outlets report on a letter sent by the head of the Jewish community to Argentina soccer federation head Claudio Tapia protesting that scotching the match shows that “fear can win out.”
• “The Jewish community is really sad and angry at the team for this, that it didn’t take a step toward peace,” Buenos Aires denizen Daniel Romano tells Israel’s Channel 10 news. “What won out is terror.”

6. Pictures in Israel Hayom and Yedioth showing sad sack kids dressed in their Argentina jerseys is meant to telegraph the disappointment of Israeli fans that the game was canceled (and apparently that Israelis are bigger fans of Argentina than the home team).

• So why was the game so important? Both because Israelis love soccer — especially Argentina’s Lionel Messi and his other team FC Barcelona — and because hosting the game would apparently speak to something larger.
• “In the end, the cancellation hits Israel in an especially sensitive spot, the spot where we put on a facade of living in a normal country, a country like all the other European countries,” Oren Nahari writes in the Walla news site.
• “The cancellation shows Israelis once again that even seemingly innocuous cultural events, like a soccer match, aren’t immune from the festering Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israelis want to portray their country as a thriving democracy like any other — violence on the border and the occupation notwithstanding — and a full member of the family of nations,” writes JTA’s Ben Sales.
• Yedioth reports that the lucky few who bought tickets will get a full refund, and those who bought from scalpers will have to trust them to return the money, thousands of shekels in some cases, or head to court.

7. The Argentina cancellation is being seen as a precursor for Eurovision organizers to also balk at the song contest being held in Jerusalem for fear Regev or others could try to politicize that as well.

• Haaretz reports that “following a series of meetings last week, European officials expressed concern that Mideast politics could harm the competition and erode the brand,” citing Israeli sources involved in the talks.
• Walla news quotes an official in the European broadcasting group that puts on Eurovision saying that Israeli officials are deciding between four cities where they might host the contest, but declines to say much more.
• “I can’t respond to a possibility I don’t officially know about, so I can’t respond on Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Eilat or Haifa,” he says, apparently giving away the choices.
• But Regev tells Yedioth it’s Jerusalem or bust: “If they try to move Eurovision from Jerusalem, I will ask the prime minister not to invest NIS 50 million and to give up on Israel hosting it.”

8. Who will be mayor when Eurovision is or is not in Jerusalem? TOI’s Marissa Newman writes that it could be an ultra-Orthodox figure (which would make a strange bedfellow with the eclectic contest).

• With national religious hawk Ze’ev Elkin battling against national religious hawk Moshe Lion, the field is wide open for a Haredi candidate to rally the city’s ultra-Orthodox and take the municipality.
• “With the remainder of the vote likely split between Elkin, Lion, and perhaps [dark horse candidate Ofer] Berkovich, the question of whether the Haredim will opt to field their own candidate(s), agree on a unified endorsement for one of those in the running, or splinter their support could tilt the election,” she writes.

9. Or maybe Jerusalem will have an Iranian ruler? Amid fears of an Iran-Israel confrontation, Newsweek tries to figure out who would win in a fight, with no clear winner emerging, thanks to Iran’s numbers but Israel’s nukes and technology:

• “Though less sophisticated than Israel, the Iranian military is a force to be reckoned with. Its large population—around 82 million—enables Tehran to maintain a standing force of around 534,000 soldiers, with a further 400,000 in reserve, making it the largest force in the Middle East. In a drawn-out engagement, national manpower becomes an important issue. Iranian available manpower is around 47 million compared with just 3 million for Israel. Of course, how important this is will depend on the nature of any war being fought.”