January 8th

An Unnecessary War ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post by Jimmy Carter - (Opinion) January 8, 2009 - 1:00am I know from personal involvement that the devastating invasion of Gaza by Israel could easily have been avoided. » Read more

The Gaza Boomerang ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times by Nicholas D. Kristof - (Opinion) January 7, 2009 - 1:00am At a time when Israel is bombing Gaza to try to smash Hamas, it’s worth remembering that Israel itself helped nurture Hamas. When Hamas was founded in 1987, Israel was mostly concerned with Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement and figured that a religious Palestinian organization would help undermine Fatah. Israel calculated that all those Muslim fundamentalists would spend their time praying in the mosques, so it cracked down on Fatah and allowed Hamas to rise as a counterforce. » Read more

What You Don’t Know About Gaza ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times by Rashid Khalidi - January 7, 2009 - 1:00am NEARLY everything you’ve been led to believe about Gaza is wrong. Below are a few essential points that seem to be missing from the conversation, much of which has taken place in the press, about Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip. THE GAZANS Most of the people living in Gaza are not there by choice. The majority of the 1.5 million people crammed into the roughly 140 square miles of the Gaza Strip belong to families that came from towns and villages outside Gaza like Ashkelon and Beersheba. They were driven to Gaza by the Israeli Army in 1948. » Read more

Israel's PR war ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz by Gideon Lichfield - (Opinion) January 8, 2009 - 1:00am It had to happen at some point. The army attacks a civilian building identified as a source of fire; dozens of civilians are killed, and what little sympathy Israel enjoyed in whatever war it's currently fighting evaporates. It happened in Qana during the Second Lebanon War, and yesterday a school in the Jabalya refugee camp became a global symbol of indiscriminate Israeli aggression. » Read more

Arab media portray Palestinians as courageous victims ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Los Angeles Times by Jeffrey Fleishman, Raed Rafei - January 8, 2009 - 1:00am Face splotched in blood, eyes closed, mouth aslant, the child seems to be slumbering, but she is dead. The only part of her you see is her head tilting in ash and rubble above the caption, "A day of massacres in Gaza." » Read more

Israeli media focus on Hamas rockets, keep gore to a minimum ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Los Angeles Times by Ashraf Khalil, Batsheva Sobelman - January 8, 2009 - 1:00am There's no visceral wartime imagery; details on injured Israeli soldiers are handled delicately. Bloody scenes such as the carnage after Tuesday's shelling of a U.N. school in the Gaza Strip appear only in snippets, and often in the context of analysis as to how the world will react. There is, however, round-the-clock coverage of the Israeli south, where rockets fired by Gazan militants have killed three Israeli civilians and injured dozens since the conflict began Dec. 27. » Read more

Nothing accidental about attack on school ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The National by Craig Nelson - January 8, 2009 - 1:00am Israeli intelligence officers call it “mowing the grass”; the continual trimming of the ranks of Palestinian militants and activists to keep the populace from getting out of control. The truth about the events that led to the deaths of at least 39 people at the United Nations Al Fakhoura school in Gaza will have to wait until the end of the war and investigations by organisations with no stake in the conflict. » Read more

Gaza War Role Is Political Lift for Ex-Premier ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times by Ethan Bronner - January 7, 2009 - 1:00am A few weeks ago, Defense Minister Ehud Barak was considered a dead man walking in Israeli politics. Members of his Labor Party were plotting to replace him after elections on Feb. 10, if not before. Under his leadership, the storied party of David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir had sunk so low in the polls that there was serious talk it might disappear. » Read more

ANALYSIS-Gaza crisis defers dispute over Abbas presidency ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Reuters by Alistair Lyon - January 8, 2009 - 1:00am Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose original four-year term expires on Friday, faces a legitimacy challenge that Israel's Gaza war has only postponed. How it plays out will affect Abbas's ability to pursue peace talks with Israel. These have so far proved fruitless, earning him only derision from Hamas, which preaches armed resistance. The Israeli onslaught on the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip has temporarily eclipsed the dispute between Abbas's secular Fatah faction and its Islamist rivals over whether he must quit now. » Read more

Red Cross Reports Grisly Find in Gaza ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post by Craig Whitlock, Griff Witte - January 8, 2009 - 1:00am The International Committee of the Red Cross said Thursday that it had found at least 15 bodies and several children -- emaciated but alive -- in a row of shattered houses in the Gaza Strip, and officials with the agency accused the Israeli military of preventing ambulances from reaching the bombed-out site for four days. » Read more