NEWS: Israel's anxieties about Egypt are apparently growing. Israel protests new South African regulations requiring Israeli goods from the occupied territories to be clearly labeled. The PA thanks South Africa and urges the entire world to boycott Israeli settlement goods. Deputy FM Ayalon says South Africa is still an apartheid state. Hamas calls on Egypt to treat Gaza residents as it treats Israeli tourists in the Sinai Peninsula. Senior UN officials reiterate that the two-state solution is the “most realistic option” for Israel and the Palestinians. The PA says settler violence is undermining the peace process. The Israeli government says efforts to integrate the children of African migrants are harming Israeli students. Residents of one “unauthorized” settlement outpost criticize residents of another for agreeing with the Israeli government to relocate. DM Barak says FM Lieberman's recent comments calling for the ouster of Pres. Abbas harmed Israel's interests. The EU and the UN call on Israel to cease a particularly destabilizing settlement project, Har Homa. Experts call on the US government to formally designate Jewish Israeli extremists as “terrorists.” COMMENTARY: Bradley Burston says Israel is threatened by Islamophobia, not Islam. Ha'aretz says Lieberman is a political ticking bomb, but the Jerusalem Post says he has a point. The Daily Star blasts Lieberman's remarks, and condemns the Israeli government in general. Jonathan Schanzer says Hamas has the same problems with corruption the PA does. Elliott Abrams thinks Congress should authorize the use of force against Iran. George Hishmeh bemoans "the American silence on Israel.”

Why the American silence on Israel
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Gulf News
by George S. Hishmeh - (Opinion) August 23, 2012 - 12:00am


It is a fact of life that in an American national elections, held once in four years, foreign policy is not a contentious issue. But this time around the policies of Israel, a revered ally of various US administrations, has time and again hit the front pages and, occasionally, the opinion pages of leading US newspapers but with hardly any serious criticism.


Time to Authorize Use of Force Against Iran
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Weekly Standard
by Elliott Abrams - (Opinion) August 21, 2012 - 12:00am


How America can stop what theNew York Times calls “Israel’s March to War” is the hot topic this month. The issue—for the Times—is whether Israel is on the verge of bombing Iran’s nuclear sites, or can be persuaded to delay that decision and rely on the United States instead. This is what a parade of U.S. officials visiting Jerusalem this summer have counseled (and pressured) Israel to do. But the comments of Israel’s top officials suggest that its patience is wearing thin and that it may act soon, in weeks if not months.


Ex-AIPAC Flack to Head The Israel Project
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jewish Daily Forward
by Nathan Guttman - (Opinion) August 22, 2012 - 12:00am


The Israel Project, one of the country’s fastest-growing pro-Israel advocacy groups, is on the brink of new leadership and a revised set of goals. Founded a decade ago to influence journalists and other media professionals by connecting them with timely, pro-Israel information, The Israel Project announced on August 22 that Josh Block, a former spokesman for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, will be its new CEO. He will succeed the group’s founder and president, Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, who stepped down earlier this year.


Hamas’s corruption
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post
by Jonathan Schachter - (Opinion) August 23, 2012 - 12:00am


The regional standing of Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist faction born in 1987 as a Muslim Brotherhood splinter group, has undoubtedly been buoyed by the meteoric rise of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. But a potentially bigger factor has been the precipitous decline of its rival, the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority government, led by the secular Fatah faction.


Two-faced occupier
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Daily Star
(Opinion) August 23, 2012 - 12:00am


Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman was once a nightclub bouncer in Soviet Moldova, born and raised outside Israel. He is a settler par excellence and in the perfect position for somebody with the track record of premier Benjamin Netanyahu to appoint him as foreign minister, in order to use him as the front man for any dirty work.


Liberman’s letter
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post
(Editorial) August 23, 2012 - 12:00am


In a letter to the Middle East Quartet – the US, UN, EU and Russia – Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman called for long overdue Palestinian elections that would oust Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Liberman went on to enumerate a list of positive Israeli gestures toward the PA, which have been answered by the Palestinian leadership with legal and diplomatic warfare, instead of constructive dialogue.


A minister who’s a ticking bomb
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
(Editorial) August 23, 2012 - 12:00am


Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has apparently decided to break his long silence and no longer spare the Israeli public and the world from his opinions. In his letter to the Middle East Quartet, as reported in Wednesday’s Haaretz, Lieberman calls for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas − whom he says is “personally acting to undermine” the peace process − to be removed and replaced in new PA elections.


Islamophobia, not Islam, will be the end of Israel
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Bradley Burston - (Opinion) August 21, 2012 - 12:00am


Everyone knows how it works. Everyone knows what it sounds like. Everyone knows how easy it is to get away with it. Everyone knows, deep down, that hatred feeds on tolerance. That however well-intentioned, a society's forbearance for the toxic slur, for the poison of ethnic or religious or racial prejudice, does hatred invaluable service.


US Scholars: Designate Israeli Extremists as Terrorists
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Al-Monitor
by Laura Rozen - August 22, 2012 - 12:00am


Amid a rising spate of Jewish extremist violence in Israel and the occupied West Bank, two prominent US Middle East scholars are urging the United States to officially designate as terrorists those Israeli extremists who perpetrate terrorist violence against Palestinian civilians, Israeli citizens and even moderate elements of the settler movement.



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