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

The Story of 'Operation Orchard': How Israel Destroyed Syria's Al Kibar Nuclear Reactor - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:27:40 -0800

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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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Think Again: Palestine

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Foreign Policy - By Zahi Khouri - Sep. 25 (Opinion) - The idea of "economic peace" suggests an economic conflict, and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is certainly not that. Although economic issues do figure into Palestinian concerns, they are not nearly as important as addressing the rights of Palestinian refugees, terminating Israel's occupation of Palestinian land, and establishing a viable, independent, and sovereign Palestinian state, with East Jerusalem as its capital. To suggest that economics are what this is about would be to sideline history and to willfully ignore the reality of Israel's occupation. This conflict is political and it calls for a solution that is political.

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Settling for Failure in the Middle East

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Stephen M. Walt - Sep. 20 (Opinion) - Like so many of his predecessors, President Obama is quickly discovering that persuading Israel to change course is nearly impossible.

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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 Elders' View Of the Middle East.

Sun, 06 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Jimmy Carter - Sep. 06 (Opinion) - Settlement expansion is disturbing and disheartening. The Elders’ View Of the Middle East In current condition and what seems more realistic than a 2 state solution is actually a 1 state, which should be democratic with clear minority rights for Muslims, and Christians. I think it is impossible to think of divided Jerusalem. Each religion including the orthodox Syrians, Armenian and the Kopts as well as mainstream Catholic and Lutheran and So shouls the mainstream 3 (as far as I know) Jewish religious communities and Muslims. Some have religious 'courts', which deals with religious and family laws. If necessary because of security in Jerusalem, it could be som kind of international oversight 'council' to secure freedom of religion and worship. Building a third Temple is many Jews dream, but to destroy the Dome of the Rock would be a cultural and artistical cruelty when one think of those who actually built and decorated it. The Dome of the Rock is in way one of the wonders of the history of the peoples of this earth. Personally, my dream is a third temple built on the vacant land between the Wailing Wall and the Jewish part of the Old City, where the Wailing Wall became part of the new Temple's structure to remind all of us of the destruction of the 2 wonderful Jewish Temples that has been there before. But I do not think I will see this happen in my lifetime, being a child Shoah survivor. But eventually it is for the citizens of the State of Israel to decide.

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Israel has Iran in its sights

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Micah Zenko - Aug. 30 (Opinion) - Iran has until late September to respond to the latest international proposal aimed at stopping the Islamic Republic from developing a nuclear weapon. Under the proposal, Iran would suspend its uranium enrichment program in exchange for a U.N. Security Council commitment to forgo a fourth round of economic and diplomatic sanctions.

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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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Israel Turns on Itself

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Foreign Policy - By Noah Efron - Jul. 20 (Opinion) - Secular Israelis, for their part, live in perpetual dismay over the fact that their successes have never led them to where they expected to arrive. Their parents’ generation, and that of their parents, expected to be vindicated, that the value and truth of the ideology they embraced would be confirmed by the society they built. After Zionists produced the Good Society, they reasoned, no one could doubt that Zionism itself is a social good. And for some time, it seemed that this formula had proven itself to be Israel’s self-image, broadly, as the country passed through two phases.

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Column: Dressing up the Palestinian state

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Jerusalem Post - By Gershon Baskin - Jun. 23 (Opinion) - Let us assume for a moment that the Palestinians accept all of Netanyahu's conditions - their state will be demilitarized, it will have no effective control of its external borders, its airspace, seaport, electromagnetic sphere. The Palestinians will agree to define the State of Israel as the state of the Jewish people. The sovereignty of the Palestinian state will be more limited than the sovereignty of almost any other state. So be it (for the purpose of argument at least). Now Mr. Netanyahu, I have some questions for you regarding your vision of this Palestinian state.

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Muslims Will Judge Obama by Actions More Than Words

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Helene Cooper - Jun. 05 (Comment) - But one thing is already clear. While Mr. Obama’s strong words may resonate today, on the Arab street and in the madrassas and the tea shops and dining tables where the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims congregate, the future actions of Mr. Obama will be far more important.

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Obama’s Speech a Start to Repairing Muslim Relations

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Newsweek - By Michael Hirsch - Jun. 05 (Opinion) - as Obama himself seemed to acknowledge, his speech won't have a shelf life of more than a few days unless it is accompanied by real policy changes. There have been some signs of that, notably the administration's stark rhetoric toward Israel about freezing West Bank settlements and the president's commitment to withdraw from Iraq by the end of 2011. But this is really only the beginning. For if Obama's outreach is ever to amount to anything more than swiftly forgotten words, he needs to begin to roll back nearly a century's worth of Arab-Western history.

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How Iran Could Save the Middle East

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Jeffrey Goldberg - Jun. 04 (Opinion) - The definitive Middle East cliché is “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” With Shiite Iran growing stronger, Jews and Sunni Arabs suddenly have a potent basis for friendship. Could leveraging Sunni fears of rising Shiite power finally solve the Israeli-Palestinian problem? The case for a Sunni-Jewish alliance

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Obama: U.S. Needs To Be 'Honest' With Israel

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

National Public Radio - By Liz Halloran - Jun. 02 (Interview) - President Obama, just days before traveling to the Middle East to deliver a key speech on U.S.-Muslim relations, on Monday reasserted U.S. support for Israel. But in an interview with NPR, the president also said he will continue to push for a Palestinian state and for a freeze on Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

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Israel’s Fears, Amalek’s Arsenal

Sun, 17 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Jeffrey Goldberg - May. 17 (Opinion) - WHEN the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, visits the White House on Monday for his first stage-setting visit, he will carry with him an agenda that clashes insistently with that of President Obama. Mr. Obama wants Mr. Netanyahu to endorse the creation of a Palestinian state. Mr. Netanyahu wants something else entirely: the president’s agreement that Iran must be prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons.

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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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Netanyahu to Obama: Stop Iran—Or I Will

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Jeffrey Goldberg - Apr. 01 (Interview) - In an interview conducted shortly before he was sworn in today as prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu laid down a challenge for Barack Obama. The American president, he said, must stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons—and quickly—or an imperiled Israel may be forced to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities itself.

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The forked-tongue eunuchs and Israel

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Daily Star (Lebanon) - By Rami G. Khouri - Mar. 20 (Opinion) - For years, US administrations called Israeli settlements "illegal" and an "obstacle to peace," but in recent years those terms have been replaced by a mere "unhelpful." On her first official trip to the region earlier this month, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton referred to the Israeli demolition of Palestinian Arab homes in East Jerusalem as "unhelpful." Earlier this week, the European Union presidency said that Israel's demolition of homes in the Silwan neighborhood of Jerusalem "threatens the viability of a comprehensive, just and lasting settlement, in conformity with international law."

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The Lieberman Disaster

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Jeffrey Goldberg - Mar. 17 (Comment) - Maybe it's just a dream, but an Arab population that has the same rights, freedoms, opportunities -- and responsibilities (i.e. national service of some sort) as the Jewish population is an Arab population that is too busy and successful to hate. (Yes, I know Israeli Arabs have the same legal rights as Israeli Jews, but what I'm talking more about opportunities here).

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Zionism is the problem

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Ben Ehrenreich - Mar. 16 (Opinion) - ... it is no longer possible to believe with an honest conscience that the deplorable conditions in which Palestinians live and die in Gaza and the West Bank come as the result of specific policies, leaders or parties on either side of the impasse. The problem is fundamental: Founding a modern state on a single ethnic or religious identity in a territory that is ethnically and religiously diverse leads inexorably either to politics of exclusion (think of the 139-square-mile prison camp that Gaza has become) or to wholesale ethnic cleansing. Put simply, the problem is Zionism.

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Zero tolerance now

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Haaretz - By Lara Friedman, Hagit Ofran - Mar. 04 (Opinion) - If President Barack Obama is serious about making progress toward Israeli-Palestinian peace and about setting America's relationship with the Arab and Muslim worlds on a new and better course, he cannot allow settlements to hijack the agenda.

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Jerusalem's Power Broker

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Atlantic Monthly - By Gershom Gorenberg - Feb. 18 (Opinion) - If they chose to, Livni and Netanyahu could form a government together and leave Lieberman as an izgoi in opposition. But that would require agreeing on who becomes prime minister, and so far, such agreement has been out of reach. On Wednesday, back in Israel, Lieberman is expected to tell Peres whom he supports — Netanyahu or Livni. The price paid for his support could make Israel itself an outcast.

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Stalemate all around in Israel

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Economist - Feb. 16 (Opinion) - FOR reasons of his own, Barack Obama chose to disregard the advice he got from many quarters that he should spell out his views on Palestinian statehood before Israel’s voters went to the polls on February 10th. That is a pity. Israelis disagree about many things, but most understand the value of having a prime minister who is liked and welcomed in the White House.

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