The plotz thickens

If something is inevitable or an unspoken truth, is it still news when it happens or comes out into the open? The answer to that question, as evidenced by the front pages of Israel’s top dailies Wednesday morning, is a resounding yes.

Legal hurdles possibly blocking the transfer of the Amona outpost residents to a nearby plot of land – to the surprise of absolutely nobody – provide the latest twist in the saga that just keeps giving and make for one of the stories leading the news agenda.

Another leading story, at least in Yedioth Ahronoth’s eyes, is the tabloid’s blockbuster expose that the Defense Ministry knew (GASP!) about the fact that Iran had a financial stake in the company that build Israel’s Navy submarines. While Iran’s 4.5 percent ownership in the company has been known for decades, the paper still plays up the ministry’s admission as BIG NEWS and doesn’t hold back with schoolmarmy tsk-tsking over the fact that the ministry originally said it didn’t know about it.

And as if readers needed an allegorical representation of propping something up just to knock it down, front pages are also bespeckled with pictures of a golden statue of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu placed in Rabin Square and gleefully toppled by the Tel Aviv crowds.

A more serious, though no less inevitable, challenge is facing the real Netanyahu over Amona. The legal challenge over plots where residents are to be moved to, held under a 1967 absentee ownership law, was reported on a day earlier by Haaretz (and The Times of Israel), but while then it wasn’t clear if it would actually prove an impediment, it seems it’s now being taken quite seriously by the judiciary.

Israel Hayom reports that Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit is weighing various options and will make a decision on what to do with the settlers in the coming days.

“Judicial and political sources don’t know at this stage how to estimate the chances the move will succeed, but if it does, the residents could move to a temporary settlement, which may be placed not on the three more distant plots of land that they opposed, but on parcels closer and bigger,” the paper reports.

According to Haaretz, though, there is little chance that will happen, with Mandelblit’s office having already decided to abandon the plan over the complications the claims represent and put together a new proposal.
“A source in Jerusalem said a plan is already being put together, but he refused to comment further. He said the decision to desist from relocating the plots was already made on Monday. Still, Justice Ministry officials insist the matter is still under review,” the paper reports. “A source familiar with the situation said that government officials had yet to give up on the possibility of relocating Amona to other plots adjacent to the present location, even if they are not the three the government had counted on until now.”

Yedioth reports that even without the legal challenges, Mandelblit’s plan was flawed, as the outpost of some 400 dunams (98 acres) would be made to move to one of 13 dunams (three acres), with room for only 31 of the 40 homes, to say nothing of any public buildings like synagogues or nurseries.

To top it all off, the paper reports the “storm” (a word it uses several times) over the Regulation Bill continued Monday, in a raucous Knesset committee meeting.

“You are preparing fraud and history will judge you. You are burning us all with your ridiculousness,” the paper quotes MK Issawi Frej yelling before being booted from the meeting.

Frej isn’t the only one unhappy over the bill. Haaretz’s lead editorial takes caustic aim at the Knesset for passing the measure on preliminary reading, both at those who supported it and at those who failed to speak up loudly enough against it, like Yair Lapid.

“This is an anti-democratic and immoral bill; it permits infringing on Palestinian property rights in the territories and legalizes illegal land seizures either by the state or by settlers acting with the state’s encouragement, or its silence,” the editorial reads. “This bill, with its many defects and inherent discrimination, will never win moral or legal legitimacy. The government is being held hostage by the most extreme settlers and can’t seem to stand up to them. Hopefully the Knesset will reject the bill and save something of the state’s honor.”

Joining Amona in the basket of inevitables is Yedioth’s submarine story, which it has continued to pound at while everyone else has given up.

The paper’s coverage looks at who knew what about Iranian involvement in ThyssenKrupp and is as fun to unpack as Donald Rumsfeld’s doozy about known unknowns.

To start with, the paper admits that its expose on Iranian involvement is something easily googled, taking some of the oomph out of the idea that it is an expose. But no matter, the tabloid is more concerned with the fact that the Defense Ministry initially said it didn’t know about it, meaning it was either in the dark or covering something up – the answer to which apparently came Tuesday when Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman admitted that the ministry did know.

“We didn’t know. We didn’t hear. Wait, actually we did, but not all of us. That’s how the farce of responses surrounding Iranian involvement in the company selling Israel submarines looks,” the paper’s news story begins, belying any sense that it’s not taking a stance on the story.
The paper goes on to report that “Liberman tried to downplay the importance of the issue,” and adds that officials in the Prime Minister’s Office are looking into how it is that the National Security Council and Netanyahu himself didn’t know, adding “This is, you will recall, information found on Google.”

With so much analysis and stance-taking in the news piece, it’s not surprising that an commentary from Yossi Yehoshua contains some actual news. After calling Liberman’s statement a “splendiferous zigzag” and detailing his various attempts to get a straight answer from the issue from the ministry, he also includes tidbits from an interview with a senior Israeli official, who tells him of course they knew about Iran’s involvement, but they didn’t really have any options other than the Germans.

“It was the best product, they gave us a discount, and there was also a fear that if we bought from some other country, like Britain or France, they would impose diplomatic sanctions and the project would be stopped,” he’s quoted saying. “Of all the options, this was the least bad.”

Being out of options is something Israel Hayom faces daily when it has no choice but to cover stories in which Netanyahu, to whom it is seen as beholden, is attacked or under crisis.

On Wednesday, that includes offering coverage to a golden statue of the prime minister placed in Tel Aviv. While other papers have fun with the story, Israel Hayom sees the statue as no laughing matter but rather “cheap provocation,” as its headline reads.

In an accompanying column, Dror Eydar calls it a “gilded statue to the arrogant left” and, ignorant of the irony, boasts that it’s only thanks to Israel’s munificence when it comes to freedom of expression that such a thing (which was fined and toppled) is allowed. But, comparing it to both the biblical golden calf and pictures of Yitzhak Rabin in a Nazi uniform (seen as a contributing factor in his assassination), he wonders if it should be allowed.

“What’s the significance of a golden calf statue if not to call to shatter it and hurt its followers,” he asks. “If so, could we say that this exhibition is a form of calling for violence?”