‘Yihye beseder’: 6 things to know for April 29

1. As the country continues to mourn the deaths of the 10 teenagers swept away in a flash flood last week, the Israeli media Sunday takes a critical look at Israel’s prevalent ‘Yihye beseder’ (it will be okay) culture, suggesting that lax regulations and disregard for authority allowed the Bnei Zion military academy to take a group high school students on a hike to the desert in severe weather despite warnings against doing so.

• Police are investigating whether the organizers of the hike lied to participants about the safety of the desert trail they planned to take, as well as about their coordination, or lack thereof, with relevant authorities.
• Over the weekend it was revealed that one Bnei Zion staffer advised against taking the students on a hike to the Dead Sea area amid heavy rains last week. Her father, a search and rescue official, warned her “don’t take the chance,” given the poor weather. The staffer said she passed her father’s warnings to school officials, but they went unheeded.
• Yedioth Ahronoth dedicates the entire front page of its Sunday paper to the tragedy, prominently quoting the staffer’s father’s warning alongside the photos of the teen victims. On page 2, the paper reprints the text of a speech by late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin who warned in 1992 that the collective ‘Yihye beseder’ approach was one of Israel’s “most painful problems.” He said the phrase “usually conceals all the things that aren’t ‘okay’: Arrogance and an exaggerated feeling of self-confidence, power and authority, which are uncalled for.”
• The Haaretz daily also blasts Israel for its “arrogant trust me” culture that it said “leads many Israelis to cut corners even when it jeopardizes their lives and others.” The paper says that while the tendency to improvise and ignore convention “sometimes gives Israel a decisive edge on the battlefield and in high-tech, the phenomenon “becomes a significant disadvantage when it invades other areas.”

2. On Sunday, the Bnei Zion academy’s Tel Aviv offices were raided by police, seizing documents and confiscating computers, after suspicions arose that the heads of the Tel Aviv-based institution were trying to obstruct the police investigation into the deadly hike.

• The head of the academy, Yuval Kahan, and the group’s tour guide Aviv Bardichev were arrested on Friday on suspicion of negligent homicide for ignoring the flash flood warnings issued amidst stormy weather. Both have been remanded into custody until Wednesday.

2. Throughout the day, the last 3 of the 10 flash flood victims were being laid to rest in their hometowns. Hundreds of mourners attended the funerals of Romi Cohen in the town of Maor and Gali Balali in Tel Aviv. The final victim, Adi Raanan, will be buried in the coastal town of Mikhmoret later on Sunday.

3. Ten vehicles were vandalized and racist Hebrew messages were spray painted on the walls of a Palestinian village overnight Sunday, amid a surge in Jewish-on-Arab hate crimes in the West Bank.

• Photos from the Yesh Din rights group showed the phrases scrawled on the village included calls to “wreak vengeance upon the nations,” (from the biblical book of Psalms, and to “take care of them.”
• This latest incident brought the total of hate crimes against Palestinians in the West Bank this month to 14.
• Police are investigating the various attacks, but no arrests have been reported.

4. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told ministers at the Sunday cabinet meeting that he would discuss the Iran nuclear deal, as well as the Islamic Republic’s “increasing aggression,” during his meeting with US State Secretary Mike Pompeo later in the day.

• “It is significant that he comes to Israel in his first official tour,” Netanyahu said. “I will discuss the increased Iranian aggression with him and of course the nuclear agreement with Iran, on which a decision should be made soon,” referring to the May 12 deadline for the Trump administration to decide whether to exit the international nuclear accord.
• Pompeo is using the Middle East leg of his first trip abroad as America’s top diplomat to call for concerted international action to punish Iran for its missile programs.
• Before taking off to Israel, Pompeo told journalists in Saudi Arabia that Iran “destabilizes the entire region,” and praised Riyadh for supporting the Trump administration’s policy on Iran and efforts to reform the nuclear deal.

5. Before the weekly cabinet meeting, Netanyahu ended his meeting with Supreme Court President Esther Hayut without reaching a compromise agreement on a coalition legislation that would drastically limit the court’s authority.

• During the meeting, Hayut reportedly said the Jewish Home’s plan to give MKs the ability to overturn a court ruling with a majority of 61 votes would constitute a “danger to democracy.”
• Coalition sources told The Times of Israel that even though Netanyahu was expected to accept a compromise proposal presented by Hayut, no agreement was reached in the meeting, which was also attended by Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked of the Jewish Home party.
• In Sunday’s Yedioth, the director of the Israel Democracy Institute makes an impassioned plea to preserve the authority of the judicial branch, and accuses Shaked of spreading disinformation about the role of the High Court.

• Dr. Aryeh Carmon argues that since Israel does not have a dedicated bill of rights or constitution, (unlike most other Western democracies) the supreme and high court play an important role defending the country’s stated democratic principals. He said Shaked and other lawmakers “lacked the understanding” of how the judicial branch works in relation to the legislative branch, and accused them of spreading “baseless claims” about the court’s supposed overreach.
• Last night, a crowd of over 3,000 people protested the Jewish Home-sponsored legislation in downtown Tel Aviv, with many holding signs reading “Bibi – keep your hands off the high court.”

6. And finally, delegates of the Palestinian Liberation Organization are gearing up this week to vote on new members of the top-tier leadership group for the first time in over two decades.

• The opportunity could be an opportunity revitalize the Palestinian national movement and start talking about potential successors to 83-year-old PA President Mahmoud Abbas, but some critics, even within the PLO, say the event is staged to maintain the appearance of legitimacy.