March 19th

Decisions in the Interregnum in Palestine and Israel
In Print by Ziad Asali - The Huffington Post (Opinion) - March 19, 2012 - 12:00am

The year 2011 will go down in history as the year when the two-state solution went into deep freeze. Yet even during this hibernation there is much that can, and indeed must, be done to prevent an even graver crisis.

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NEWS: Palestinians are beset by soaring levels of debt. Jewish-American groups are increasingly divided over Iran policy. The Israeli debate about war with Iran is focusing on defense. Israeli and American officials agree Iran has not decided whether to create a nuclear weapon. The PA is negotiating the Palestinian tax revenue issue with Israeli officials. The IMF says Palestinians urgently need the delivery of pledged aid. Israel claims the Iranian military experts are operating in Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula. A UN report says Israeli settlers are taking over Palestinians springs. A new book by an Israeli academic claims Israeli textbooks promote hatred against Palestinians. Israeli and other women complain of sexual harassment at anti-occupation protests in the occupied territories. COMMENTARY: Peter Beinart says Zionists should boycott Israeli settlements and their goods in order to save Israel. Sarah Chayes and Amir Soltani say both Israel and Iran are using the nuclear issue as a diversion from deeper problems. Akiva Eldar says Israel is finding it increasingly difficult to plausibly claim victimhood. Avner Cohen says PM Netanyahu has shown contempt for the Holocaust. Nathan Jeffay asks why large “unauthorized” settlement outposts remain intact after years of court orders and promises to remove them. The Forward says it's a bad idea for pro-Israel groups to try to squelch campus free speech using Title VI. Emad El Din Adeeb says there is the danger of a war that begins in Gaza and ends in southern Lebanon. Elias Harfoush looks at changes taking place within Hamas and other Palestinian groups. Jeff Wheelwright looks at the effects of new genetic science on Israel's attempts to define “who is a Jew.” Barry Rubin says US primacy in the Middle East may have died in 2011.

In 2011, US primacy in the Middle East died
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post
by Barry Rubin - (Opinion) March 18, 2012 - 12:00am

This is the end... Of our elaborate plans, the end, Of everything that stands.... No safety or surprise.... There’s danger on the edge of town.... And all the children are insane.... The West is the best.... But you will never follow me.” – “This is the End,” The Doors

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Defining Jews, Defining a Nation: Can Genetics Save Israel?
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Atlantic
by Jeff Wheelwright - (Analysis) March 14, 2012 - 12:00am

Herzliya, a broad-beached ocean-side resort 10 miles north of Tel Aviv, is booming with construction -- big hotels going up on the bluffs and expensive new bungalows on the bougainvillea-laden streets. Herzliya was named for Theodor Herzl, the 19th-century Zionist visionary whose dream to see the Jewish people resettled in their homeland triumphantly came to pass.

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Palestinian Transformations
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Dar Al-Hayat
by Elias Harfoush - (Opinion) March 18, 2012 - 12:00am

The times are different for Gaza, and they are different for Hamas. And just as the recent confrontation in the Gaza Strip represented a new test of the ability of Israel’s offensives to inflict human casualties and material damage among the ranks of the Palestinians, as if we needed further Palestinian bloodshed to discover this, it also represented a test for the Islamist movement and for its courageous hesitation to move forward in taking the risk of such a costly confrontation.

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The dangers of the situation in Gaza
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Asharq Alawsat
by Emad El Din Adeeb - (Opinion) March 18, 2012 - 12:00am

Amidst our preoccupation with the situations in Syria, Egypt, Yemen, Libya and Tunisia, the danger of the situation in Gaza seems to have slipped from our memory, even though the current scenario forewarns that a military explosion is likely to start in Gaza and end in southern Lebanon.

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A Fine Line on Title VI
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jewish Daily Forward
(Editorial) March 19, 2012 - 12:00am

Do Jewish students deserve the same federal civil rights protections as African Americans, women and the disabled in the nation’s schools and universities? The official answer now is in the affirmative, and in principle, that seems only just and fair. After years of lobbying, Jewish groups led by the Zionist Organization of America managed to persuade the Obama administration to extend Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to cover members of religious groups on the basis of shared ethnic characteristics.

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Migron Is Symbol of Broken Promise
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jewish Daily Forward
by Nathan Jeffay - (Opinion) March 18, 2012 - 12:00am

Jerusalem — To almost every country in the world, all of Israel’s settlements on the occupied West Bank are officially illegal. Israel rejects this view but does consider one group of settlements illegal under its own laws. Yet, less than a handful of these unauthorized outposts have been evacuated since June 2004, when then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon promised President George W. Bush to remove them. Of those that were evacuated, most were repopulated within days.

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Netanyahu's contempt for the Holocaust
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Avner Cohen - (Opinion) March 19, 2012 - 12:00am

In October 2006, Haaretz's weekend magazine asked a number of cultural figures to describe how they would feel if Tel Aviv were to be wiped off the map. This was in response to one of the Israeli anxiety attacks over the non-existent Iranian atom bomb and the declarations made by the Iranian president in that vein. I was surprised that serious people were prepared at all to relate to such a weird and nihilistic question but I was even more surprised that the Haaretz editorial staff had initiated the project.

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Israel is fighting a losing battle over victimhood
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Akiva Eldar - (Opinion) March 19, 2012 - 12:00am

With regard to A.B. Yehoshua's extraordinary remark - that he had "never heard the Jews analyze the Holocaust as a Jewish failure, which was not anticipated" - I can only wonder where the renowned author was when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu waved the "Auschwitz letters"? Yehoshua didn't hear that Netanyahu said that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the new version of Adolf Hitler? He didn't know that Netanyahu had promised that he would not, under any circumstances, allow Iran to carry out a second Holocaust?

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