Iran strike a death wish
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ynetnews
by Yakir Elkariv - (Opinion) March 20, 2012 - 12:00am

The sanctions against Iran may accelerate the Ayatollah regime’s end. Once the economic pressure grows heavier, social unrest would grow and may develop into a popular uprising. However, such processes take time, and it’s uncertain whether officials around here would have the patience to wait. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – with the encouragement of loyal journalists – is determined to enter the annals of history as the leader who saw farther than anyone else and saved Israel from the Iranian nuclear threat. However, his eagerness may turn out to be fateful.

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Protecting civilians
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post
by Navi Pillay - (Opinion) March 19, 2012 - 12:00am

My visit to Israel and Palestine a year ago left me with a profound sense of the difficult human rights situation faced by many Palestinians and Israelis. Still, the openness of representatives on all sides to engage seriously on the human rights challenges I identified was encouraging. Taking this spirit of constructive engagement as our point of departure, I and my staff have been watching closely for progress on the issues I raised with Israeli and Palestinian authorities in Gaza, Jerusalem, Ramallah and Tel Aviv.

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Decisions in the Interregnum in Palestine and Israel
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Huffington Post
by Ziad Asali - (Blog) March 19, 2012 - 12:00am

The year 2011 will go down in history as the year when the two-state solution went into deep freeze. Yet even during this hibernation there is much that can, and indeed must, be done to prevent an even graver crisis.

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Israeli textbooks foster hate, says author
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The National
by Vita Bekker - March 19, 2012 - 12:00am

TEL AVIV // One asserts that Israel's Palestinian citizens shun modernisation and are building houses illegally. Another alleges the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank steals water from Israel. And elsewhere, that Palestinians have been a "terrifying demographic problem" for Israel. Such statements are part of mainstream schoolbooks in Israel that teach an "anti-Palestinian" approach in a bid to prepare Jewish children to be aggressive towards Palestinians once they serve in the army, according to a new book.

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Israel is fighting a losing battle over victimhood
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Akiva Eldar - (Opinion) March 19, 2012 - 12:00am

With regard to A.B. Yehoshua's extraordinary remark - that he had "never heard the Jews analyze the Holocaust as a Jewish failure, which was not anticipated" - I can only wonder where the renowned author was when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu waved the "Auschwitz letters"? Yehoshua didn't hear that Netanyahu said that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the new version of Adolf Hitler? He didn't know that Netanyahu had promised that he would not, under any circumstances, allow Iran to carry out a second Holocaust?

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Netanyahu's contempt for the Holocaust
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Avner Cohen - (Opinion) March 19, 2012 - 12:00am

In October 2006, Haaretz's weekend magazine asked a number of cultural figures to describe how they would feel if Tel Aviv were to be wiped off the map. This was in response to one of the Israeli anxiety attacks over the non-existent Iranian atom bomb and the declarations made by the Iranian president in that vein. I was surprised that serious people were prepared at all to relate to such a weird and nihilistic question but I was even more surprised that the Haaretz editorial staff had initiated the project.

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Playing for time through a strike on Iran
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post
by Richard Cohen - (Opinion) March 19, 2012 - 12:00am

Nations have doctrines. The Soviet Union had the Brezh­nev Doctrine and the United States had the Monroe Doctrine, among others. Even little Israel has one. I call it the Maybe the Dog Will Talk Doctrine, and it is based on a folk tale of the rabbi who makes a preposterous deal with a tyrant: If the tyrant spares the lives of local Jews, the rabbi will teach the tyrant’s dog to talk. When the rabbi tells his wife what he has done, she calls him a fool. But, he says, “A year is a long time.

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Israel: Palestinian economy not stable enough for independent state
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Barak Ravid - March 18, 2012 - 12:00am

Israel is expected to present a report Wednesday at a donor meeting on Palestinian aid in Brussels claiming that the Palestinian Authority is not sufficiently stable to meet the standards of a well-functioning state.

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Members of Israel’s Diverse African Community Join Forces to Lobby for Better Treatment
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Associated Press
March 16, 2012 - 12:00am

DIMONA, Israel — For years, Israel’s array of African communities had little interaction, divided by religious, linguistic and cultural differences. That is changing. They are facing a common situation in Israel — relegated to bottom rungs, partly because of discrimination over their skin color. That has brought some members of a wide range of communities together, including Jewish Ethiopians, nomadic Muslim Arabs and migrants from Eritrea and Sudan.

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Backlash to Netanyahu’s Iran Speech Ignores the Holocaust’s Enduring Effect
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by David Landau - (Opinion) March 16, 2012 - 12:00am

Israelis needed, as we know, an entire generation until they were able to look the sights of the Holocaust, its refugees, the very fact of its occurrence, straight in the eye. We needed another entire generation until we began to acknowledge, or at least to consider, the claim that there was something cold and aloof in the Yishuv's response and in its conduct even during the time of the Holocaust itself.

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