October 9th

Iran says drone incursion displays Israel's vulnerability ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Xinhua October 9, 2012 - 12:00am TEHRAN, Oct. 9 (Xinhua) -- An Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) general said the fact that an unmanned aerial vehicle recently penetrated into Israeli airspace shows the vulnerability of Israel's air defenses, Tehran Times daily reported Tuesday. According to media reports on Saturday, the Israeli military announced in the day that a warplane of Israel had shot a drone down near the occupied West Bank in the southern country. » Read more

Israel deploys missile defense system days after shooting down suspect drone over its skies ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Associated Press October 9, 2012 - 12:00am JERUSALEM — Israel’s military has deployed a missile defense system near the Lebanese border, days after warplanes shot down a mysterious unmanned aircraft that entered its skies. An army spokesman said on Tuesday that the Patriot missile defense battery was deployed in the northern city of Haifa. He refused to say if the battery’s deployment was connected to Saturday’s drone incident. The drone is widely believed to have originated in Lebanon. He spoke anonymously in line with military regulations. » Read more

Lebanon Says Israeli Planes Circled Its Airspace for an Hour ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times by Jodi Rudoren - October 7, 2012 - 12:00am JERUSALEM — The morning after the Israeli Air Force shot down an unidentified drone in the Negev Desert, the Lebanese government said that four Israeli warplanes spent an hour on Sunday illegally circling in its airspace. The Israeli Defense Forces refused to confirm or deny the report from the Lebanese Army, which said the planes entered above the village of Kfar Kila at 10:10 a.m. and left above Naqoura an hour later. » Read more

Israel Launches Airstrikes After Attacks From Gaza ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times by Fares Akram, Isabel Kershner - October 8, 2012 - 12:00am JERUSALEM — Gaza militants fired a barrage of rockets and mortar shells into Israeli territory on Monday, causing no casualties but some property damage, after an Israeli airstrike in southern Gaza on Sunday killed one Palestinian and wounded at least nine others. » Read more

October 5th

Anti-Semitism—Bad for Palestinians, Too ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Daily Beast by Emily L. Hauser - (Opinion) October 5, 2012 - 12:00am Pro-tip: If your goal is to help the Palestinian people, anti-Semitism is a really poor tool. I happen to be among those who feel that the anti-Semitism accusation is often made far too lightly, flung about at the drop of a settlement boycott or a Goldstone Report, as if any criticism of anything that any Israeli ever does is, by definition, gratuitous Jew hatred. » Read more

Inside Bibi's Bunker ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Foreign Policy by Chuck Freilich - (Opinion) October 4, 2012 - 12:00am Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's use of a cartoon bomb to illustrate Israel's red lines regarding the Iranian nuclear program may have elicited guffaws among the foreign-policy punditocracy, but the issue is no laughing matter. In fact, Israel's entire defense bureaucracy has long been engaged in an exhaustive assessment of what is undoubtedly among the most difficult decisions Israel has ever faced -- and perhaps the most difficult since David Ben-Gurion declared independence. » Read more

Where Settlers' 'Price Tag' Policy Meets Israel’s Mask of Hypocrisy ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Yedioth Ahronoth by Alex Fishman - (Opinion) October 4, 2012 - 12:00am When it comes to [the acts of vandalism perpetrated by Israeli right-wing extremists] "price tag" policy, the government of Israel is hiding behind a mask of pretense and double standards. On the one hand, it requests the law enforcement bodies to crush the phenomenon, the same way they are dealing with Arab terror. On the other hand, it refrains from putting at their disposal the legal measures that would enable them to do so. » Read more

Khaled Mishal the “Zionist agent”! ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Asharq Alawsat by Tariq Alhomayed - (Opinion) October 4, 2012 - 12:00am During the Israeli war on Gaza in early 2009, the Hamas movement was criticized for its recklessness in exposing Gaza to destruction and havoc only to serve the goals of Iran, Hezbollah and Bashar al-Assad in the region. Wise commentators said that the war was not justified, and that it was just another adventure for Hamas after Hezbollah’s adventure in Lebanon in 2006. » Read more

Israelis Look Nervously Across to Syria ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Media Line by Linda Gradstein - (Opinion) October 4, 2012 - 12:00am Fears that Syria’s Violence Could Spill Over Border into Israel » Read more

Both Israeli and Arab, a poet straddles a conflict ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz by Eli Eliyahu - (Interview) October 3, 2012 - 12:00am Our interview has barely begun when Marwan Makhoul says to me, “It’s not easy for me to be interviewed by an Israeli newspaper. We, the Palestinian residents of Israel, are threatened by both sides, the Arab and the Israeli. We’re neither here nor there. We haven’t found a fitting definition for ourselves.” Makhoul, an Arab poet, and I, a Jewish journalist, are together to discuss the Hebrew-language publication of his book, “Land of the Sad Passiflora.” Many of the poems in this volume, he tells me, come straight out of his own biography. » Read more