No Arab renters: Right-wing Judaism and minority inclusion in Israel
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Al-Masry Al-Youm
by Roger Hercz - (Opinion) July 11, 2011 - 12:00am

JAFFA - As a student at a college in Safed, a small city of 30,000 residents, Yusuf checked apartment after apartment, hoping to find a home close to his academic institution. Never did the 19-year old anticipate the reaction from Rabbi Schmuel Eliyahu, the local town rabbi.

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Israel arrests raise specter of rabbis vs state
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency
by Marius Schattner - July 5, 2011 - 12:00am

Challenges to Israel's justice system by a small group of ultra-nationalist rabbis have raised the specter of theocracy in Israel, where religion is deeply intertwined with affairs of state. Over the past week, police have detained, questioned and released two very influential rabbis as part of an ongoing investigation into a banned book called "The King's Torah," which justifies killing non-Jews under certain circumstances. The arrests have sparked violent protests and a raging debate about whether rabbis are above the law, and about the limits of religious freedom of expression.

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Rabbi Dov Lior should be fired
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
(Editorial) June 29, 2011 - 12:00am

The arrest of Rabbi Dov Lior two days ago is a controversial act that has aroused worrisome reactions. Those who favor freedom of expression will of course find it difficult to accept as self evident the arrest of a person, any person, for things that he said or wrote. An open and liberal democratic society is not tested by its support for speakers or writers of texts of which it approves, but by providing an opportunity to say harmful things, as infuriating and subversive as they may be, about it and even against it.

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Facebook posts by Israeli PM's son draw fire
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Associated Press
by Matti Friedman - June 24, 2011 - 12:00am

JERUSALEM — The Israeli prime minister's 19-year-old son posted disparaging comments about Arabs and Muslims on his Facebook page, an Israeli paper reported Friday. Earlier this year, Yair Netanyahu posted that Muslims "celebrate hate and death," the Haaretz daily reported. After Palestinian assailants entered a West Bank settlement and stabbed five members of an Israeli family to death, he wrote that "terror has a religion and it is Islam." Yair Netanyahu, the eldest of the prime minister's two sons, is currently a soldier in the Israeli military's media liaison unit.

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Extremists could step into Mideast peace vacuum-Blair
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Reuters
by Adrian Croft - May 26, 2011 - 12:00am

Extremists will gain the upper hand unless Israeli-Palestinian negotiations are revived, Middle East envoy Tony Blair said on Thursday, warning that time was running out to get the peace process moving. Talks brokered by Washington collapsed last year when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refused to extend a moratorium on new building in Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank. Netanyahu told U.S. President Barack Obama last week that his vision of how to achieve Middle East peace was unrealistic, exposing a divide that could doom any U.S. bid to restart the talks.

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A University Trustee Expands on His View of What Is Offensive
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
by Jim Dwyer - May 5, 2011 - 12:00am

“I want to say something,” Jeffrey S. Wiesenfeld said. “The question is offensive. Before you even finish.” Mr. Wiesenfeld is the City University of New York trustee who rose this week at a board meeting to block an honorary degree to the playwright Tony Kushner, declaring him an “extremist” opponent and critic of Israel. It was a startling development for a board that appeared to be on the verge of rubber-stamping a bundle of honorary degrees proposed by the colleges within the university, including one for Mr. Kushner from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

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Rabbi Lior: Encourage Bedouins to leave Israel
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ynetnews
April 26, 2011 - 12:00am

Rabbi Dov Lior, rabbi of Kiryat Arba and head of the yeshiva there, chose to use the platform of the fourth Ramla conference to state that the State of Israel "must encourage Bedouins to return to their native land in Saudi Arabia and Libya".

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How can Israel change Muslim extremists' attitude toward Israel?
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Akiva Eldar - (Opinion) March 29, 2011 - 12:00am

Two weeks ago, after the link Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made between the murder in Itamar and Palestinian incitement publications, I reported about a study analyzing the weekly Torah-portion pamphlets distributed in their thousands in Israeli synagogues. The researchers found that the brochures, many of which receive funding from the Education Ministry, use scripture to incite against the Palestinians. The Jews are depicted as the sons of light, while the Muslims are the sons of darkness, murderers, evildoers and bloodthirsty.

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Islamic Jihad: PA detains leaders, tracking members
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency
March 24, 2011 - 12:00am

Officials from the Islamic Jihad movement said Thursday that Palestinian Authority security forces detained two of the movement's leaders from their homes in the city of Jenin overnight. In a statement, officials said PA forces raided the homes of Khalid Jaradat and Tareq Qa’dan, taking the former to an unknown location and the latter to a detention facility in the northern West Bank. Jihad officials said PA forces were tracking members in the wake of a blast in West Jerusalem that went off near the central bus station, killing one woman and injuring 30 others.

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The anti-democratic racism of Israel must end
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Sefi Rachlevsky - (Opinion) March 23, 2011 - 12:00am

If there is one country in the world that should have heeded the commandment 'Thou shall not build nuclear reactors,' it is Japan, and that is not 20-20 hindsight. The traumas of World War II, of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, along with the fact that Japan sits on the seam of tectonic plates, should have kept it away from that path. But Japan became a leader in the construction of reactors after all.

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