Trans-cyberian failway

Israel was apparently not among the 70-odd countries affected by the WannaCry cyber attack that swept much of the world Tuesday, but Israeli papers still catch the virus, giving top coverage to the ransomware offensive.

Israel Hayom’s top headline reads that Israel has hit “a peak of preparing for the attack,” but the tabloid reports it may have been spared thanks to the Jewish day of rest.

“As of now, the attack passed over Israel. According to the head of the national cyberdefense authority, Bucky Carmeli, it’s possible that the central reason is that most bodies do not work on Shabbat, and as a result, many systems were not online. That being said, there’s no guarantee damage won’t be discovered from today and on,” the paper reports.

Yedioth Ahronoth reports that the health system has been ordered to disconnect from the internet and workers are not to open emails from abroad. The paper notes the Energy Ministry is also taking precautions to protect power and water infrastructure. “We take this very seriously,” the paper quotes the health and energy ministries saying.

On the paper’s op-ed page, Tel Aviv University computer expert Yitzhak Ben-Israel identifies another reason Israel was spared: its high-tech prowess.

“One of the main reasons [Israel wasn’t attacked] is the warning sent out last week by people from the national cyberdefense authority. The authority, together with the cyber unit, is part of a national cyber array working out of the Prime Minister’s Office. This system is unique and exists almost nowhere else in the world and places Israel atop the list of countries that plan seriously for national cyberdefense,” he writes.

Spotting a silver lining in the WannaCry attack, former cyberdefense official Rami Efrati writes in Israel Hayom that other countries’ lack of preparedness may now be changing.

“Western countries have now agreed to form a joint force to fight cyber terror,” he writes. “Countries will be able to make decisions to beef up [cyberdefense] methods in other fields, like the banking system, and to impose regulations to secure information in companies or bodies in fields such as health, transportation, infrastructure and local governance. These moves will be an efficient solution for the lack of security for most computer systems around the world.”

While the cyberattack also makes the front page of broadsheet Haaretz, the paper leads off instead with a diplomatic spat between Israel and Jordan that erupted in the wake of a Jerusalem terror attack Saturday, in which a Jordanian man stabbed a police officer and was killed. After Jordan called the death a “heinous crime” and Israel accused Amman of being two-faced, the paper indicates that the row is more than just a garden variety kerfuffle, calling it a “sharp confrontation” in its top headline.

The paper, though, spills even more ink riffing on another possible conflict — between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump, after the White House indicated Trump would express support for Palestinian self-determination during his trip to the region next week.

“Ostensibly, there is nothing new in a statement like this from Trump. After all, the three presidents who preceded him – Clinton, Bush and Obama – also expressed support for the establishment of a Palestinian state. The latter two even defined the realization of the two-state solution as an American security interest. But only 120 days ago, Trump really was not there,” diplomatic correspondent Barak Ravid writes, while also hedging with the well-worn caveat regarding Trump and his fickle stances. “No one can predict whether on the first occasion that he encounters Abbas’s and Netanyahu’s well-known rejectionist stances, he will decide to abandon the issue and move on to other things. Supporters of the two-state solution in Israel would do well to learn the lesson from the anguish the settlers are experiencing these days, and lower their expectations.”

In another column (the paper has three on the subject), Chemi Shalev ties in Trump and Netanyahu’s possible clash to the Trump news the rest of the world is talking about — the firing of FBI head James Comey, noting that the GOP’s unwillingness to confront Trump on any issue should worry Jerusalem.

“Netanyahu needs to ask himself whether he’ll be able to enlist his trusted allies in the majority party to confront the president on an issue such as the establishment of a Palestinian state, if they wouldn’t dare look Trump in the face when he fired America’s top law enforcer in the middle of an investigation against him,” he writes.

To look at Israel Hayom’s coverage of the trip, though, one would likely have no idea that the two don’t see eye to eye on absolutely everything and that the trip isn’t going to go more swimmingly than any trip ever.

“This trip is truly historic,” the paper’s headline reads, passing up the actual news in national security adviser H.R. McMaster’s announcement. Readers have to slog through hundreds of words before getting to his line about Palestinian self-determination.

Also touted as historic is the demotion of the Hapoel Tel Aviv soccer team from the premier league to the lower national league for the first time in 28 years, with pictures of dejected fans and players sprinkled across all three papers.

In Yedioth, writer and fan Shay Feigenbaum also does little to hide his unhappiness, with a column titled “I am embarrassed” in which he lashes into the team with all the fury of a typical armchair goalie.

“I’m ashamed of them not just over the poor game, but over the last three games and those before them,” he writes, letting his indignation pour forth. “These are players who are not committed, who aren’t for for the Premier League, and definitely not a big famous club like Hapoel Tel Aviv.”