When IS is the enemy, everyone’s a friend

Nothing sells papers like a little bit of fear (well, kittens and health advice, but after that comes fear) and whether you think IS is knocking at our doorsteps, is in league with regional baddies actually at our doorstep, or is just a way to bring former regional foes, like say, the US and Iran, together, Israel’s Hebrew-language dailies have something for everyone Sunday.

“IS is in Sinai,” Israel Hayom breathlessly reports in its main A1 headline, probably wishing that Hebrew had capital letters it could employ. The nitty gritty is that a member of terror group Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, which actually is in Sinai, told Reuters that they are being advised by Islamic State terrorists. As for IS being in Sinai, though — eh, not so much.

“They teach us how to carry out operations. We communicate through the Internet,” the paper quotes a terrorist telling Reuters. “They don’t give us weapons or fighters. But they teach us how to create secret cells, consisting of five people. Only one person has contact with other cells.”

While IS may not actually be in Sinai, it recently claimed the life of one Israeli, American-born journalist Steven Sotloff, and Yedioth Ahronoth quotes an unnamed former hostage saying that among Sotloff’s torturers while in captivity for a year was Mehdi Nemmouche, the man fingered for the Brussels Jewish Museum terror attack earlier this year. It’s unclear if the paper’s source is the same as Nicolas Henin, who went public with the info on Saturday.

Nemmouche “espoused extremely anti-Semitic views,” the former hostage says. “He wanted very much to be like Mohammed Merah, the terrorist from the Jewish school in Toulouse. He would beat the Syrian hostages, but one time he also beat Sotloff.”

As efforts to stop the IS threat ramp up in the West, Yedioth hops on the news, already rampant in the foreign press, of an increasing alliance between the US and Iran, among other states, including some not so obvious ones.

“The US is hoping Jordan will help gather intelligence on IS and Saudi Arabia will fund Syrian opposition groups to fight them. A central place in the coalition is saved for Turkey, a NATO member, which will be asked to step up control over its border crossings,” the paper reports. It also adds, in what can only be described as a lapse in journalism, that an unscheduled stop of a plane carrying American contractors in Tehran Saturday could be linked to this alliance. “It’s too early to tell,” the paper smartly concludes.

In Haaretz, Zvi Bar’el also writes about Iran and the US “being in the same foxhole” against IS, though he notes that increased cooperation will have a number of hurdles to overcome, such as differences of opinion over Syria and the fact that both forces will have to coordinate efforts via the Don Knotts-esque Iraqi Army:

“This gathering and organizing of forces does not guarantee efficient collaboration between the Western powers and Iran, since all foreign forces will have to rely on the Iraqi army. The army’s troops suffered an embarrassing failure when they ran for their lives without putting up a fight against the forces of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Islamic State’s leader. Not only will the Iraqi army’s questionable abilities be a hindrance, the absence of an agreed-on government overseeing the army and coordinating a campaign makes the operation of an international coalition doubtful.”

The death of a 2-year-old left for 40 minutes in a hot car on Friday also garners top headlines. Yedioth quotes neighbors as saying the parents were not the type to not pay attention to their kids. “There was always the impression that they cared a lot for their kids. This is a terrible tragedy and there’s no doubt it was done by mistake. I only hope they can recover from this,” one neighbor says.

Alongside the tongue wagging, Israel Hayom features some of the finger wagging that typically follows a tragedy like this. Orly Silverberger, head of the Beterem organization, writes that a little education can go a long way toward heading off these disasters.

”The solution is known and already working in some 30 Western countries: a systematic cultural change through public policy reforms in the government toward educational programs, teacher and caretaker training, stepped up public advocacy, increased help for populations at risk, statistical gathering and analysis of injuries and mostly increased awareness. Only this way can we stop the next needless death,” she writes.

All that is good and all, but sometimes gathering information and talking more about a problem doesn’t solve anything. Hence the premise of a piece by Haaretz’s Jonathan Lis, which reveals that some lawmakers fear a Knesset panel convened to study the latest Gaza War is nothing but a toothless sham thrown together for political purposes.

“Committee member MK Nitzan Horowitz (Meretz) thinks the subcommittee is ‘political shady dealing,’ and ‘a farce,’ rather than an unbiased panel,” the paper reports, adding that the panel is missing some opposition parties as well as any Arabs or women.

“The committee is scrutinizing the functioning of the government, when its chairman, Zeev Elkin, was until a few months ago a member of that same government as deputy foreign minister,” the paper quotes MK Nachman Shai as saying. “He owes his appointment to Netanyahu and now he is scrutinizing him.”