June 14th, 2012

Hamas informer in Israel on lecture tour ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Associated Press by Amy Teibel - June 14, 2012 - 12:00am The son of a Hamas founder who renounced his father's militant group to spy for Israel has returned to the Jewish state on a pro-Israel lecture tour, an Israeli official said Thursday. Mosab Yousef was invited by Druse Arab lawmaker Ayoob Kara, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Party. » Read more

Ex-Israeli soldier seeks Palestinian citizenship ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Associated Press by Dalia Nammari - June 14, 2012 - 12:00am In an odd twist to the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian saga, a former Israeli soldier has embarked on a new fight: He wants to renounce his Israeli citizenship and move to a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank. Andre Pshenichnikov, a 23-year-old Jewish immigrant from Tajikistan, was recently detained by Israeli police for residing illegally in the Deheishe Refugee Camp near Bethlehem. There he told police that he wants to break all ties with Israel, give up his Israeli citizenship and obtain a Palestinian one instead. » Read more

Gaza Five Years On: Hamas Settles In ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Carnegie Endowment for International Peace by Nathan J. Brown - (Analysis) June 14, 2012 - 12:00am As political upheavals spread over much of the Middle East and North Africa in 2011, regimes throughout the region were shaken and a few fell. But in both the West Bank and Gaza, a soft authoritarianism that has provoked uprisings elsewhere has only been further entrenching itself. » Read more

June 13th

Question and Answer: Norman Finkelstein ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Tablet Magazine by David Samuels - (Interview) June 11, 2012 - 12:00am For three decades, Norman Finkelstein has been the American Jewish community’s problem-child—denounced as a hysteric, a marginal ideologue, and a self-hating Jew. Selfless and vain, highly emotional—sometimes hysterical—in tone yet relentlessly logical in his arguments, he is now an academic with a doctorate from Princeton whose attacks on “the Holocaust Industry” and public cheerleading for Hezbollah have rendered him so toxic that he can’t obtain even the lowliest adjunct teaching position at any community college in America. » Read more

To honor a tragic history, we must work for peace ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Daily Star by Ziad Asali - (Opinion) June 13, 2012 - 12:00am I do not need anyone to teach me about the Palestinian Nakba. It is the defining moment of my existence. During the 1948 war, my family had fled our home in Talpiot in southeast Jerusalem and taken shelter in a monastery. We quickly gathered some possessions and climbed down and up the mountain to Bethany, and then to Jericho. We eventually resettled as refugees in East Jerusalem.Because I was a graduating medical student at the American University of Beirut during the war of 1967, I became a double-refugee. » Read more

Jordan presses US to refocus on Israeli-Palestinian conflict before November election ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Hill by Julian Pecquet - June 12, 2012 - 12:00am The Obama administration needs to recommit to helping solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or risk the ire of a whole generation of Arab youth demanding democratic change in the region, Jordan's foreign minister cautioned during a visit to Washington Tuesday. “You don't want to get to the U.S. election without something substantial in motion,” Nasser Judeh said in remarks at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Judeh addressed the think tank after meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday. » Read more

The Case for Deportation ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Daily Beast by Micah Stein - (Opinion) June 13, 2012 - 12:00am On Monday, Israeli police began rounding up illegal African immigrants as the first step in a campaign of mass arrests and deportations around the country. Earlier this year, the Knesset passed an “anti-infiltration” bill, which allows police to detain illegal immigrants for years without a trial and punishes Israelis who employ, house, or transport illegal immigrants. » Read more

Palestinians enjoy land victory in Israeli courts ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Reuters by Noah Browning - June 12, 2012 - 12:00am More used to enduring eviction orders than enforcing them, Palestinians are relishing the Israeli government's discomfort as it struggles to evacuate five settler buildings in the occupied West Bank. Israel's supreme court upheld a petition by a group of Palestinian landowners last month, mandating a demolition order by July 1 against the apartment blocs that sit on Ulpana Hill above the Palestinian village of Dura al-Qara. » Read more

My Way or the Highway ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jewish Daily Forward by Kathleen Peratis - (Opinion) June 13, 2012 - 12:00am If you say that the peace process, like the Wicked Witch, is not merely dead, but really most sincerely dead, no one will argue with you. Israel and the Palestinian Authority have not had a real negotiating session since September 2010, when so-called “talks” collapsed following a so-called settlement “freeze.” The last sign of life in the peace process was even earlier, in September 2008, when Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas came this close to a deal. » Read more

Stand up for West Bank's Freedom theatre ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Guardian by Howard Brenton - (Opinion) June 13, 2012 - 12:00am What price the freedom to put on plays? The odd bad review in the Daily Telegraph (if you're me)? Or protesters at Shakespeare's Globe (if you're performing in Habima theatre's Israeli version of The Merchant of Venice)? » Read more