April 23rd

Coalition may back PM on J'lem freeze ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post by Rebecca Anna Stoil - April 23, 2010 - 12:00am Israel Beiteinu, however, threatens crisis over other demands. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s key coalition partners seemed to give a tacit nod Thursday to the possibility of a building freeze within Jerusalem itself, despite a reiteration by Netanyahu that no such freeze would be enacted. But while that potential source of coalition friction seemed to turn in the prime minister’s favor, other challenges to coalition unity arose during the day from Israel Beiteinu. » Read more

Is Israel willing to freeze East Jerusalem construction? ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Christian Science Monitor by Ilene Prusher - April 22, 2010 - 12:00am US Middle East Peace Envoy George Mitchell arrived here late Thursday for talks with the Israeli and Palestinian leaders in an attempt to get the two to agree to terms for so-called proximity talks. Mr. Mitchell's trip comes despite recent indications from President Barack Obama that his administration is losing patience with the two parties in the conflict. » Read more

Shutting the Doors ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jewish Daily Forward (Editorial) April 21, 2010 - 12:00am Rabbi Louis Jacobs was well on his way to becoming chief rabbi of the United Kingdom in the 1960s, when his ascension was stopped cold because of a small, brilliant book he had published challenging the traditional view that the Torah was dictated by God from Mount Sinai. Banned from his own Orthodox synagogue, he inspired the birth of the Masorti movement in Britain, and went on to author more than 50 books, achieving worldwide fame for his scholarship, eloquence and aptitude for reconciling Orthodox practice and modern belief. » Read more

Israel's messianic terrorists ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Gulf News by Patrick Seale - (Opinion) April 23, 2010 - 12:00am Barely a week goes by without news of some act of violence by Jewish colonists against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. By any definition, what colonists and religious activists do to Palestinians is terrorism. But it goes unpunished. Time and again, Muslim graves and mosques are desecrated, harvests torched, sheep rustled, cars stoned and damaged, homes and shops forcibly occupied. Palestinians are chased off their own land by gun fire. Just last week, colonists cut down 300 olive trees. » Read more

Netanyahu should listen to reason ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Gulf News by George S. Hishmeh - (Opinion) April 22, 2010 - 12:00am Israel, like a child, always sees itself blameless. This is partly thanks to its supporters, who include some key members of the well-entrenched American Jewish community, who cannot see the light of day. It is as if they are blindfolded. Here is one prominent example (and there are many), in which the author of a full-page advertisement, costing tens of thousands of dollars, and which appeared in key US newspapers, made a fool of himself this week, even as some fellow Jews recognised. » Read more

Hamas is accused of being moderate ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Los Angeles Times by Edmund Sanders - April 22, 2010 - 12:00am Hamas, the Palestinian faction viewed by many in the West as a nest of terrorists and Islamic hard-liners, is battling a curious new epithet: moderate. Fifteen months after a punishing Israeli offensive failed to dislodge Hamas from power in the Gaza Strip, rival resistance groups and some former supporters say the organization has become too political, too secular and too soft. » Read more

Giving ground on Arab east Jerusalem? ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post by David Horovitz - April 23, 2010 - 12:00am On the face of it, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s interview with Channel 2 last night represented a fairly banal outing. Israel wanted to avoid wars, he declared, and it sought peace. Not many headlines there. He may not have signaled the firmest of convictions in President Obama’s capacity to prevent Iran from attaining a nuclear weapons capability, but he didn’t give voice to any specific skepticism he may be feeling either. » Read more

Israeli Unassailable Might and Unyielding Angst ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times by Roger Cohen - (Opinion) April 23, 2010 - 12:00am JERUSALEM — For Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his people are not traumatized by some wild delusion. No, there are facts: the rise of Iran, the fierce projection of Iran’s proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, and the rockets that have been fired by them. Netanyahu is firm in his core self-image as the guarantor of threatened Israeli security. Israeli withdrawals from southern Lebanon and Gaza, led only, in his view, to the insecurity of life beneath a rocket threat. The question he poses himself, contemplating the West Bank, is how to stop this happening a third time. » Read more

April 22nd

Trying to effect change in Israel ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jordan Times by Daoud Kuttab - (Opinion) April 22, 2010 - 12:00am An analysis of the most recent ABC TV interview with former US president Bill Clinton reveals a fascinating development in Washington, DC. The Obama administration has concluded who the culprit is in the Arab-Israeli conflict, and it is not the Arab side. When asked by reporter Jack Tapper about US plans for the Middle East conflict, the former US president stated that Washington plans to "do something to deprive both sides of any excuse not to engage in serious negotiations". » Read more

Strain in U.S.-Israel Ties Spurs Anxiety About ‘Dual Loyalty’ ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) by Gal Beckerman - (Opinion) April 21, 2010 - 12:00am Dual loyalty is an old and nefarious accusation. It has dogged Jews for centuries in any land where they settled and began to feel comfortable — the allegation that their allegiance is to their tribe first and not to their nation. America has been a haven precisely because the moments when this fear has swelled up have been few and far between. Even the existence of Israel, a country with its own set of national interests and its own wars and ways of dealing with them, has not created much of an issue for those American Jews who see themselves as both Zionists and patriots. » Read more