Summary of editorials from the Hebrew press
Today’s issues: Born free, supporting the PA’s UN resolution, politics and the rule of fear, the Kurdish dilemma, and don’t buy Golan Telecom threats.
The Jerusalem Post comments on the escalation of extremist views in Israeli society, which are reflected in the racist comments of Bayit Yehudi MK Bezalel Smotrich, and cautions that “Nearly three decades after the activities of the Jewish Terrorist Underground, the 2015 arson murders at Duma and the kidnapping and burning to death of Arab teen Muhammad Abu Khdeir by Jewish terrorists in 2014 demonstrate that lethal racism persists among some Jews.”
Haaretz praises the draft resolution expected to be submitted to the UN Security Council this month by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas calling for the immediate resumption of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, with a one-year deadline to complete them and reach a final-status arrangement based on the principle of two states, and states that this “could help to jump-start the stalled peace process.” The editor appeals to the US not to veto the resolution, despite PM Netanyahu’s opposition to it, and asserts: “Israelis, like Palestinians, need a vision of a positive future. The Security Council must demonstrate daring that will breathe new life into the peace process.”
Yediot Aharonot asserts: “Fear and the manner in which it is leveraged by leaders in the US, Europe and Israel threatens democracy. The common denominator of what is developing within the US presidential election campaign (the Trump phenomenon), Europe, in which the echoes of the extreme right wing parties are growing, and PM Netanyahu’s rhetoric of intimidation in Israel is a creeping threat to the foundations of democracy,” and declares: “Trump and Netanyahu embody the opposite of the leadership required during difficult times – competent leadership which has a complex vision of reality, which points to milestones in bleak situations and which is honest and trustworthy.”
Israel Hayom places Israel’s emerging rapprochement with Turkey in the context of the situation the Turks now find themselves in, namely the bloody global war of terror raging in their midst, and with no friendly neighbors in the region, and contends that of all countries, “Israel, which for decades has been the victim of Palestinian terrorist organizations, has reason to stand by Turkey in these difficult days.” The author believes, however, that Erdogan may be linking the rapprochement with Israel as an opportunity to yet again prevent the establishment of an independent Kurdish state, and calls on Israel’s decision makers to ponder whether recognition of Kurdish self-determination may not be in Israel’s best interests, much as in “the manner of the axiom stipulating that ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend.’”
Globes discusses the incompetent leadership that has brought the entire telecommunications industry to the brink of the abyss, on the backdrop of the storm surrounding the merger of two telecommunication companies, Cellcom and Golan Telecom, which “could affect the entire telecommunications market either positively or negatively,” and contends that the merger is merely an attempt by Golan Telecom management to “cynically exploit the state and then coolly dare to claim that they will suffer immense damage unless the state gives them carte blanche to make a billion shekels.”
[Arik Karmon, Boaz Bismuth and Gad Perez wrote today’s articles in Yediot Aharonot, Israel Hayom and Globes, respectively. |
