April 6th

Gaza Militants Say They Will Adhere to Cease-Fire, As Wary Israel Seals Borders or Holiday ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Associated Press April 5, 2012 - 12:00am JERUSALEM — A Palestinian militant leader said Friday that his group is adhering to a cease-fire that stopped a barrage of rockets and air strikes between Israel and the Gaza Strip last month. Sheik Nafez Azzam of Islamic Jihad said Israeli reports that he had called for an ongoing struggle against Israel, despite a cease-fire, were mistaken. “We in the Islamic Jihad are committed to the cease-fire,” Azzam told The Associated Press. He said a firebrand speech calling for ongoing resistance was a general political statement. » Read more

April 5th

Gunter Grass' poem is more pathetic than anti-Semitic ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz by Tom Segev - (Opinion) April 5, 2012 - 12:00am "What Must Be Said" was the title Gunter Grass gave his controversial poem in which he labeled Israel a threat to world peace because of its nuclear arsenal. This was his first mistake: It did not have to be said because it has already been said by many others, in Israel as well. » Read more

The Two-State Solution on Its Deathbed ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Atlantic by Robert Wright - (Opinion) April 5, 2012 - 12:00am Peter Beinart's book The Crisis of Zionism has started debates about various things, including whether it's too late for a two-state solution. Beinart's view is that it's not quite too late but is so close to that as to warrant drastic measures--like a boycott of products made in West Bank settlements (or "Zionist BDS," as distinguished from full-on BDS). My view is if anything more pessimistic. But apparently I should cheer up: After I last expressed that pessimism, fellow Atlantic contributor Zvika Krieger explained that it rests on confusion. » Read more

Kadima Is in Death Throes And On Way to Irrelevance ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'ariv by Omri Meniv - (Opinion) March 28, 2012 - 12:00am Good morning to the elected leader of Kadima, and congratulations on the impressive victory — notwithstanding your party bieng in its death-throes and irrelevant, a party that should never have risen at all, a party that must die as soon as possible and maybe will do so after the coming national elections. » Read more

The "Sort of" Leader ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Daily Beast by Yehudah Mirsky - (Opinion) April 4, 2012 - 12:00am Last week Tzipi Livni proved of one of my pet theories of Middle Eastern politics— the more attractive and familiar a public figure is to foreign elites, the thinner their support back home. One of Newsweek's 150 most powerful women in the world was just trounced in Kadima's primaries by Shaul Mofaz, a gray, inarticulate, lifelong soldier (whose media advisors are now working to reshape him into a smiling crusader for social justice). Now it's his turn to try and snag the crucial centrist bloc, one quarter of the Israeli electorate, that wanders from one party to another, looking for a home. » Read more

Oppose church divestment from Israel ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) by Noam E. Marans - (Opinion) April 3, 2012 - 12:00am NEW YORK (JTA) -- As Christians and Jews gather during their respective Easter and Passover holidays, we should recall all that Jews and liberal Protestants in America share and have accomplished together. But pride in the past should not blind us to the danger that this relationship could be derailed by pernicious responses to the Arab-Israeli conflict within certain churches. » Read more

Playing the Holocaust card ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post by Douglas Bloomfield - (Opinion) April 4, 2012 - 12:00am When Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu waved copies of the 1944 exchange of letters between the World Jewish Congress and the Roosevelt State Department and said the United States rejected Jewish pleas to bomb Auschwitz, he was drawing a parallel between the Islamists who rule Iran and the Nazis who controlled Germany seven decades ago. He wanted to leave no doubt about his willingness to attack Iranian nuclear facilities because he is convinced that country is building weapons to carry out its threat to wipe the Jewish state off the map, and he doesn’t care what anyone says. » Read more

Of bondage and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post by Jonathan Rosen - (Opinion) April 4, 2012 - 12:00am After 130 years of Zionist activism, 64 years of statehood, 45 years of occupation, more than 20 years of failed negotiations with the PLO and seven years of disengagement; after seven wars, two intifadas, the rise of Hamas and the specter of anti-Semitic Islamist sentiment sweeping the region, many Israelis have come to the conclusion that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is simply intractable. » Read more

Norman Finkelstein bids farewell to Israel bashing ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz by Natasha Mozgovaya - (Interview) April 5, 2012 - 12:00am In June, Norman Finkelstein will mark 30 years of criticizing Israel. He remembers the exact day - the beginning of the Lebanon war, which ended his indifference to the Middle East's troubles. He'll have a new book coming out - "Knowing Too Much: Why the American Jewish Romance with Israel Is Coming to an End" - that focuses on Jewish public figures who represent, in his view, the narrative of beautiful Israel that's coming to an end. He is sure to make a lot of people mad again. » Read more

Netanyahu did the right thing by clearing Hebron outpost ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz (Editorial) April 5, 2012 - 12:00am Another attempt by the settlers to bend the law in the West Bank to their extremist ideology failed on Wednesday, with the evacuation of the so-called Machpela House. The eviction came after Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that delaying the execution of the Civil Administration's eviction order could ignite the area, in addition to constituting contempt of court and undermining the authority of the military commander and the defense minister. This was an important reminder that the West Bank is not the settlers' state. » Read more