What To Do?
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jewish Daily Forward
(Editorial) March 23, 2012 - 12:00am

If well-meaning American Jews who love Israel believe that the occupation of Palestinian land and people is detrimental and wrong, what are those Jews to do? How can they express those beliefs and take actions that protect Israel, support their fellow Jews, and also hold Palestinians appropriately accountable for their own actions?

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Settlement Boycott Call Likely To Fall Flat
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jewish Daily Forward
by Nathan Guttman - (Opinion) March 22, 2012 - 12:00am

Washington — By most standards, SodaStream is a great Israeli success story. The company’s product, a home carbonating device for soft drinks, is sold by all major retailers in the United States. The company’s stock is traded in Nasdaq. But if a call to boycott products from Jewish settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank gains traction, SodaStream, with its manufacturing center in the West Bank settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, could become a target of protest.

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Beinart’s boycott plan deals a blow to peace bid
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA)
by Steven Bayme - (Opinion) March 22, 2012 - 12:00am

NEW YORK (JTA) -- Far from charting a path toward peace for Israelis and Palestinians, Peter Beinart’s advice, “boycott the settlements to save Israel,” would make peace far less likely. Beinart’s boycott plan assumes that Jewish settlement on the West Bank is what is holding up a deal for a two-state solution. Therefore, his logic goes, branding the settlements as “nondemocratic Israel” and declaring economic war on their residents will somehow induce an Israeli pullback and the emergence of a Palestinian state at peace with its Jewish neighbor.

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Israeli defense minister says Israel and US disagree on timetable for effective Iran action
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Associated Press
March 22, 2012 - 12:00am

JERUSALEM — Israel and the US disagree on what would be a realistic timetable for stopping Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, Israel’s defense minister said Thursday, but stopped short of threatening unilateral Israeli action. Ehud Barak reiterated concerns that Iran is trying to make its suspected nuclear weapons program immune from attack before taking a decision on assembling atomic bombs. Israel “cannot afford” to wait in such a situation, Barak told Israel Radio.

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Washington and Jerusalem differ on Iran
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Ari Shavit - (Opinion) March 22, 2012 - 12:00am

A week ago, a senior Israeli official had an American guest over for a late-night chat. Because the guest is intelligent and influential, the official, after offering whiskey and serving coffee, cut straight to the chase.

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Calling Israel's bluff
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Gulf News
by George S. Hishmeh - (Opinion) March 22, 2012 - 12:00am

Benjamin Netanyahu, the arrogant Israeli prime minister, is always tempted to repeat — erroneously — to foreign audiences that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. All he has to do is look around his country and see how some Israeli citizens, Jews and non-Jews, including women face discrimination in their communities.

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Is archliberal Peter Beinart good for the Jews?
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Chemi Shalev - (Opinion) March 22, 2012 - 12:00am

NEW YORK CITY ? “If Israel does not survive as a Jewish democratic state, I want to be able to tell my children that I did what little I’m capable of. I’m a writer, so what I can do is to try to sound an alarm. I just want to be able to say that to them.”

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Settlement Boycotts Work
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Daily Beast
by Peter Beinart - (Opinion) March 22, 2012 - 12:00am

My call for Zionist BDS (which, by the way, is not just a settlement boycott; it’s also reinvestment in democratic Israel) has elicited several critiques.

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Atlantic's Goldberg Discusses Israel vs. Iran; Boycott Idea
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Al-Monitor
by Barbara Slavin - (Interview) March 21, 2012 - 12:00am

Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic has become a major figure in the debate over whether and when Israel might attack Iran’s nuclear facilities. Author of a provocative piece in 2010 that predicted that Israel would strike Iran the following year, Goldberg has shifted since then, even suggesting recently that Israel might have been bluffing.

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Setting back the war clock
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post
by Douglas Bloomfield - (Opinion) March 21, 2012 - 12:00am

The question of whether US or Israeli forces will attack Iran’s nuclear facilities in this volatile election year became murkier in the wake of this month’s AIPAC policy conference and some serious saber rattling coming from the Washington Convention Center, as well as from Jerusalem. Some factors on the international game board suggest the likelihood of a US attack has diminished, but political factors may be driving the government of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to ratchet up Israeli plans for possible military action.

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