NewsTrust - Gaza - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Mainstream)

Which Way for Hamas?

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The New York Review of Books - By Nicolas Pelham, Max Rodenbeck - Oct. 22 (Opinion) - Amid the wreckage of Gaza, Hamas's officials struggle to sound upbeat. The burly interior minister, Fathi Hamad, whose predecessor was killed by an Israeli bomb, defiantly shuns security precautions at his makeshift office in Gaza City's main police station. "Claims that we are trying to establish an Islamic state are false," says the minister, who says his preference would be pursuing a degree in media studies. "Hamas is not the Taliban. It is not al-Qaeda. It is an enlightened, moderate Islamic movement."

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Rights Watchdog, Lost in the Mideast

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Robert L. Bernstein - Oct. 20 (Opinion) - Human Rights Watch had as its original mission to pry open closed societies, advocate basic freedoms and support dissenters. But recently it has been issuing reports on the Israeli-Arab conflict that are helping those who wish to turn Israel into a pariah state.

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My mission - and motivation

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Jerusalem Post - By Richard Goldstone - Oct. 20 (Opinion) - I begin with my own motivation, as a Jew who has supported Israel and its people all my life, for having agreed to head the Gaza mission. Over the past 20 years, I have investigated serious violations of international law in my own country, South Africa, in the former Yugoslavia, in Rwanda and the alleged fraud and theft by governments and political leaders in a number of countries in connection with the United Nations Iraq Oil for Food program. In all of these, allegations reached the highest political echelons. In every instance, I spoke out strongly in favor of full investigations and, where appropriate, criminal prosecutions. I have spoken out over the years on behalf of the International Bar Association against human rights violations in many countries, including Sri Lanka, China, Russia, Iran, Zimbabwe and Pakistan.

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Goldstone report: Israel's failings

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By George Bisharat - Sep. 19 (Opinion) - Will Israel's decades-long impunity from international law finally come to an end? That is the question facing the international community in the aftermath of the just-released Goldstone report.

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The Settlements Issue

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - Jul. 31 (Editorial) - The last American president to openly challenge Israel on settlements was George H.W. Bush and we commend President Obama for demanding that Israel halt all new construction. The controversy must not obscure Mr. Obama’s real goal: nudging Israel and

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Sizing Up President Obama's Foreign Policy After 6 Months

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By David Ignatius - Jul. 19 (Opinion) - Six months on, how is Barack Obama doing in foreign policy? Some leading experts give the new president high marks for improving America's battered image abroad, but they warn that the hard work is still ahead. Obama's first priority was boosting America's standing in a world angered by the Bush administration's arrogance and unilateralism. Obama rightly saw this as a major national security threat, and he used his charisma to change that image in a hurry.

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Caught in the Middle

Sat, 02 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Foreign Policy - By David Ignatius - May. 02 (Opinion) - Gaza is simply one of those problems for which there isn’t much middle ground. Israelis and Palestinians are both convinced not only that they are right, but that the other side is morally bankrupt.

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A brave man who stood alone. If only the world had listened to him

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Independent - By Robert Fisk - Mar. 30 (Opinion) - Tom Hurndall had stayed in Rafah. He was only 21 where – in his mother's words – he lost his life through a single, selfless, human act. "Tom was shot in the head as he carried a single Palestinian child out of the range of an Israeli army sniper." Mrs Hurndall asked me to write a preface to Tom's book and this article is his preface, for a brave man who stood alone and showed more courage than most if us dreamed of. Forget tree huggers. Hurndall was one good man and true.

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Obama's Interview On Al Arabiya

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

CBS News - Jan. 27 (Interview) - "I think the most important thing is for the United States to get engaged right away, and George Mitchell is somebody of enormous stature. He is one of the few people who have international experience brokering peace deals. "

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The Bullets in My In-Box

Mon, 26 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Ethan Bronner - Jan. 26 (Opinion) - ... trying to tell the story so that both sides can hear it in the same way feels more and more to me like a Greek tragedy in which I play the despised chorus. It feels like I am only fanning the flames, adding to the misunderstandings and mutual antagonism with every word I write because the fervent inner voice of each side is so loud that it drowns everything else out.

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Eyeless in Gaza

Sat, 17 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The New York Review of Books - By Roger Cohen - Jan. 17 (Opinion) - Israel has the right to hit back at Hamas when attacked—but not to blow Gaza to pieces, or deprive people of food, water, and medicine. In at least one appalling incident at Zeitoun, on the east of Gaza City, where children were found next to their mothers' days-old corpses, the International Red Cross has accused Israel of an "unacceptable" failure "to meet its obligation under international law to care for and evacuate the wounded." Israel denies targeting civilians, accuses Hamas of using civilians as human shields, and says it works in "close cooperation" with international aid organizations. But at some point—and I would say a couple of hundred dead children in Gaza are already well past that point—such denials become pointless: the facts speak for themselves. No invocation of collateral damage or legitimate defense can excuse such wanton killing. As Avi Shlaim, a professor of international relations and former soldier in the Israeli army, has observed, the Gaza offensive "seems to follow the logic of an eye for an eyelash."

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Go your own way

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Haaretz - By Yossi Sarid - Jan. 16 (Opinion) - You, Barack Hussein Obama, are our last chance, and if that too fades - and evil is determined against us, all hope is lost. We are the prisoner who is stuck in a cell; without the help of others, we will never succeed in extricating ourselves from the bonds of our natural fear and the historical accounting. And there are no "others" except for America, for which no substitute has been found, even in its time of weakness.

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It's time for the U.N. to impose tough sanctions on Israel

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

McClatchy - By John B. Quigley - Jan. 16 (Opinion) - It's time for the United Nations to shed its impotency and impose tough sanctions on Israel. That would be the least the United Nations could do after sitting silently for years through a "peace process" that Israel has used as a cover to grab Palestinian land.

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Gaza: A pawn in the new 'great game'

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Asia Times - By Alastair Crooke - Jan. 14 (Opinion) - The thesis that literally "everything" must be done either to lever "moderates" into power, or prevent them from losing power - euphemistically called "supporting moderation" - lies at the heart of the Gaza crisis. It is a narrative that has served Israel's wider interests in garnering legitimacy for the Israeli campaign against Iran, and in dichotomizing the region into Westernized "moderates" and Islamist "extremists".

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Why Israel Can’t Make Peace With Hamas

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Jeffrey Goldberg - Jan. 14 (Opinion) - Hamas’s desire to best Hezbollah’s achievements is natural, of course, but, more to the point, it is radicalizing. One of the reasons, among many, that Hamas felt compelled to break its cease-fire with Israel last month was to prove its potency to Muslims impressed with Hezbollah.

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A rabbi's plea for a ceasefire in Gaza

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The Independent - By Jonathan Wittenberg - Jan. 14 (Opinion) - We should pray, for our loved ones, for Israel and Gaza, for the wounded and the grief-stricken, and for a swift, enduring end to this fighting. But we also need to call for a durable solution for peace, including a swift and sustainable ceasefire that ends all rocket attacks, and the complete and permanent lifting of the Gaza blockade. May peace come quickly.

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Empty gestures won't bring peace to Middle East

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Times - By Akiva Eldar - Jan. 14 (Opinion) - Now, a few weeks before Israel's Feb. 10 general elections, polls show that the Likud, the major center-right political party in Israel headed by Benjamin Netanyahu, has a good chance to form the next government. Mr. Netanyahu's record as prime minister, together with the Likud candidates, doesn'tdemonstrate any desire to help Mr. Obama create breakthroughs in the peace process. They promise to stick to their approach that rules out the formula of territories for peace.

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British Jews and Israel: a new relationship?

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Keith Kahn-Harris - Jan. 13 (Opinion) - British Jews who have felt discomfort with Israeli actions have generally been faced with a bleak choice: to express this discomfort privately and quietly or be marginalised and perhaps even ostracised.

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War on Gaza - Who will save Israel from itself?

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Aljazeera - By Mark LeVine - Jan. 13 (Opinion) - Who will save Israel from herself? Israelis are clearly incapable. Their addiction as a society to the illusion of violence-as-power has reached the level of collective mental illness. As Haaretz reporter Yossi Melman described it on January 10, "Israel has created an image of itself of a madman that has lost it". Not Palestinians, too many of whom have fallen prey to the same condition.

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Humanitarian Crisis Deepens In Gaza

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Radio Free Europe - Jan. 13 (Interview) - The Israeli campaign against Hamas is now in its third week with no end in sight. In the densely populated Gaza Strip, the conditions for civilians are worsening daily.

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Obama Must Get Tough With Israel to Achieve Peace

Mon, 12 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Newsweek - By Aaron David Miller - Jan. 12 (Opinion) - Jews worry for a living; their tragic history compels them to do so. In the next few years, there will be plenty to worry about, particularly when it comes to Israel. The current operation in Gaza won't do much to ease these worries or to address Israel's longer-term security needs. The potential for a nuclear Iran, combined with the growing accuracy and lethality of Hamas and Hizbullah rockets, will create tremendous concern. Anxiety may also be provoked by something else: an Obama administration determined to repair America's image and credibility and to reach a deal in the Middle East.

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Bush's Mideast legacy

Sun, 11 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Boston Globe - Jan. 11 (Editorial) - are usually traceable to a failure of statecraft. In the case of the current Israeli assault on the Hamas regime in Gaza, that failure belongs not only to the leadership of Israel and Hamas, but, most tellingly, to the serial blunders of President Bush. The humanitarian catastrophe imposed on civilians in Gaza, the Iranian-supplied rockets fired into Israel by Hamas, and the Israeli missiles landing in densely populated neighborhoods of Gaza City are among the consequences of eight years of Bush administration policy in the Middle East. The disasters of war in Gaza come as the culmination to a long skein of bad decisions, and those errors will burden President-elect Barack Obama with a tangle of crises that he will have to begin addressing immediately.

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Bill Moyers reflects on Middle East violence

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Bill Moyers Journal - By Bill Moyers - Jan. 09 (Comment) - In a city made noisy by hammers and saws preparing for the inauguration of a new president — a city already reverberating with partisan rancor, and with the constant chattering of the opinionated — it was hard to hear the sound of a single snare drum along Pennsylvania Avenue, between the White House and Capitol Hill, but there it was: a mere handful of men and women, 70 at most, had come out this rain-swept morning to bear witness to the dead - to the victims of war.

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Obama and Israel

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Foreign Policy - By Ian Williams - Jan. 09 (Comment) - On January 5 John Bolton, the former unconfirmed U.S. envoy to the United Nations, advocated in The Washington Post a "three-state solution" to the Palestinian problem. This "solution" involved returning Gaza to Egypt and the West Bank to Jordan because the Palestinian state has manifestly failed. A perennial cutter of Gordian knots, Bolton usually misses the complexity of the turns — and the identity of the knot-tiers. In this case, he missed the rather obvious point that the Palestinian Authority's ailments are connected to the Israeli refusal to allow a viable and contiguous state to exist and its constant undermining of whatever party the Palestinian people elect, first Fatah and now Hamas. In fact, Bolton doesn't go far enough. Following his line of "reasoning," Israel should be returned to Britain as a mandate and then quickly turned over to the United States.

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The peace has been lost to Israel’s military victories

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Financial Times - By Philip Stephens - Jan. 09 (Opinion) - Israel will never turn armed might into strategic security. If need be, it could win a war against all its enemies combined. But if it wants peace it must face the decision it has avoided for 40 years: withdrawal from the occupied Palestinian territories. Military victories and land grabs are futile. Security will come only with political resolution.

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