Gaza: Goldstone’s report
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Arab News
by Uri Avnery - (Opinion) September 21, 2009 - 12:00am

Is there no limit to the wiles of those dastardly anti-Semites? Now they have decided to slander the Jews with another blood libel. Not the old accusation of slaughtering Christian children to use their blood for baking Passover matzoth, as in the past, but of the mass slaughter of women and children in Gaza.

»

Who's being unfair?
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post
by Richard Goldstone - (Opinion) September 21, 2009 - 12:00am

The responses from the government of Israel to the UN Fact-Finding Mission on Gaza have been deeply disappointing. The mission's mandate enabled Israel to bring its concerns and facts relating to Operation Cast Lead publicly before a UN inquiry. It could have been used by Israel to encourage the UN and especially the Human Rights Council to move in a new direction beneficial to the interests of Israel. I repeatedly requested the government of Israel to do that, and to meet with me in Jerusalem to discuss how the Fact-Finding Mission should approach its mandate.

»

UN must act on Goldstone's report
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Gulf News
by Linda S. Heard - (Opinion) September 21, 2009 - 12:00am

The recently released Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict is unequivocal in its condemnation of Israel. Led by Justice Richard J. Goldstone - a South African judge who served as Chief Prosecutor for the UN's Rwanda and former Yugoslavia international criminal tribunals - the report pulls no punches.

»

Barak, Clinton may join Mideast summit at UN
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Natasha Mozgovaya - September 21, 2009 - 12:00am

Defense Minister Ehud Barak and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will apparently participate in a tripartite meeting on Middle East peace in New York on Tuesday. U.S. President Barack Obama will meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, for a meeting all sides have declared would unlikely bring about an immediate resumption of peace negotiations.

»

Goldstone findings will put Netanyahu on defensive at UN
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Natasha Mozgovaya - September 18, 2009 - 12:00am

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reminisced how, at the start of his tenure as Israel's ambassador to the United Nations in 1984, he met the Lubavitcher rebbe who told him that "you are going to the house of darkness but you must remember that even in the greatest darkness, if you light a small candle, it will shed its light to great distances."

»

UK minister to Ynet: We do not support boycotts against Israel
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ynetnews
by Yael Levy - September 18, 2009 - 12:00am

"The UK does not support boycotts against Israel as they are unhelpful and polarize the debate," British Secretary of State for Business Peter Mandelson told Ynet Thursday evening in response to a decision by British labor unions to support a ban on importing Israeli goods that are produced in "illegal settlements." The boycott, approved at the annual conference of the Trades Union Congress, also calls for an end to arms trading with Israel and disinvestment from some companies. It was reportedly initiated in response to Israel's military offensive in Gaza.

»

'PM agrees to 9-month W. Bank freeze'
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post
by Herb Keinon - September 18, 2009 - 12:00am

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has agreed to a West Bank settlement freeze of nine months, and not the previously agreed six, Army Radio quoted Jerusalem sources as saying Friday. The reported deal came in a meeting with US Middle East envoy George Mitchell, during which the possibility was also raised of Israel making additional moves to ease Palestinians' lives in order to try and convince Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to meet Netanyahu and resume the peace process.

»

Israel must now heal itself
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Guardian
by Daniel Levy - (Opinion) September 18, 2009 - 12:00am

The report of the UN fact-finding mission on the Gaza conflict is outrageous, a disgrace. The mission's head, Richard Goldstone, was the chair of the Friends of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, chair of the World ORT education organisation with more than 150 schools in Israel and a self-declared friend of Israel whose daughter made aliyah – Zionist emigration to Israel – and she told Israeli army radio this week, "Israel is more important to me than anything."

»

Iran and Israel are benefitting from a weakening Obama
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Dar Al-Hayat
by Raghida Dergham - (Blog) September 18, 2009 - 12:00am

Presidents and Prime Ministers are flocking to the United Nations this week, some of them full of expectations, some burdened with depression and others less enthusiastic about meeting US President Barack Obama, after his international flame has waned as a result of internal battles that were waged against him or that he provoked, weighing him down.

»

U.S. Rejects U.N. Proposal to Compel War Crimes Probes of Gaza Conflict
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post
by Colum Lynch - September 18, 2009 - 12:00am

Susan E. Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, rejected a U.N. proposal to compel Israel and Hamas, the Islamist movement that controls the Gaza Strip, to conduct credible investigations into war crimes during last winter's war in Gaza or face possible prosecution by an international prosecutor.

»


American Task Force on Palestine - 1634 Eye St. NW, Suite 725, Washington DC 20006 - Telephone: 202-262-0017