Justice Minister: Jewish law should be binding law in Israel
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Yair Ettinger - December 8, 2009 - 1:00am

Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman on Monday said he believes Jewish law (Halakha) should be the binding law in Israel, Army Radio reported. "Step by step, we will bestow upon the citizens of Israel the laws of the Torah and we will turn Halakha into the binding law of the nation," said Neeman at a Jewish law convention at the Regency hotel in Jerusalem, in the presence of many rabbis and rabbinical judges. "We must bring back the heritage of our fathers to the nation of Israel," Neeman said. "The Torah has the complete solution to all of the questions we are dealing with," he added.

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The US cash behind extremist settlers
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from
by Andrew Kadi, Aaron Levitt - (Opinion) December 8, 2009 - 1:00am

Last month, a Brooklyn-based non-profit organisation called the Hebron Fund, which supports Jewish settlers in the Israeli-occupied city of Hebron, held a fundraiser at the New York Mets' stadium, Citi Field.

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West Bank settlers block freeze-order officials
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The National
by Omar Karmi - December 8, 2009 - 1:00am

Hundreds of settlers yesterday blocked the entrances to two settlements in the occupied West Bank to prevent Israeli government inspectors from serving construction freeze orders in line with a government order issued in late November.

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Meet Daniel Pinner - an extremist West Bank settler
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Chaim Levinson - (Interview) December 7, 2009 - 1:00am

Daniel Pinner, whose monologue follows, lives in the settlement of Kfar Tapuah, which was founded in 1978 by a core group of members of Moshav Bareket belonging to the Hapoel Hamizrachi movement and is defined as a "religious communal" settlement. In 1990 Binyamin Ze'ev Kahane (the son of Meir Kahane, founder of the extreme right-wing Kach party, which was banned in 1994) moved there; he was murdered, together with his wife Talia in 2001, in a shooting on a highway south of the settlement of Ofra. Following the younger Kahane, others identified with the Kach movement moved to Tapuah.

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Israeli resentment grows on trees
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Guardian
by Seth Freedman - (Opinion) December 7, 2009 - 1:00am

The Jewish National Fund (JNF) is no stranger to controversy, its sectarian approach to charity work having fomented tension for decades in Israel and abroad. The JNF is once again embroiled in a row, though this time the tables have turned, with the fund's administrators finding themselves cast as pantomime villains by diehard supporters of the Jewish state.

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Trust the settlers to lose the West Bank
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Bradley Burston - (Opinion) December 7, 2009 - 1:00am

Barack Obama cannot and will not compel Israel to withdraw from the West Bank and free up land for a Palestinian state. Neither will the international community as a whole, nor Hamas, and certainly not the Palestinian Authority, nor what remains of the Israeli left. Trust the settlers, though. They alone will make it possible. Sooner or later, they'll lose the West Bank all by themselves.

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Jewish Nationalists Clash With Palestinians
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
by Isabel Kershner - December 1, 2009 - 1:00am

Jewish nationalists and Palestinians clashed in an East Jerusalem neighborhood on Tuesday after the Israelis took over a house by court order in a predominantly Arab area. The confrontation further strained tensions in this contested city, where competing Israeli and Palestinian claims have become a sticking point in the Obama administration’s efforts to restart peace talks.

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Book Calls Jewish People an ‘Invention’
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
by Patricia Cohen - November 25, 2009 - 1:00am

Despite the fragmented and incomplete historical record, experts pretty much agree that some popular beliefs about Jewish history simply don’t hold up: there was no sudden expulsion of all Jews from Jerusalem in A.D. 70, for instance. What’s more, modern Jews owe their ancestry as much to converts from the first millennium and early Middle Ages as to the Jews of antiquity. Other theories, like the notion that many of today’s Palestinians can legitimately claim to be descended from the ancient Jews, are familiar and serious subjects of study, even if no definitive answer yet exists.

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Tribute to Kahane planned by Israeli legislators
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency
by Jonathan Cook - November 23, 2009 - 1:00am

A plan by right-wing legislators in Israel to commemorate the anniversary this month of the death of Meir Kahane, whose banned anti-Arab movement is classified as a terrorist organization, risks further damaging the prospects for talks between Israel and the Palestinians, US officials have warned. A move to stage the commemoration in Israel's parliament, the Knesset, is being led by Michael Ben-Ari, who was elected this year and is the first self-declared former member of Kahane's party, Kach, to become a legislator since the movement was banned 15 years ago.

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Rabbis at secret meet: Soldiers who refuse orders are 'heroes'
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Chaim Levinson - November 23, 2009 - 1:00am

Dozens of religious Zionist rabbis held a secret meeting in Jerusalem on Sunday to discuss ways of bolstering the hesder yeshivas, the halachic argument for refusing to obey military orders to evacuate settlements, and the campaign against having the army evacuate Jews from their homes. The rabbis in attendance included Zalman Baruch Melamed, rabbi of Beit El and head of the yeshiva there; Shmuel Eliyahu, rabbi of Safed; and Yaakov Yosef, son of Shas spiritual leader Ovadia Yosef.

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