1. A few days after it was first reported that the top-level security cabinet would start meeting in a bunker, Yedioth Ahronoth is taking readers inside the underground building that looks from the outside like a brutalist Frank Gehry design.
- The paper reports that the building, hidden somewhere in Jerusalem, is protected from all sorts of attacks and disasters, from earthquakes to nukes. It’s not Iranian missiles that led Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to move the meetings to the building, but rather fear of leaks. Netanyahu got annoyed that in the old room, ministers could step out at any time and grab a phone, and so started security meetings at the Defense Ministry headquarters, before moving to the emergency preparedness center.
- While the food there is apparently better than at their old digs (“bourekas, tasty sandwiches, fruit, vegetables and good coffee”) not everybody is happy with the move.
- “A minority think the decision is unnecessary and broadcasts panic, and there’s even one who spoke in closed conversation about Netanyahu’s paranoid fear of Iranian and Hezbollah pinpoint missiles.”
- In Haaretz, political commentator Yossi Verter thinks that may be the point, with Likud’s supporter numbers rising each time attention is focused on security matters.
- “It broadcasts a feeling of emergency. It signals a danger nearing. The more these thoughts sink deeper into the public consciousness, and as the siege mentality grows stronger, only one man can gain from it,” he writes.
2. That’s not to say there are not real dangers lurking, as yet another airstrike in Syria against a Hezbollah missile site was reported late Thursday.
- Israel Hayom calls the explosions reported at an airbase near Homs “mysterious.”
- It’s not quite a whodunit, according to Yedioth, which reports that Syrian state media blamed Israel for what they said was an airstrike on the missile site that set the depot on fire.
- The paper also notes opposition reports saying 25 Iranians and Hezbollah members were killed, but notes that given the source of the info “it’s not clear how reliable they are.”
3. Netanyahu’s bunker mentality has been shown to extend to the legal cases against him, which pop back into the headlines in Haaretz thanks to a top story quoting Bezeq chief Shaul Elovitch saying “I believe [Netanyahu is] ready to commit suicide for me.”
- The paper reports Elovitch made the claim in the summer of 2015, shortly after Netanyahu’s Communications Ministry approved a merger between Bezeq and Yes despite anti-trust concerns.
- The paper also quotes Elovitch saying he gave him positive coverage in the Walla news site he also owns because he “owes” Netanyahu for helping him “against everybody.” (Elovitch denies making the statements.)
- “The quotes, as with others, show that Elovitz saw his relationship with Netanyahu as a quid-pro-quo, and linked the positive coverage in Walla with the government’s gestures to Bezeq,” investigative reporter Gidi Weitz writes.
4. Israel Hayom reports that an internal Israeli investigation has found the EU funneling millions of euros to groups that support a boycott of Israel.
- The paper focuses on just a couple of groups, including Norwegian People’s Aid, which got 1.76 million euros of public funding in 2016, the same year it published a report calling on financial firms to divest from Israel.
- The paper admits, though, that the money isn’t necessarily going to activities to delegitimize Israel, and that it is difficult to track.
- Still, columnist Oded Beck in the paper calls on Israelis to “open your eyes to the European subversion.”
- “The numbers appearing in the report are the tip of the iceberg of European involvement in funding the battle to muddy Israel’s face,” he writes.
5. The sudden and not totally unexpected blowing up of the planned summit between US president Donald Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jung-Un is also getting wide play in the Israeli media.
- “Angry again,” reads the headline in Yedioth Ahronoth. The paper’s US correspondent notes — with the aggrieved air of someone who really had her heart set on going to Singapore — that the time and place had already been set and a commemorative coin already issued.
What is Singapore Airlines’ cancelation policy. Asking for … the Washington press corps.
— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) May 24, 2018
- In Haaretz, columnist Chemi Shalev asks whether Trump will now focus attention on solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, now that his historic peace initiative with Pyongyang is now seemingly off the table.
- “Benjamin Netanyahu and his colleagues may be secretly hoping that Kim continues to keep Trump engaged for the foreseeable future, otherwise he may start to look for his Nobel Prize somewhere else, as in the ‘ultimate deal’ between Israel and the Palestinians,” he writes.
6. JTA’s Ron Kampeas takes a deep dive into the mess Congress made for itself by including some anti-Israel activity in a bill defining anti-Semitism.
- Kampeas notes that the Arab-American Institute’s complaint neatly sums up the objections, with a statement that warns the language “will chill conduct, cause individuals to self-censor, and remain enforced by the government for years until legitimate speech is targeted, a suit is brought, and the slow machinery of the judiciary strikes down the legislation,”
- The wording apparently came from the State Department, but Kampeas reports that one of the co-authors is among those objecting to the language, since it was never meant to apply to become part of legislation.
- “Kenneth Stern, who now directs the Justus & Karin Rosenberg Foundation, has said the definition was meant to assist diplomats in identifying anti-Semitic trends in their host countries and was not crafted to the more stringent standards that a law should aspire to,” he reports.