Yediot Aharonot notes that the Government is spending NIS 5 million on an advertising campaign that lauds its socio-economic achievements, including its efforts to lower the cost of living, and says that the money is coming "from our pockets. We are financing a campaign designed to tell us how the Government is saving us money." While the author admits that "NIS 5 million is not a lot of money in terms of the state budget," she nevertheless adds: "There are 1,000 elements that would be happy to accept this amount and use it for something that is far more beneficial to the public." The paper reminds its readers that the ads specifically extol the expansion of free education from age three and tax breaks for working parents with small children, but contends: "What is not said is that expanding free education for children from age three and tax breaks for parents with small children are irrelevant to most of the public," at a time when "VAT is rising by 1%, gasoline prices are skyrocketing, the price of a! standard loaf of bread is going up, smokers are paying NIS 2 more for a pack of cigarettes (one should take into account that most of the smoking public buys cigarettes and does not receive cigars as gifts) – and even someone who wants to relax with a bottle of beer, not even whiskey, will need to pay more." The author concludes: "The sense is that Netanyahu is putting a little into one pocket and taking a lot more from the other pocket."
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Ma\’ariv dismisses the claim that Iran does not intend to use such nuclear weapons as it may come to possess against Israel and asserts: "Escalation in relations between countries against the background of regional tensions or mutual tensions as a result of actions that the countries attribute to each other (killing scientists, promoting terrorist attacks against civilians in Bulgaria, etc.) are liable to bring both sides into an unintended war." The author also dismisses any analogy to the MAD that prevailed during the Cold War: "The current global order is not divided between two superpowers that seek to maintain their strength, but is composed of global and regional powers that maintain dynamic, as opposed to stable, relations. To this unstable reality, one must add the rise on strength of not-state actors, including terrorist organizations, some of which are supported by Tehran." The paper also cites the threat of a regi! onal arms race and concludes that "The comparison between the Soviet and Iranian bombs merely shows how dangerous a nuclear Tehran would be for Israel, the region and the entire world."
Yisrael Hayom criticizes UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon for announcing that he will attend an upcoming Non-Aligned Countries Summit in Tehran contrary to American and Israeli requests and avers: "It is no wonder that Iran is laughing at the world, which occasionally makes a laughingstock out of itself." The author says that the UN Secretary-General\’s presence will legitimize "a conference that is nothing more than an Iranian attempt to break through the wall of international isolation around it," and dismisses the conference as "a propaganda exercise by the ayatollahs\’ regime."
The Jerusalem Post refers to the letter sent by FM Avigdor Liberman to the Middle East Quartet in which he called for long overdue Palestinian elections that would oust Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and states that “Liberman might be right that Abbas is an obstacle to peace. But, regrettably, Abbas is just a reflection of public opinion on the Palestinian street. Until that public opinion reconciles itself to living in peace alongside a Jewish and democratic Israel, the resolution of the conflict will remain unattainable.”
Haaretz declares that FM Avigdor Liberman is a “ticking bomb,” and states: “It\’s difficult to think of any other country whose leadership so fears the unpredictability of its foreign minister.”
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[Sima Kadmon, Avner Golov and Boaz Bismout wrote today’s articles in Yediot Aharonot, Ma\’ariv and Yisrael Hayom, respectively.]