When a win is not exactly a win

Success can be a hard thing to come by anywhere. But especially in the Middle East, where losses have lapped wins a couple times over in recent years, even the hint of a success is cause for celebration.

Take, for instance, the release of Ouda Tarabin, an Israeli held in Egypt for 15 years as a spy and released Thursday after serving his full sentence, after years of failed negotiations, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Likud MK Ayoub Kara and a gaggle of lawyers and negotiators all tried to take credit for, as if getting a guy out of prison when his sentence is up is a major feat of diplomacy.

Indeed, the question of whether Tarabin would have been released at his appointed time, and whether wheeling and dealing was needed to get him out, is barely addressed in any of the three major dailies Friday morning, with only Yedioth Ahronoth mentioning in passing that the release of six Egyptians in exchange for Tarabin was needed to make it look like a win for Cairo on the Egyptian street.

Instead, Israeli papers are filled with accounts of his emotional reunion with his family, and of him speaking about how hard it was behind bars in Egypt.

“I was in the grave in Egypt,” he’s quoted saying in Haaretz. “I feel like I’m in a dream and don’t believe it.”

In Israel Hayom, Tarabin’s timely release is feted as a major win for the country, which also released six Egyptian prisoners, with the front-page headline of “Home — thanks to Israel.”

The paper is also the only one to run a photo of Tarabin and Netanyahu, whom he met before getting to see his family, on its front page.

Columnist Dan Margalit does ask some tough questions, such as whether the family’s cooperation with Israel to keep quiet on the issue and not make waves was any good in the end. And he notes that keeping Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi happy meant keeping the celebrations from getting out of hand, which Israel was only too happy to comply with.

“The rest is due to the honorable behavior of the family. To the mother who wept on his shoulder and the father who received him with restraint, and of course we didn’t miss the bristly scene where the attorney fought with the deputy minister over who got him out of prison, and both of them ignored the fact that this happened two weeks before his sentence ended anyway,” he writes.

The question of whether something can be touted as an unqualified success — if you only get to it after years of failure — comes up again with the “perfect” trial of the Arrow 3 anti-ballistic missile system, which managed to shoot down a target in space for the first time ever Thursday, gaining it accolades and a coveted spot as the top story in Yedioth.

The paper hogs all the space and sky puns for the story (“Head in the clouds,” “Out of this world,” etc.), reporting that the success was made all the sweeter, considering the years of work and an earlier failed attempt.

“In light of the failure of the Arrow 3 last year, this is an important achievement for anti-missile defense that is supposed to shoot down Iranian ballistic missiles while they are still in space,” the paper writes.

“This was perhaps the most complicated trial Israel has ever been engaged in,” the paper also quotes Israeli Aerospace Industries veep Boaz Levy as saying.

One might dare to call Israel’s years’-long — and still failing — effort to reach a peace accord with the Palestinians the most complicated one in its history though, one that has yet to see any successes, qualified or not.

Adding a notch to the “Loss” column, Haaretz reports that US President Barack Obama told his Israeli counterpart Reuven Rivlin that the US may no longer be able to stave off anti-Israel initiatives on the world stage, as US Secretary of State John Kerry was able to do while there was a viable peace process.

“Kerry returned without answers. I can’t know whether we’ll continue to be able to block [efforts] because we can’t promise them anything…. What will we tell them?” the paper reports that Obama told Rivlin, citing US and Israeli officials briefed on the meeting.

The reporter, Barak Ravid, also takes a deep dive into Rivlin’s psyche, writing that he left the meeting feeling uneasy about continued US support and that “what most likely bothered him was his sense, even if Obama didn’t say so explicitly, that Israel could no longer count on a US veto in the UN Security Council.”

But what can one count on in the US anymore? One need only look at the front-runner in the Republican field to know that there’s a chance that a year and change from now, the White House could be turning Turtle Bay into a Trump casino — Mooslims need not apply.

It’s no shock that the announcement likely elicited a sign of relief from Netanyahu’s office, though it insisted it had nothing to do with the cancellation.

Yedioth, though, surmises that it was made clear enough that Trump’s visit in the wake of inflammatory comments against Muslims put them in a sticky situation.

“It seems that Trump, who wanted to bolster his standing as the leading GOP candidate via a hug from Netanyahu, understood that the prime minister was not able at that time to give him that hug. He also understood that if he canceled his trip to the Temple Mount it would be seen as giving in to terror. From all these reasons, it seems his campaign staff suggested he cancel the trip — and along the way make Netanyahu’s life easier,” the paper reports.

One group that is less happy about Trump staying home is journalists, who would have been happy to welcome the tabloid-fodder magnate to town, at least for the entertainment value, or in the case of Haaretz’s Ravit Hecht, to expose Netanyahu for the hatemonger he really is, and the Israeli electorate for the Trump-loving buffoons they are.

“Netanyahu and Trump actually deserve each other. They’re made of the same psychological materials. ‘The Arabs are going to the polls in droves,’ which Netanyahu produced at money time, is no different from the repulsive statements made by Trump, another political boor who, by virtue of the loudness of his shouting, has managed to gather a flock of errant sheep, devoid of any conscience or original thought. In their hour of need, when the ballot box was ticking away, both were willing to ride roughshod to the goal, even at the price of making abominable and catastrophic remarks,” she writes.

“Trump isn’t a good fit just for Netanyahu, but also for the mood of the Israeli majority. Netanyahu’s electoral base, which ignores issues like the shocking poverty report released this week and elects him again and again, mainly for his racist rhetoric and patriotic manipulations, could be honored to have a president like Trump,” continues Hecht.