Today’s Top Stories
1. Why does the media insist on making Israel the aggressor every chance it gets? Hamas fired a rocket at Israel late last week and Israel responded with an airstrike. But Reuters still gives Israel the central role in the headline to its coverage:
2. Palestinians are under pressure to delay any vote on their resolution to the UN Security Council.
There are those in the UN pushing to postpone the vote at least until the beginning of 2015 when the makeup of the Security Council will change. Still others, especially the United States, are requesting a far longer postponement until after the elections in Israel on March 17, 2015, since such a step could strengthen the Israeli right, the official said.
Meanwhile, political commentator Aaron David Miller gets space in the Daily Beast to express what everyone already knows about the peace process.
In case you haven’t noticed, there is no credible peace process and hasn’t been for at least a decade and a half, and no chance of promoting one right now.. Sure you’ve had various Israeli-Palestinian bilateral talks and US brokered efforts to get talks going and even to develop proposals to bridge gaps. But none of these, including the Camp David summit of July 2000, not to mention John Kerry’s most recent efforts in 2013, ever got close enough to be considered even a “close but no cigar” outcome. The gaps on the big issues are just too large, the mistrust between Israelis and Palestinians too deep, and the current leaders far too constrained for a successful outcome.
3. U.S. to EU: Keep Hamas on list of terrorist organizations. EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini agrees.
Israel and the Palestinians
• Perhaps the opening photo of a concrete portion of Israel’s security barrier should have been a clue about what was to follow. New York Times staff editorial looks at the dwindling hopes for a two-state solution from a largely Palestinian perspective. When will the Times run an op-ed lamenting the dwindling hopes of Israelis living in peace and security with their neighbors?
• The two-state solution was also high on the list of concerns for New York Times columnist Roger Cohen who gives his nod to Labor leader Yitzhak Herzog for the coming election, accompanied by the usual alarmist rhetoric of what might happen if Herzog doesn’t win:
The two-state idea is alive but ever more tenuous. It is compatible with an Israel true to its founding principles. It is incompatible with an Israel bent on Jewish supremacy and annexation of all or most of the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. It can be resurrected, because there is no plausible alternative, despite the fact that almost a half-century of dominion over another people has produced ever greater damage, distrust and division. It can be buried only at the expense of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, for no democracy can indefinitely control the lives of millions of disenfranchised people — and that is what many Palestinians are.
The Rest of the Roundup
• Palestinian sources told Israeli media that Hamas is diverting cement and other building supplies away from Gaza reconstruction projects and using it to reconstruct its tunnels instead. Meanwhile, the Times of Israel reports that Hamas has learned some important lessons from the summer war.
According to the reports, Hamas has acknowledged the limited efficacy of its mid- and longer-range rockets, many of which were shot down by Israel’s Iron Dome defense system during the war, inflicting very limited civilian casualties. Meanwhile, Hamas has recognized the deadliness of mortar shells, which fall short of Iron Dome’s range.
• Harvard Provost speaks out against the boycott against SodaStream launched by the Harvard University Diving Services. “Harvard University’s procurement decisions should not and will not be driven by individuals’ views of highly contested matters of political controversy,” he said in an email. His comments, however, came too late to pre-empt a harsh critique of the university by one of its superstar professors, Steven Pinker. Join HR’s Fighting BDS Facebook page to fight Israel’s delegitimization in the media.
Image: CC BY-NC-SA flickr/Ross Pollack
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