This is the press secretary of our affliction

Even had the Trump administration only said that Russia needs to decide between Syria’s Assad and the US, it would have been enough to rile up Israel’s press after a one-day holiday break.

Even had White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer just said Adolf Hitler didn’t sink to the level of Assad, it would have been enough.

Even had he just used the strange term “Holocaust Center” in his attempt to explain himself, it would have been enough.

Even had he just clarified that what he meant was that at least Hitler didn’t gas his own people, it would have been enough.

Even had he just been forced to go on the defensive and an apology campaign as calls for him to be fired over the comments poured in, it would have been enough.

Yet like a child showered with gifts after finding the hidden afikoman matza during the Passover Seder, Israel’s press is handed all this and more on a silver platter Wednesday morning.

The toxic love-hate-missile rhombus between the US, Syria, Russia and Iran is the consensus news leader, but only Yedioth Ahronoth plays up Spicer’s Hitler controversy as its lead story, calling his remarks “incomprehensible.”

“The Shoah and the alternative facts,” reads the tabloid’s headline, reporting that Spicer’s comments caught journalists at a press conference “in total shock,” though the paper does not include Spicer’s apology, which came only after the paper was sent to print.

“Spicer’s fall, beyond his embarrassing and intolerably odd comments, won’t help the White House get rid of the feeling that it operates under an air that excuses anti-Semitism,” the paper’s Tzipi Shmulovich reports, sliding from reporting into analysis and opinion. “In three months Spicer has managed to transform the daily briefing from a rote event to somewhere between satire and farce. Spicer, a known figure in Washington, was supposed to bring an scent of professionalism to the Trump administration, but instead has become the court jester.”

The name calling doesn’t stop there, though, with columnist Orly Azulay calling Spicer “not the sharpest pencil in the case” but positing that his comments aren’t the result of ignorance but rather much more sinister anti-Semitic undercurrents running through the White House.

“In his poor briefing in which he spoke about Hitler, Spicer tried to ward off the flood of attacks that Trump and his administration were not as racist as his supporters wanted them to be. If Trump turned his back on these people, they would show him in the next election. It’s hard to say that Trump is an anti-Semite,” she writes. “For him ignorance is power, and the rest is just showing-off and special interests. But those who surround him know exactly how to appease their constituency, and what Spicer said yesterday is indeed ignorant but also reveals layers of anti-Semitism that the White House understands should be expressed, because that’s what the public wants in the Trump era. Anyone who thought that Trump would come out against Muslims without those in his immediate circle trying to harm Jews as well is living in total denial. What Spicer said was not a slip of the tongue; this is the new strategy.”

Israel Hayom goes a bit easier on the Trump spokesman, but doesn’t let him totally off the hook, calling the comments “muddled.”

“It seems he forgot the murder of millions of Jews in the gas chambers during the Holocaust,” the paper writes, and one cannot be sure if it’s being sarcastic or sincere.

The tabloid and broadsheet Haaretz, though, both focus on the meatier matter of US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson telling Russia it’s either with the US or against the US, which both papers describe as an “ultimatum.”

In Israel Hayom’s op-ed page, columnist Zalman Shoval notes that the comments come as the Trump administration is still trying to figure out where it stands vis-a-vis Russia, Syria and the whole regional mess.

“It’s discovering that it sometimes contradicts itself. The US works with the Iraqi government in its war against Islamic State, and even provides them with weapons and training, even though the government in Baghdad and the army, to say nothing of the Shiite militias taking an important role in the battles, are used by Iran to make strategic geopolitical gains,” he writes. “Even more than that: The cautious cooperation between the US and Russia in its battle against IS in Syria allows Russia’s allies, like Iran, to raise the level of support for Hezbollah and even to try to get its forces, or forces working for it, near the Israeli and Jordanian borders. One should hope that that the new US administration will deal with these challenges in the coming months. Israel has no interest in the degradation of ties between the US and Russia in Syria or anywhere else, but rather the opposite. However, it needs to be alert to the deadly potential of the link between Moscow and Iran, and the US’s relationship toward it.”

While the administration figures out its red lines, Haaretz reports that anti-Semites believe it’s being guided by a dastardly Jew — Trump son-in-law and top adviser Jared Kushner, who is blamed for pushing Trump away from isolationism and toward bombing Syria.

“It’s them, it’s them – it’s his daughter and son-in-law who are literally enemies of the republic! I can’t help it, I’m just gonna lay it all out there,” the paper quotes popular conspiracy theorist Alex Jones saying on his radio show. “We don’t need Jared Kushner leading us into another disastrous war in the Middle East for the benefit of Israel,” another far-right commentator is quoted saying.

Another disastrous war may be out of Kushner’s hands, though, with tensions rising in Egypt, just in time for Passover. As Israelis got ready to read about pillars of fire and smoke leading them toward Sinai, a modern version came whistling out of the peninsula in the form of an Islamic State rocket attack. The incident came as Israel shut the Taba border crossing, “forcing thousands of Israelis to cancel their plans,” according to Haaretz, which reports that some 5,000 Israelis were already chilling on the sandy beaches of the restive peninsula.

Yedioth collects the stories of some of these intrepid vacationers who insist they won’t be leaving Egypt anytime soon, too-on-the-point biblical parallels be damned.

“The Sinai is dangerous as Jerusalem is. As the country I live in and where I raise my children, on the edge of the volcano. Maybe even less. But we don’t give out travel warnings for Israel, for obvious reasons,” writes Tamar Kaplinsky. “In the end we deal with the dangers. To each their own. We continue to live in Israel, on the edge of the volcano and raise kids there, despite the racism and violence. Despite the security situation and choking economy and feeling that there’s no way out. We get in our cars despite the dangers. We visit our holy city despite the frequent attacks.”

As for those who stayed in Israel, Israel Hayom reports that Israelis didn’t exactly stay at home, with 80,000 people visiting national parks on the first day of Passover alone, and another 10,000 filling up the beaches around the Sea of Galilee.