Religion | The American Task Force on Palestine

Jewish leftists need to have the Talk
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Bradley Burston - (Blog) June 16, 2011 - 12:00am

These days, it's a little too easy for Jewish Leftists to avoid having the Talk. The Talk, an open-minded consideration of the Palestinian right of return, might well be divisive, corrosive, just one further blow at a time of Israeli – and world Jewish - apathy and depression and paralysis. It's certainly more comfortable to let the issue run in the background, as many groups on the left have done, either coming down at one stroke on one side or the other, as if the issue were not breathtakingly complex, or, alternatively, deciding not to decide.

Learning to trust our neighbors
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Leon Wieseltier - (Opinion) June 15, 2011 - 12:00am

The stability that Hosni Mubarak conferred upon Israeli-Egyptian relations could not last forever, and Israel's security policy cannot be premised on an eternity of Arab tyranny; but still it is not hard to understand the anxiety that the turbulence in Egypt, and elsewhere in the Arab world, has provoked in Israel. What seems to rattle Israel is not only the prospect of Arab instability, but also the prospect of Arab democracy. The only democracy in the Middle East looks as if it wishes to remain the only democracy in the Middle East. This is not altogether attractive.

Angels perceived as devils
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Nathan Englander - June 15, 2011 - 12:00am

Tony Kushner doesn't mind the heat. He grew up in Louisiana, and he's long used to it by now. So when I ask him to sit outside on a stifling Manhattan morning already edging toward 100 degrees, he's more than happy to oblige.

Beyond Survival
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Shalom Hartman Institute
by Tal Becker - (Opinion) June 5, 2011 - 12:00am

For many years now, the conversation about Israel in the Jewish world has taken a familiar form. With rare exceptions, our sovereign project is spoken of in Jewish communities across the globe with pride about the past and anxiety about the future.

Get rid of Zionism
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Yitzhak Laor - (Opinion) June 3, 2011 - 12:00am

The 45th year of occupation is now beginning. The depth of the entanglement, from which there is apparently no way out without bloodshed, is as great as the obedience of the intelligentsia: Just as European colonialism was collapsing once and for all, the local intelligentsia found a way to collaborate with the claims of Israel's governments, leaving us today with both a right-wing coalition and a right-wing opposition.

PM: Jerusalem will never again be divided
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ynetnews
by Ronen Medzini - June 1, 2011 - 12:00am

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared on Wednesday at an official ceremony marking Jerusalem Day that Jerusalem will never be divided again. "We won't go back to the days we had to climb up the Terra Sancta building to watch the Old City; we'll never go back to a divided, lacerated city, because the day Jerusalem was reunified – the wound healed," he said. The event, held at the Ammunition Hill, was attended by President Shimon Peres, IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz and Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, as well as other officials.

Jerusalem Day: Why the Holy City is at the crux of the peace process
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Christian Science Monitor
by Christa Case Bryant, Ariel Zirulnick - (Analysis) June 1, 2011 - 12:00am

Today is Jerusalem Day in Israel, the anniversary of the day in the 1967 war when Israel took the Old City and East Jerusalem from Jordan. More than 40 years later, Jerusalem remains one of the largest hurdles to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel insists Jerusalem is its ‘undivided and eternal’ capital while Palestinians insist on securing a capital in East Jerusalem. Here are three reasons why Jerusalem is so important to both sides. One capital city wanted by two nations

Prayer, politics collide on midnight pilgrimage
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Associated Press
by Mohammed Daraghmeh - May 31, 2011 - 12:00am

A modest stone building holy to Jews in the midst of this Arab city is becoming an increasingly volatile friction point, drawing growing numbers of pilgrims on nighttime prayer visits, unnerving Palestinian residents and putting Israel's military into conflict with some of the worshippers it is meant to protect. The monthly trips by religious Jews to this largely hostile city, coordinated with Palestinian security forces, emphasize the complexity of the Holy Land's religious landscape and the sometimes deadly intersection of the sacred and the political.

Should the Palestinians Recognize Israel as a Jewish State?
In Print by Hussein Ibish - Foreign Policy (Opinion) - May 25, 2011 - 12:00am

Most observers expected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to target his harshest criticisms of the Palestinians during his U.S. trip on the Hamas-Fatah agreement. Surprisingly, his most important talking point turned out to be his demand for Palestinian recognition of Israel as a "Jewish state." To be sure, Netanyahu took every opportunity to denounce the Palestinian unity deal, compare Hamas to al Qaeda, and point out that some of its leaders had praised Osama bin Laden.

US Christian group warns Palestinians of apocalypse
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency
May 12, 2011 - 12:00am

At least half a dozen billboards recently went up across the West Bank warning Palestinians of an impending judgment day, slated according to the signs, for May 21. At the entrance to Birzeit, and several roads leading into the West Bank cities of Ramallah and Jericho, the signs -- some in English, some in Arabic -- advise travelers to "cry unto God" and are directed to the website of the US-based religious group.

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