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"For anyone looking for a real diplomatic initiative, this trip was just that: a disappointment. Obama was all embrace: no pressure, no initiative, no insistence…But the trip, for all its limitations, is worth unpacking because it is one of those events that could turn out to be deeply significant…"
— In today’s Daily Comment, David Remnick writes about Obama in Israel: http://nyr.kr/YetAUZ(Source: newyorker.com)
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Obama in Israel: What’s His Game Plan?
What is Obama really up to with his visit to Israel? John Cassidy has some thoughts: http://nyr.kr/YrNpT0
Photograph by Uriel Sinai/Getty.
(Source: newyorker.com)
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"There is a great deal of celebrating now all over Palestine and in the Palestinian diaspora. But it may fizzle out in a week or two. Whether it will or not depends on what we do with it…"
— - David Remnick talks to Prime Minister Salam Fayyad about Palestine’s day, and the obstacles facing a two-state solution with Israel: http://nyr.kr/Uw5bFM(Source: newyorker.com)
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“The Gatekeepers”
“The Gatekeepers” was made by the Israeli filmmaker Dror Moreh, with French backing, and it is obviously intended, among other things, as a challenge to the Netanyahu regime. The movie is built around interviews with six men who pretty much consecutively ran the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal-security intelligence operation, from 1980 to 2011
…These insiders reported directly to the Prime Ministers they served. They are all hyper-patriots who would do anything to save Israeli lives and to preserve the Jewish state. And they are convinced that Israel is on the wrong track—that the future is “dark,” as Shalom puts it; that Israel is turning into a colonial power policing a rapidly increasing population of Arabs within its borders.
David Denby reviews “The Gatekeepers”: http://nyr.kr/YaWPr7
(Source: newyorker.com)
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Twitter has been instrumental during past moments of political upheaval, typically as a means for citizens to communicate outside the wrath of oppressive states (such as in the Arab Spring). But news, and precedent, were broken here: this is a narration of real, physical violence by the agents of violence, all as the violence is being wrought. And this raises a number of questions for the start-up giants who founded the various platforms…
Emily Greenhouse writes “The Tweets of War,” on Israel’s and Hamas’s recent use of Twitter: http://nyr.kr/UDWiWL
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"In Israel, they talk of “mowing the lawn” in Gaza, a callous idiom used to refer to the periodic bombardment of a besieged territory in the hopes of reducing the capacity of militant groups every few years. Each time they “mow,” however, they sow seeds of hatred for the next generation. How successful, morally or militarily, is a war whose repetition is planned?"
— Yousef Munayyer on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Continue reading. -
…Netanyahu announced that he and his Likud Party had formed an alliance with the Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, and his Russian-dominated Yisrael Beiteinu Party (the Our Home Israel Party) for elections on January 22nd. In the 2009 elections, Netanyahu ran to the center-left (at least by the standards of an ever more conservative political map), but now he has thrown in with the country’s most prominent xenophobe. Lieberman, who emigrated in 1978, lives in the West Bank settlement of Nokdim. He admires Vladimir Putin. He is so given to outrageous statements about Arabs that foreign reporters are rarely allowed to talk to him.
Political insiders in Israel know that Netanyahu and Lieberman distrust each other, but their newfound alliance makes it almost impossible for a center-left bloc to win in January. Their leaders are, to the last, extremely weak….
David Remnick on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s dark choice on Iran:
http://nyr.kr/S86Xt6
Photograph: AFP/Getty.
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Road Show
Laura Secor writes about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s waning power in Iran, and the United States’s continuing Iran policy conundrum: http://nyr.kr/Q9vZbq
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The Israeli Inspiration for "Homeland"→
Ruth Margalit talks with Gideon Raff, who created the Israeli show that inspired “Homeland”: http://nyr.kr/Q0K62S
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Netanyahu’s American Campaign
“Netanyahu seems determined, more than ever, to alienate the President of the United States and, as an ally of Mitt Romney’s campaign, to make himself a factor in the 2012 election— one no less pivotal than the most super Super PAC.”
Photograph by Platon.
David Remnick on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s attacks on Obama: http://nyr.kr/QKdJc2
