Guilt-tripping the world is dangerous for Israel
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Gideon Levy - (Opinion) March 22, 2012 - 12:00am

As if the horror in Toulouse wasn't enough, as if the suspicion that Al-Qaida was involved in the attack wasn't enough, and as if the constant criticism of Israel wasn't enough, we've invented another imaginary enemy: Catherine Ashton, the European Union's foreign policy chief.

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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.

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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.

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Toulouse Tragedy Shows Depth of Hatred
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jewish Daily Forward
by Robert Zaretsky - (Opinion) March 21, 2012 - 12:00am

France, and the rest of the world, is still reeling from the shock of events in Toulouse, where a lone gunman killed a teacher and three children at a local Sephardic Jewish school on March 19. In the coming days, all of us ardently hope that we will learn not about another massacre, but instead of the capture of the killer. But in the confusion and uncertainty of the moment, it is important to recall what we know, and what we don’t know, about this event.

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Fayyad: Stop Using Palestinian Cause to Justify Terror
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Agence France Presse (AFP)
by Elior Levy - March 21, 2012 - 12:00am

Extremists must stop using the Palestinian cause to justify their acts of violence, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said on Wednesday after a deadly attack on a French Jewish school. "It is time for these criminals to stop marketing their terrorist acts in the name of Palestine and to stop pretending to stand up for the rights of Palestinian children who only ask for a decent life," the Palestinian premier said in a statement.

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‘Extremists Mustn’t Use Palestine to Market Terror’
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post
March 21, 2012 - 12:00am

Extremists must stop marketing their terrorist acts in the name of Palestine, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said Wednesday, condemning the murder of four French Jews at a school in Toulouse. French Interior Minister Gueant earlier Wednesday said the gunman wanted revenge "for the Palestinian children and he also wanted to attack the French army because of its foreign intervention." "Extremists must stop pretending to stand up for the rights of Palestinian children who only ask for a decent life," AFP quoted Fayyad as saying.

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Iran’s Supreme Leader Warns of Retaliation if Israel or U.S. Strikes
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Los Angeles Times
by Emily Alpert, Ramin Mostaghim - March 20, 2012 - 12:00am

REPORTING FROM TEHRAN -- Iran will strike back with equal force if the United States or Israel attacks it over its nuclear program, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned in an address from the eastern city of Mashhad in observance of Nowruz, the Persian new year. "The holy Koran states that if an enemy attacks you first, the enemy will certainly be defeated," he said. “This is divine law. We are not thinking of attacks and aggression, but we are attached to the existence and identity of the Islamic republic."

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Hamas Denies Reports of Iranian Experts Aiding Militants
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Xinhua
March 20, 2012 - 12:00am

GAZA, March 20 (Xinhua) -- A senior Hamas official on Tuesday denied media reports saying that Iranian military experts were helping Gaza militant groups to develop weapons and upgrade their capabilities for a future confrontation with Israel. "These reports are fabricated and aim to justify (Israeli) military aggression against Gaza," Mahmoud Zahar, a member of Hamas' politburo, told Xinhua. On Monday, Israel's Haaretz newspaper reported that some Iranian experts were in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip to help the militant groups based in the coastal enclave.

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Israeli official: Iranian military experts operating in Gaza, Sinai
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Avi Issacharoff - March 19, 2012 - 12:00am

Iranian military experts are active in the Gaza Strip and in Sinai, according to a high-ranking official in Jerusalem. The official said the Iranians entered the areas via Sudan and Egypt, and added that some of the rocket-launching systems in Gaza were manufactured under Iranian supervision. The senior source also claimed that Islamic Jihad continued to fire rockets at Israel even after the recent cease-fire was announced because the Iranians pressured that organization, and the popular resistance groups, to continue acting against Israel.

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The West Bank Through Chinese Eyes
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Daily Beast
by Bernard Avishai - (Opinion) March 19, 2012 - 12:00am

Three weeks ago—just while Benjamin Netanyahu was preparing for his Palestineless AIPAC speech—I accompanied a team of about thirty Chinese businesspeople on a visit to the West Bank, led by a former Duke colleague, Liu Kang, now also the dean of the Institute of Arts and Humanities Shanghai’s Jiao Tong University. It was kind of tour d’horizon for uninitiated but intrigued foreign investors—“some billionaires,” Kang assured me—shoe and leather manufacturers, toy exporters, equity-fund managers, people by now accustomed to seeing the world as their market, if not their oyster.

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