War and peace

A throw-down in the Knesset between the parents of soldiers killed in combat in Israel’s 2014 war in the Gaza Strip and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu led the A-block nightly news on Wednesday, and the Thursday papers follow suit with major coverage of the contentious Knesset committee meeting. The battle of the grieving parents competes with a High Court ruling that markets in the liberal bastion of Tel Aviv would be allowed to remain open on the Sabbath, flying in the face of ultra-Orthodox opposition. That alternative front page issue in Israel Hayom is a welcome respite for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from the fierce tongue-lashing and bad press he suffers in the other Thursday papers.

Security matters take a backseat in Thursday’s press, with Wednesday’s car-ramming at the West Bank’s Gush Etzion Junction — in which an Israeli man was injured and his Palestinian assailant shot dead — barely getting any coverage. Even the alleged attempted smuggling of explosives from the Gaza Strip into Israel through the Erez Crossing by two Palestinian women gets insignificant play.

The ever-populist Yedioth Ahronoth goes full-force behind the families who spoke at the Knesset committee, summing up its position on the matter with a front page showing two grieving mothers in tears with the headline: “Shame.” The parents of soldiers killed in Operation Protective Edge attended a meeting on the State Comptroller’s Report on the government’s handling of the war and were met with derision from two of the lawmakers there. The paper calls the standoff between the bereaved and Netanyahu’s underlings, MKs David Bitan and Miki Zohar, “Their disrespect, all of our shame.” The paper’s report says that the roundtable discussion “turned into an embarrassing apology for several Likud party lawmakers, who apparently forgot whom they were talking to.”

The newspaper’s reporter also pens an op-ed in which he calls politicians and grieving parents “an impossible mixture. Oil and water. Holy and base. Essentially impure and inconceivably pure.”

“The degrading display in which public individuals dared for the first time ever to raise their voices to grieving parents is only the first result of this debate,” he writes. “Grieving parents are not always right, but they are always deserving of respect.”

Israel Hayom’s attempts to dull the backlash are feeble at best. There’s no mention of the outrageous behavior of the MKs in its headline, and Netanyahu, who declined answering questions put forward by the families, is presented as the good guy. “Netanyahu exhibited restraint and patience, and at the end of the meeting shook hands with the grieving families,” the paper reports, treating the mothers and fathers of fallen soldiers like children throwing a temper tantrum. Good on Netanyahu for exhibiting restraint in the face of such nastiness. The paper places the blame squarely on the parents, not on the politicians who may have bungled the war and caused their sons to be killed in combat. “Several grieving parents who were invited by Committee Chair MK Karin Elharar (Yesh Atid) attacked with harsh words Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was in the room, and several MKs from Likud,” the paper says.

Israel’s Gray Lady, Haaretz, doesn’t stoop to putting the battle in the Knesset above the fold on the front page, accompanied by a big photo of one parent pointing the finger at unseen lawmakers and another in tears, but focuses its attention on the battle between religious and secular Jews. The banner headline fluttering proudly across all the paper’s columns proclaims that the “High Court of Justice declared: Markets in Tel Aviv can operate on Shabbat.” Interior Minister Aryeh Deri’s call for a new court discussion with a larger bench leads in Israel Hayom, which likely seeks to keep Netanyahu’s religious allies happy. Its coverage highlights the ultra-Orthodox parties’ outrage over the court decision rather than the decision itself, as Haaretz and Yedioth Ahronoth do. Yedioth Ahronoth finds the matter far less compelling than its competitors, however, and sticks it on Page 8.

Haaretz’s op-ed writer Yair Ettinger writes that Deri should thank the High Court judges for being his “Shabbos goy” — the ones who violated the Jewish Sabbath in his stead. He says it’s unlikely that the ultra-Orthodox-backed government will attempt to pass a law to enforce the Sabbath nationwide and override the court’s decision, pointing out the negative political impact such a move would have on votes for Likud and Kulanu. “Keep in mind that the Sabbath is an issue of geography and of politics. For years there had been mass institutionalized violation of the Sabbath on Mount Meron to allow the religious public a giant celebration in the memory of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yohai. There isn’t a word spoken about the status quo, and it’s doubtful if we’ll hear about it on Lag Ba’Omer, which is expected to cause mass violation of the Sabbath.”