March 23rd

No Arrests in Racist Mall Riot ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency March 23, 2012 - 12:00am TEL AVIV, Israel (Ma'an) -- Israeli police have made no arrests after hundreds of football supporters attacked Palestinian workers at a shopping mall in Jerusalem, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported Friday. The assault in Malha mall on Monday was "a mass lynching attempt," cleaner Mohammed Yusuf told Haaretz. An Israeli police spokesman did not respond to inquiries from Ma'an, but witnesses told Haaretz that hundreds of football fans flooded the mall after a match and chanted anti-Arab slogans, screaming "Death to the Arabs." » Read more

Israel Seeks to Return Refugees to South Sudan ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Los Angeles Times by Batsheva Sobelman - March 22, 2012 - 12:00am REPORTING FROM JERUSALEM--Israel doesn't need celebrity activists to call its attention to troubles in Africa. After years of being on the receiving end of a steady stream of work migrants and asylum seekers, the country knows this first-hand. Civil war, tribal troubles and economic hardship in African countries have sent tens of thousands on the dangerous journey across the desert to try their luck in Israel, which they have entered through the country's sprawling, largely open border with Egypt. » Read more

Small Amounts of Israeli Fuel Entering Gaza, Only Barely Easing Power Crisis ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Associated Press March 23, 2012 - 12:00am GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Small amounts of Israeli fuel were trucked into the Gaza Strip on Friday, slightly easing an energy crisis provoked by a cut-off of Egyptian fuel, Palestinian and Israeli officials said. The shipment however did not meet Gaza’s total energy needs for even one day, one official said, and the territory still lacks a reliable fuel supply. Gaza’s fuel pinch highlights the difficulties its cash-strapped, internationally isolated Hamas rulers face in administering the territory. » Read more

March 22nd

Three Cheers for a Settlement Boycott ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Daily Beast by Hussein Ibish - (Opinion) March 21, 2012 - 12:00am The backlash against Peter Beinart's principled call for Jewish Americans to boycott Israeli settlement goods mirrors a debate that has been raging within the pro-Palestinian community. While many Jewish Americans, including those who are highly critical of the settlements, have reacted angrily to Beinart's idea and reject the notion of any boycott of any Israelis whatsoever, in pro-Palestinian circles the debate has been whether or not to boycott all of Israel or to focus on the occupation and the settlements. » Read more

Six Big Lies about How Jerusalem Runs Washington ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Foreign Policy by Aaron David Miller - (Opinion) March 21, 2012 - 12:00am Several years after leaving government, I wrote a piece in the Washington Post titled "Israel's Lawyer." The article was an honest effort to explain how several senior officials in U.S. President Bill Clinton's administration (myself included) had a strong inclination to see the Arab-Israeli negotiations through a pro-Israel lens. That filter played a role -- though hardly the primary one -- in the failure of endgame diplomacy, particularly at the ill-fated Camp David summit in July 2000. » Read more

Hijacked cause ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Daily Star (Editorial) March 22, 2012 - 12:00am The Toulouse killer’s claim that the Palestinian struggle was the motive behind his recent murdering spree is just the latest example of terrorists’ misappropriation of the cause for their own selfish reasons. After shooting dead three soldiers, three Jewish children and one teacher over the last 10 days, Mohamed Merah was Wednesday cornered in his apartment by police. The Frenchman, of Algerian descent, has allegedly declared allegiance to Al-Qaeda, and said that the killings were designed to avenge the deaths of Palestinian children. » Read more

Calling Israel's bluff ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Gulf News by George S. Hishmeh - (Opinion) March 22, 2012 - 12:00am Benjamin Netanyahu, the arrogant Israeli prime minister, is always tempted to repeat — erroneously — to foreign audiences that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. All he has to do is look around his country and see how some Israeli citizens, Jews and non-Jews, including women face discrimination in their communities. » Read more

Ashton's False Equivalency That Wasn't ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jewish Daily Forward by J.J. Goldberg - (Opinion) March 22, 2012 - 12:00am What could possibly explain the logic of the European Union foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, who stunned the Jewish world on March 19 by lumping together the murdered Jewish children of Toulouse in the same sentence with Arab civilian war victims in Gaza? What conceivable morality could combine them in one thought? As near as I can figure, there are three ways of understanding her comment. Let’s take them one at a time. » Read more

Does America and Iran's mutual mistrust mean war is inevitable? ATFP World Press Roundup Article from BBC News by Edward Stourton - (Opinion) March 19, 2012 - 12:00am n late 2004, in an atmosphere of frenzied speculation about war with Iran, Jack Straw - then Britain's Foreign Secretary - told the BBC that military action was "inconceivable." "If I'd not done so, in my view we would have been involved in a firestorm inside the Labour government." For the United States and Britain had recently invaded Iraq. "It was impossible for any British government, but particularly a Labour government given what had happened in Iraq, to contemplate or have any dalliance with the idea of military action in Iran," he now recalls. » Read more

Setting back the war clock ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post by Douglas Bloomfield - (Opinion) March 21, 2012 - 12:00am The question of whether US or Israeli forces will attack Iran’s nuclear facilities in this volatile election year became murkier in the wake of this month’s AIPAC policy conference and some serious saber rattling coming from the Washington Convention Center, as well as from Jerusalem. Some factors on the international game board suggest the likelihood of a US attack has diminished, but political factors may be driving the government of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to ratchet up Israeli plans for possible military action. » Read more