Commentary/Analysis
• Worth reading: Operation Pillar of Defense touched Forbes investigative journalist Richard Behar close to home. A rocket damaged a Rishon LeZion apartment building where relatives lived, the Tel Aviv bus bombing struck a line a cousin frequently rode, and then there’s another distant cousin who was injured when terrorists fired an anti-tank missile at an IDF jeep patrolling the Gaza border. That was the attack which critically injured four soldiers, sparking the war.
• How Will Big Media Refer to the Palestinian “State”? Palestine, PA, and Palestinian Territories are flawed references, so what’s an editor to do?
• Analysts quoted by the NY Times offered two reasons it won’t be simple for the Palestinians to drag Israel to the International Criminal Court:
Some analysts said that by accepting the jurisdiction of the court, the Palestinians could also open themselves up to prosecution for war crimes, including Hamas’s attacks on Israeli civilians.
“Maybe the Palestinians will not want there to be a case against Palestinians,” said Aeyal Gross, a law professor at Tel Aviv University.
They also question whether the Palestinian Authority can bring a case involving jurisdiction in the Gaza Strip, which Hamas, and not President Mahmoud Abbas controls. That raises questions on whether Gaza even forms a state along with the West Bank. “It is a double-edged sword for them,” said Srini Sitaraman, an international law professor at Clark University in Massachusetts.
• An Irish Examiner staff-ed says “It is time for President Obama to be more forceful and tell Israel that its diplomats, not its soldiers, must resolve this crisis.
• “The foreign ministers of Britain and France co-wrote a Times of London commentary (paywall) calling for more US involvement in the peace process.
• Israel’s Birth Didn’t Come at UN; Neither Will Palestine’s
• It’s disgusting that Deborah Orr (remember her?) equates settlement activity with terror. Funny, but I don’t recall ever seeing her condemn terror.
No one has any difficulty, surely, in condemning aggression, particularly in the form of rockets sent by Hamas into Gaza? A lot of us consider settlements and occupation to be acts of aggression as well, and simply don’t understand how Israel can manage to persuade itself that, somehow, some way, they’re not.
• The Peace Process Tooth Fairy
• Abbas can best cement his legacy by resigning and explaining “hard truths” to the Palestinians without the constraints of his position.
But in order to make peace, Palestinians must understand that Israel is not some freak of history, some alien invasion or malignant growth.
• Globe & Mail staff-ed: Canada shouldn’t penalize Palestinians
• Count on Comment is Free to be the platform of choice for Joseph Massad‘s historical revisionism and for Hanan Ashrawi.
• “If the UN decision to recognize Palestine was as meaningless as it’s made out to be, why did its opponents fight so ferociously against it?” asks Haroon Siddiqui.
• See also Paul McGeough, Jennifer Rubin, David Frum, Fareed Zakaria, John Bolton, Frida Ghitis, Boaz Bismuth, staff-eds in The Independent and Irish Times, cartoonist Jeff Danziger, and Tariq Almohayed. The latter doesn’t like Khaled Meshaal’s attempt to equate Hamas’s war with Abbas’s UN success:
What we must recall here is that Abbas secured recognition of the Palestinian state from the international community, whilst all Mishal is interested in is securing recognition for Hamas and himself, and there is a very big difference between the two, and that is the whole story.
Arab Spring Winter
• Worth reading: Turkish columnist Joost Lagendijk says Mohammed Morsi’s rising stature is coming at Ankara’s expense. And its squarely because Prime Minister Erdogan burnt his bridges with Israel. His anti-Israel vitriol left him a bystander in the Gaza ceasefire talks:
It has made him popular on the Arab streets, and I guess it goes down well with many Turks as well. The result however is that Turkey has lost its seat at the negotiation table because it is no longer perceived as an honest broker in conflicts in which Israel is involved.
Lagendijk buttresses his point citing recent commentary/analysis in the NY Times and Foreign Policy. By the way, the Toronto Star‘s Rosie DiManno channeled her inner Lagendijk with a similar commentary.
• Secularists are crying foul, but Egypt is moving towards a December 15 constitutional referendum. BBC coverage.
• Quite a few papers picked up on a NY Times report detailing how Iran’s sending arms to Syria over Iraqi airspace.
Regarding the arms shipments, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton secured a commitment from Iraq’s foreign minister in September that Iraq would inspect flights from Iran to Syria. But the Iraqis have inspected only two . . .
But one former Iraqi official, who asked not to be identified because he feared retaliation by the Iraqi government, said that some officials in Baghdad had been doing the bare minimum to placate the United States and were in fact sympathetic to the Iranian efforts in Syria.
• The Syrian Internet’s back up, but Asma Assad hasn’t Facebooked since Thursday.
• The Lede: Bomb outside Press TV’s Damascus office destroys satellite news truck and other vehicles.
• In his first interview with the Western press since defecting, Syrian Brig. Gen. Manaf Tlass told the Sunday Times (paywall) that Bashar Assad won’t hesitate to use chemical weapons against his people. Regarding the February deaths of reporters Marie Colvin and Rémi Ochlik in the shelling of Baba Amr (Paul Conroy and Edith Bouvier were injured), Tlass had this to say:
Asked whether the journalists were deliberately targeted, Tlass replied: “It’s possible. They were broadcasting the voice of the Syrian people, and killing a journalist isn’t hard for a regime which killed 500 people in Baba Amr.
“Anyone who relays the voice of the people isn’t welcome. The deaths of the journalists could be a message saying, ‘This is our affair, don’t get involved,’” he said.
Rest O’ the Roundup
• Iran stationed defense staff in North Korea. Reuters says they’re cooperating on missile development.
• Follow the progress of the HonestReporting-Australia Advocacy Mission in Israel. Click for more info.
• TechCrunch: British parliament summoned senior Google and Facebook officials to discuss media convergence and how it should be regulated.
(Image of Erdogan via YouTube/PBSNewsHour)
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