March 27th

Justices Decline to Say if Jerusalem-Born Americans Can Claim Israeli Birthplace ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times by John H. Cushman - March 26, 2012 - 12:00am WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday ordered a lower court to decide whether Congress has the authority to allow Americans born in Jerusalem to claim Israel as their birthplace on their passports. The decision postpones resolution of a long-running dispute between Congress and the executive branch over the power to set foreign policy, in this case the highly fraught issue of whether to formally recognize Israel’s claim that Jerusalem is its capital. » Read more

Draw the Line: How Israel Erases Itself ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Daily Beast by Gershom Gorenberg - (Opinion) March 26, 2012 - 12:00am One day in the late 1980s, my wife and I visited a staffer at the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem for an off-the-record conversation. The walls of his office were decorated with large maps produced, he mentioned, by the CIA. One showed the West Bank, with the border between it and Israel precisely depicted. Our careful journalistic distance from the interviewee evaporated. We shamelessly begged him for a copy, which he politely gave us. » Read more

Israelis Fear Blame For US-Iran War ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Al-Monitor by Barbara Slavin - (Opinion) March 27, 2012 - 12:00am A thread of anxiety ran through a conference of liberal American Jews and Israelis Sunday [March 25]. The worry: that Israel would bear the blame for any military confrontation between the United States and Iran. Retired brigadier general Shlomo Brom, a former director of strategic planning for the Israeli Defense Forces General Staff, told an audience at the J-Street convention that he had participated in talks with the George W. Bush administration before it attacked Iraq in 2003. » Read more

A settlement boycott can work ATFP World Press Roundup Article from NOW Lebanon by Hussein Ibish - (Opinion) March 27, 2012 - 12:00am Peter Beinart’s recent call in the New York Times for Jewish Americans to boycott Israeli settlement goods has been met with angry responses from many Jewish Americans. This includes some who are opposed to the settler movement. The most important of these objections hold that a boycott cannot work because Jewish Americans won’t go along with such a program and there isn’t much to boycott anyway. Both arguments hold little water. » Read more

March 26th

Show, Don't Tell: Why the Apartheid Analogy Falls Flat ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Daily Beast by Hussein Ibish - (Opinion) March 26, 2012 - 12:00am A series of recent articles have pointlessly debated whether or not Israel can accurately be described as “an apartheid state.” But the problem with the apartheid analogy is less its inaccuracy, and more that, however emotionally appealing some people may find it, it’s just not useful in ending the occupation and advancing the Palestinian cause. » Read more

Israel's Moral Peril ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Chronicle of Higher Education by Alan Wolfe - (Opinion) March 25, 2012 - 12:00am In the past few years, a trickle of dissent with respect to Israel has turned into a running stream. Books, articles, and Web sites critical of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, its acquiescence in the messianic designs of its settlers, its foreign-policy decisions on Gaza, Iran, and much more, and the increasing influence of the ultra-Orthodox over the character of its domestic life have begun to appear in significant numbers in America. Some, but not all, of these efforts, moreover, come from writers unused to being in the critical camp. » Read more

Atlantic's Goldberg Discusses Israel vs. Iran; Boycott Idea ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Al-Monitor by Barbara Slavin - (Interview) March 21, 2012 - 12:00am Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic has become a major figure in the debate over whether and when Israel might attack Iran’s nuclear facilities. Author of a provocative piece in 2010 that predicted that Israel would strike Iran the following year, Goldberg has shifted since then, even suggesting recently that Israel might have been bluffing. » Read more

What Does Israel Want for Syria? ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Al-Zaman by Fateh Abdelsalam - (Opinion) March 20, 2012 - 12:00am The Syrian regime's defenders and opponents have been assessing where Israeli interests lie with regard to the Syrian conflict, the likes of which the country has not seen in a century. The regime’s defenders see that a weak Syrian government serves Israeli interests, and therefore the protests should stop and there should be dialogue and agreement to prevent its collapse, which seems near. » Read more

Toulouse attacks harm Palestinians in their own name ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The National by Charles Glass - (Opinion) March 26, 2012 - 12:00am It started in France in 1894, when a Viennese journalist covered the Paris treason trial of Captain Alfred Dreyfus. "In Paris, as I have said, I achieved a freer attitude toward anti-Semitism," Theodor Herzl wrote in his diary. "Above all, I recognised the emptiness and futility of trying to 'combat' anti-Semitism." That futility led him to propose an escape from anti-Semitism to a nation-state in Palestine. » Read more

West Bank's economy at crossroads ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Al-Jazeera English by Charlotte Silver - (Analysis) March 26, 2012 - 12:00am Ramallah, West Bank - The economy of the West Bank has reached a crossroads, and with it so has the Palestinian Authority (PA). As Palestinian lending banks close their doors, development contracts are shelved and everyday spending slows to a trickle, the PA and international institutions speak of an economic crisis in the West Bank. Conventional analysis blames the failure of donors to fulfill promised pledges for the paralysing PA budget deficit that has reached $.5bn. Meanwhile, Israel blames financial mismanagement by the PA. » Read more